Twitter Tuesday

A new occasional feature covering items of interest from the Twittersphere:

@MonsterCareers shares 51 job search tactics. Worth reviewing to see if there are one or two new ones to try. A key couple for active job seekers include “Prepare and practice your elevator speech” and read articles about best resume practice – chances are your CV format used 5-10 years ago is no longer appropriate!

@stephaniekays links to a Washington Post article examining the unemployment rates of US college graduates. It contains a nice graphic breaking this down by both subject and age group. Recent college graduates (aged 22-26) in “science-life/physical” subjects had a close-to-median unemployment rate of 7-8%. This drops to 2-2.5% for graduate degree holders (age 30-54) – relatively low compared to their peers. Interesting to compare this data with that from the UK Prospects figures, visualised here – similar trends are observed, but IT and engineering graduates appear to have relatively better employment prospects in the US when compared to other subjects.

@chemjobber covers the Wall Street Journal’s neat visualisation of recent data released by the Bureau of Labor in the US... which shows an almost doubling of the chemist and material scientist unemployment rate to 6.1% in 2011. Ouch.

@hecsu comments on the recently published High Fliers report into graduate vacancies and starting salaries at the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers. The stats for chemist employers are woeful, but more details on this to come...

@Sulfur_Blue – Not job-related, but a really nice compilation of periodic table designs to brighten your day