Invitrogen hired 1,000 life science PhDs worldwide last year, of whom roughly 30% were new graduates, and it expects to hire 1,000 more by the end of this year, says Rodney Moses, vice president for global talent acquisition for the Carlsbad, Calif.-based company. Fourteen percent of recently graduating PhDs expect to join the industry within two years of their postdocs,1 yet many of these new hires aren't ready to contribute meaningfully to the companies that need them. Invitrogen managers say that "they are great scientists, but when we bring them onboard, will they also understand how we bring our products to our customers?" says Moses. The answer is too often no.
Life science PhD programs are typically geared toward allowing the student to learn enough laboratory skills to produce publishable data for the thesis, says Douglas Amorese, R&D manager for genomics business at Agilent Technologies in Palo Alto, Calif. Although ...
