Another brown-bag job-search lunch yesterday. One of my coworkers asked how long we are going to have these - "Until everybody has a job?" I thought, until I have a job, but I said "yes". I still might end up going to Michigan and if that's the case I'll be there for several months. And of course they can go on without me. I asked the branch manager to talk about resume formats, what to put and what not to put on there, and so forth. People still have the idea that there are RULES. "I can't get everything on one page." I don't think anybody over the age of 35 ought to have a one-page resume. It looks like you haven't done anything. I used to have a boss who questioned "ten years of experience" - is that ten years, or one year of experience ten times? So even if you've worked at the same place since you were a baby, hopefully you didn't do the exact same thing all that time. Unless you did. But still you ought to be able to flesh that out a little bit. One coworker fretted that if she only goes back 10 years in any detail, that leaves out her human resources experience, which would be relevant if she wants an HR job. Put it in, we told her. Put in whatever you want (as long as it's true). You could have a resume for applying for HR jobs that's different from your other resumes.

There are jobs out there but most seem to want biology lab experience. This is a big change from a few years ago, when labs I worked in hired biology majors because they couldn't find work except in a chemistry lab. I could do quality. That would mean cGMP stuff, writing IQs and OQs and PQs and other kinds of protocols, charting things and writing investigations and so forth. This irritates me in my current job, but I think maybe that's because I'm wearing too many hats. If I'm doing quality I'm not supervising in the department and things start going to heck, and if I'm taking care of things in the department then the quality tasks pile up. I don't ever feel like I'm taking care of anything the way it deserves. At the lab in Michigan they split the supervisory functions so that there are quality supervisors and people supervisors. That makes much more sense.