In 2003 when I began working in science communication I didn't know about all the different type of jobs available or the different sectors, so I began collecting examples of places that had employed, or seemed likely to employ, science communicators.
That list became a hugely popular blog post in 2009 and I have been perennially updating it ever since. The latest version (checked Nov 2017) now lives in a Google Spreadsheet: Scicomm jobs - list of vacancies pages employing science communicators
Science communication happens in medical research charities, schools, newspapers, museums, universities, community groups, learned societies, pharma companies, government - it is impossible to completely map all the possible ways that one can do scicomm.
The jobs are hugely varied too - health information professionals (my own background), PR people, journalists, museum explainers, bloggers, television or radio presenters and vloggers, scientists who talk about their work, non-scientists who talk about other people's work. It's a big sector!
Anyway if you're new to science communication I hope you'll find something interesting among the suggestions.
Note that these employers also employ IT specialists, HR personnel etc so the vacancies pages will probably be of use to anyone looking for a job, but the focus is on scientific (broadly) institutions.
Note to employers
PLEASE consider adding a /jobs redirect to the end of your homepage address and pointing that to wherever you're currently keeping your jobs. The reason this list of science communication vacancies pages needs updating so frequently is partly because you keep moving your jobs around every time you have a website refresh but also because you use different terms to describe jobs (jobs, vacancies, recruitment, work for us, work with us, opportunities).
Obviously you are free to put your vacancies pages wherever you wish and call them whatever you like but please let's all point to them with /jobs for simplicity. Thank you. This will let anyone type /jobs at the end of your homepage URL and go straight to your vacancies page, hooray!
Showing posts with label vacancies pages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacancies pages. Show all posts
Saturday, 11 November 2017
Monday, 28 December 2015
2015 edition: places where UK science communicators could work (London-heavy)
Since 2003 I've been keeping a great big public list of vacancy pages where science communicators and health info communicators work, or might work, in the UK. Initially this was just a list I kept for myself as part of trying to find a job, then I discovered the world of blogs and realised others might find it useful too.
There are places that are obviously science communication-y sorts of places, such as science museums, learned societies and medical research charities but all sorts of other places fit the bill and have vacancies pages that may be worth noting.
Universities will have scientists who also do science communication stuff, and departments and larger projects might also have someone whose job relates to wider public engagement and scicomm, so uni vacancies pages are a good bet. Similarly any organisation with a science PR department.
Many organisations don't pitch the jobs they make available as 'scicomm' (though there has been an increase in them doing this in recent years) so I advise thinking of this list as a bouncing off point to find other examples within a sector (eg there are loads of medical charities here but I've not got all of them) or to find a new sector (I don't have much here on big industries).
Full list is here: Scicomm jobs - list of vacancies pages employing science communicators (examples below).
The original 2009 list, updated in 2013 is here: Where London science communicators might work
What I would like is to hear about similar lists in other cities and countries which I can then combine with this list. I mean yes of course I can google science centres and museums in, say, Canada or Italy and provide a list but it's probably better done by someone who knows the area.
What I would also like is for all organisations which have a vacancies page to set up a page-redirect so that typing /jobs after the homepage address always takes you to wherever their vacancies page is. Organisations use such a variety of terms to describe jobs that it would be helpful to aim for some overarching consistency: jobs, vacancies, work with us, work for us, recruitment, careers etc.
Here are some examples where I've found the vacancy page. I'm about halfway through my list.
There are places that are obviously science communication-y sorts of places, such as science museums, learned societies and medical research charities but all sorts of other places fit the bill and have vacancies pages that may be worth noting.
Universities will have scientists who also do science communication stuff, and departments and larger projects might also have someone whose job relates to wider public engagement and scicomm, so uni vacancies pages are a good bet. Similarly any organisation with a science PR department.
Many organisations don't pitch the jobs they make available as 'scicomm' (though there has been an increase in them doing this in recent years) so I advise thinking of this list as a bouncing off point to find other examples within a sector (eg there are loads of medical charities here but I've not got all of them) or to find a new sector (I don't have much here on big industries).
Full list is here: Scicomm jobs - list of vacancies pages employing science communicators (examples below).
The original 2009 list, updated in 2013 is here: Where London science communicators might work
What I would like is to hear about similar lists in other cities and countries which I can then combine with this list. I mean yes of course I can google science centres and museums in, say, Canada or Italy and provide a list but it's probably better done by someone who knows the area.
What I would also like is for all organisations which have a vacancies page to set up a page-redirect so that typing /jobs after the homepage address always takes you to wherever their vacancies page is. Organisations use such a variety of terms to describe jobs that it would be helpful to aim for some overarching consistency: jobs, vacancies, work with us, work for us, recruitment, careers etc.
Here are some examples where I've found the vacancy page. I'm about halfway through my list.
Sunday, 1 December 2013
How to make it easier for people to find your jobs
How to make it easier for people to find your jobs by Jo Brodie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/p/test-page.html.
This post (but no other post on this blog) is made under a Creative Commons license for anyone to pinch, rewrite and share with attribution and linking back to this post. You don't need to ask my permission to use it, even for commercial use, but you need to apply the same type of license to your version as I've used here. That's the deal :)
Dear organisations, companies, charities, people who employ other people...
There are lots of people looking for jobs at the moment and many of them will be spending some time looking online, so let's make it easier.
Although there's an almost limitless supply of websites that list job vacancies most organisations will also post their own jobs on their own website in addition to advertising elsewhere. Sometimes they can be a bit hard to find and require hopeful candidates to spend time hunting on your website.
Here's my big suggestion for making it easier for everyone to find your latest job vacancies.
Create a page which has the following type of address
http://www.yourwebsite.co.uk/jobs
This means that anyone visiting your site only has to type /jobs at the end of the address of your homepage to be immediately taken to your page about jobs.
Most web users know or have learned, through experience, that clicking on the organisation's logo (generally on the left hand side of the page) will return them to the homepage. I'd love it if people could similarly learn that typing /jobs was a quick shortcut that would always lead them to a page of info about working at your company.
It also provides people with a page that they can bookmark and link to (eg on sites where vacancies pages are collected). It's even better if you set up an RSS feed on it so that your new jobs are sent to RSS subscribers whenever you make a change on that page.
Possible objections
1. People can use our search box to find jobs
I'm sure they can, if they're on your site. But should they search for job, jobs, vacancy, vacancies, work with us (for us) or recruitment? Do all those words lead them to your page on jobs?
2. Way ahead of you, our jobs page is at http://www.yourwebsite.co.uk/vacancies
Fantastic. Any chance you could humour me and set up a /jobs page that redirects to your vacancies page as well?
Don't forget, after a website reshuffle, to point your new http://www.yourwebsite.co.uk/recruitment to the http://www.yourwebsite.co.uk/jobs page though.
3. We're a small company so we don't have a page on jobs
Well... can't force you, but would it damage your Google ranking to have a page saying that jobs will be posted there when they become available?
How about using such a page to talk about what a great place you are to work, perhaps some profiles celebrating the diverse mix of skills and backgrounds of your members of staff, and why they've chosen to work there.
4. Well we do have a jobs board
Great but that's you advertising jobs at other organisations (very helpful of course) but is it easy for people to find out how they can work with you too?
See also - my other regular bleats on this topic :)
- Thoughts on job vacancies pages part two (24 December 2011)
- Dear companies / organisations everywhere – why not make it easier for people to find your jobs? A little bit ranty :) (8 February 2012)
- Organisations that make it easy for you to find their jobs (9 February 2012)
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Thoughts on job vacancies pages part two
I have a new plan. I am going to try and persuade all organisations to add a page - /jobs - to their website and for it to be the official page on which their jobs are posted. For some organisations new jobs will appear infrequently (some orgs are small and have a low turnover of staff) in which case it might say for several months in the year "there are no vacancies at present".
Not all organisations have a page like this, which would look something like http://website.org.uk/jobs or http://www.website.co.uk/jobs, presumably because they think it's pointless having a non-regularly updated page that doesn't have much on it.
I disagree.
1. If all organisations have such a page in existence (and we all agree to accept that some will be updated at slower rates than others) then it makes it an order of magnitude easier to find where that org keeps its jobs. Imagine if this was an industry standard. I've written about this before, sort of, in part one.
Also it would be very helpful if you could set your website search engine to point job, jobs, vacancy, vacancies, "work with us", "work for us", opportunities, recruitment, employment and any other synonyms you can think of to point to this /jobs page.
2. This adds an extra page to your website. By all means link it back to other pages in your site and do something clever with it for search engine optimisation.
3. You can add content about people you have working for you and what they do, thereby demonstrating that your organisation is a great place to work in.
4. Call me crazy but why not have some information about your jobs such as a few job descriptions, typical salaries and organisational structure, as well as copies of your application form and guidance on filling these in. I appreciate that job descriptions are very variable (as is organisational structure) but surely we can all agree that we won't hold it against you if you put this information there. Feel free to put a disclaimer.
5. If it's an organisation that is likely to employ science communicators then I'll list it on my great big list (two and a half years old and getting bigger) of 'places where science communicators might work'.
So, please add a page to your site and make it easier for people to bookmark / link to / look at when they want to come and work for you.
Thank you :)
Not all organisations have a page like this, which would look something like http://website.org.uk/jobs or http://www.website.co.uk/jobs, presumably because they think it's pointless having a non-regularly updated page that doesn't have much on it.
I disagree.
1. If all organisations have such a page in existence (and we all agree to accept that some will be updated at slower rates than others) then it makes it an order of magnitude easier to find where that org keeps its jobs. Imagine if this was an industry standard. I've written about this before, sort of, in part one.
Also it would be very helpful if you could set your website search engine to point job, jobs, vacancy, vacancies, "work with us", "work for us", opportunities, recruitment, employment and any other synonyms you can think of to point to this /jobs page.
2. This adds an extra page to your website. By all means link it back to other pages in your site and do something clever with it for search engine optimisation.
3. You can add content about people you have working for you and what they do, thereby demonstrating that your organisation is a great place to work in.
4. Call me crazy but why not have some information about your jobs such as a few job descriptions, typical salaries and organisational structure, as well as copies of your application form and guidance on filling these in. I appreciate that job descriptions are very variable (as is organisational structure) but surely we can all agree that we won't hold it against you if you put this information there. Feel free to put a disclaimer.
5. If it's an organisation that is likely to employ science communicators then I'll list it on my great big list (two and a half years old and getting bigger) of 'places where science communicators might work'.
So, please add a page to your site and make it easier for people to bookmark / link to / look at when they want to come and work for you.
Thank you :)
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