(written by D. Farrar) Fall 2007 graduate
My name is David Farrar and I am finishing my Master's degree in Health Physics at CSU. I will
graduate in December 2007.
I heard through Dr. Johnson that prospective students want to know what the job market is like for
HP’s. I have been actively job hunting since the end of the past school year, so I have plenty of
experience.
I guess one place to start is to tell you a little about my academic and work backgrounds so
you have an idea of where I come from. My undergrad was engineering physics from Colorado School
of Mines, so I am on the technical side of physics. My work during that time was mainly retail, with
one summer spent LabVIEW programming at a laser lab in Milwaukee. My grad is obviously here and my
work here has included a little bit of teaching and a lot of instrumentation and data analysis.
When I applied for jobs, I applied for nearly any HP job requiring less than 5 years experience.
The jobs I applied to involved the fields of government (state and federal), consulting, instrument
development, medical imaging, medical therapy, corporate radiation safety, university radiation
safety, nuclear power, hospital radiation safety, national labs and contractors, military
(civilian work), accelerators, and radioactive waste.
I found out about the job listings through
various general job sites (Monster, Careerbuilder, etc.), the Health Physics Society website
(a very good source), through professors in the Health Physics program here (especially Dr.
Johnson), meeting people at the Health Physics Society meetings, and students in the online
health physics review course put on by us in the CSU Student Branch of the Health Physics Society.
I don't remember how many jobs I applied to, but I was contacted by 20 individual companies,
universities, etc. Out of those, I had 3 phone interviews and 7 face-to-face interviews.
Those numbers are a little low because I have rejected some interviews because I wasn't interested
in their kind of health physics work.
Out of those, I have received 3 job offers
(each above $60,000/year). More keep coming and I have recently stopped returning phone calls and
emails because I received an offer doing work I am very interested in doing and I may have an
opportunity to continue on with a Ph.D. here at CSU.
Remember, all of this was BEFORE I graduated and with VERY little operational experience in
health physics. And from what I hear and see at the Society meetings, the job market will be even
more hungry for HPs (increasing public acceptance of radiation, desire to build more reactors, and
majority of HPs retiring/dying off).
Hopefully this answers some of your questions regarding the HP job market.
If you have any further questions about the job market, the CSU HP program, or anything else,
please feel free to EMAIL ME.
For additional information about the Health Physics program, inquiries should be addressed to:
Mailing Address
Environmental & Radiological Health Sciences
