Egbert van Hattem
Some statistics, one can hardly believe. According to Joeri Voets, the chance of getting unemployed as a graduate physicist in the Netherlands is around three percent. ‘That is because of the margin error,’ he says as someone from the audience remarks playfully, adding to the spirit of the afternoon, after having to wait for some fifteen minutes because Voets was delayed while traveling.
For fifty PhD candidates present in room 286 of the Zuidhorst building, who represent most parts of the world, that statistic is great news to hear. There is every chance of finding a challenging job in Holland for a physicist, in the opinion of Voets. Good news as it may seem, the statistics are altogether troublesome for the Dutch economy and society.‘In Holland, we structurally lack highly skilled people in physics, we are very poor in making students enthusiastic about science and the participation of women is one of the lowest in Europe , despite the vast number of PhDs from all over the world, our nation envisages a negative flux of knowledge. Not a happy image at all for a country profiling itself as a high-tech country.’
What are employeurs?
As director of TMC Physics, he is invited to give PhDs insight into skills Dutch companies are interested in gaining. What's more, the PhDs can get acquainted to some main features of a high-tech company culture in the Netherlands.
Existing for ten years now, TMC Physics Department is a beacon in this landscape, making use of a unique business model. Around about 500 highly skilled employees, specialists and advisers work on projects for different clients, among them the most highly rated high tech companies. Entrepreneurship is part of working at TMC for everyone at all levels, and due to this fact, they call their people ‘employeneurs.’ The projects are multidisciplinary in nature and spread over ten business cells.
Independent Workstyle
Voets stresses that PhDs are welcome at TMC, approximately granting a hundred of them a job at the moment. One should be capable to work on a project independently, manage the project under his/her own hands, get other people involved if necessary, and basically cope with the situation when things go wrong. Most of the time, projects involve dealing in subparts of a big company’s research programs. Come and work for us if you want to broaden your scope and gain experience in a different environment,’ Voets indicates. Any start-up PhDs, wanting to earn far more than 3100 euros a month–that is not including the profit sharing part– or those longing for more security had better start looking somewhere else first.
photo: Gijs van Ouwerkerk
