Hi Conor, thanks for your comment! Appreciate all the work you do on the 80k job board.
I will caveat by saying 1) my perspective is based on a job search in the US/​Western biosecurity landscape, not a global one and 2) I drew on my own personal experiences and that of my friends’ in attempting to find a credible full-time position (e.g. summer internship) in biosecurity.
During this job search, many of the entry-level and junior opportunities I scouted on biosecurity job boards tended to (and still do) fall into one of two categories:
Part-time projects/​ ‘test your fit’/​Expression of Interest (EOI) forms; or
Full-time roles that are tagged as open to Junior (1-4 yrs) professionals, but are also open to senior-level candidates, and/​or state a PhD or master’s degree requirement.
Obviously, there are some exceptions and I would love to see someone do an analysis of entry-level biosecurity job postings over time. However, I would point out that it is still difficult to find jobs when moving from category #1 to #2, and if you go down the list of entry level positions today, it would be hard to find more than 5-10 positions that a young person without a PhD could be competitive for. I also think EA jobs are often competitive and agree with Peter’s comment that this higher competitiveness lends itself to selecting more senior, experienced candidates (even when a junior position is available). I would love to see both more orgs (both established and new) run more summer internship/​RA/​entry-level positions and advertise them here more.
Hi Conor, thanks for your comment! Appreciate all the work you do on the 80k job board.
I will caveat by saying 1) my perspective is based on a job search in the US/​Western biosecurity landscape, not a global one and 2) I drew on my own personal experiences and that of my friends’ in attempting to find a credible full-time position (e.g. summer internship) in biosecurity.
During this job search, many of the entry-level and junior opportunities I scouted on biosecurity job boards tended to (and still do) fall into one of two categories:
Part-time projects/​ ‘test your fit’/​Expression of Interest (EOI) forms; or
Full-time roles that are tagged as open to Junior (1-4 yrs) professionals, but are also open to senior-level candidates, and/​or state a PhD or master’s degree requirement.
Obviously, there are some exceptions and I would love to see someone do an analysis of entry-level biosecurity job postings over time. However, I would point out that it is still difficult to find jobs when moving from category #1 to #2, and if you go down the list of entry level positions today, it would be hard to find more than 5-10 positions that a young person without a PhD could be competitive for. I also think EA jobs are often competitive and agree with Peter’s comment that this higher competitiveness lends itself to selecting more senior, experienced candidates (even when a junior position is available). I would love to see both more orgs (both established and new) run more summer internship/​RA/​entry-level positions and advertise them here more.
Great points. I would love to see more of this too!