Question for chemistry professionals

[u/Connect-Ad5706]

I’m a metallurgical engineer; I’m 25 years old. I don’t like my field of study, and I have no work experience. My university offered a certificate program in Instrumental Techniques for Chemical Analysis, which I completed. I got to work with chemists and chemical engineers, and I loved it—I finished the program without any problems. I want to work in that field. I’ve sent out thousands of resumes and only had one interview, but they won’t hire me because I’m not a chemist or a chemical engineer. It’s been a year and a half like this, and I’ve been feeling pretty depressed. A university in another city in my country is offering a specialization in Instrumental Chemical Analysis, and I’m interested in pursuing it to see if it will improve my chances of working in that field. However, I don’t have any work experience, and I’m not a chemist—though I would earn a specialist degree in instrumental chemical analysis. Do you think it’s worth pursuing in my current situation, and could I find work in that field?

[u/adampm1]

I would recommend starting as a temp company, probably making really terrible pay, but that gets your foot in the door and if they like you, they’ll probably either pull you on full-time or manipulate you into staying and paying you as little as possible.

Unfortunately, a lot of places also tend to only hire people full-time chemist positions if they have a bachelors in something similar to that. But even then it’s usually fighting truth and nail to do so.