"He's the archetypal British physics boffin. Don't ever let him near a customer - he couldn't sell a bone to a dog." That's how the marketing manager of a successful high-tech company recently described the physicist who had set up the company and who was still the brains behind the operation. As a recent report called Employers' Views of Postgraduate Physicists makes clear, "customer orientation" has never been a strong point for physicists.
The report was commissioned from the Institute for Employment Studies by the physics programme of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to examine the views of organizations that employ postgraduate physicists. University physics departments in the UK produce about 800 new physics PhDs every year, about 200 of whom have been funded by the EPSRC. In comparison, the UK produces around 2400 physics graduates every year.
While 30%-40% of newly minted PhDs remain in academic research, the rest go on to work for a wide variety of employers. According to the report, growth sectors that have been experiencing problems in recruiting sufficient postgraduate physicists include the electronics and communications sectors, while skills that are particularly in demand include software development and modelling. Coincidentally, the supply of all sorts of scientists and engineers in the UK is currently the subject of a separate review being carried out for the Treasury by the physicist Sir Gareth Roberts .
Most employers interviewed for the EPSRC report were happy with the technical skills of the physics postgraduates they were employing, and in many cases took these skills for granted. Job interviews, therefore, tended to focus on “soft skills” such as communication, problem solving and team working. Not surprisingly, physicists scored highly on problem solving, but communication and team-working skills were described as “problematic and often not well developed amongst postgraduates”.
The very nature of the PhD, with its emphasis on the individual’s contribution to scientific knowledge, was seen as part of the problem. However, there is a strong case for improving the communications skills of all postgrad students, irrespective of whether they intend to remain in academic research or move into industry and business. Preparing grant applications, writing reports and giving presentations are generic skills that will benefit physicists of all types. Team-work, while difficult to teach, is something that most supervisors should encourage in their research groups.
Other skills that physics PhDs lacked, according to the report, included time management, business awareness, self management and the ability to sell bones to dogs. There have, of course, been exceptions such as David Potter, the plasma physicist who founded Psion (page 17, print version only), and the various entrepreneurs highlighted in the April issue of Physics World. And with a little tweaking of the traditional postgraduate experience, there could be a lot more.
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