iJOBS Blog

Huri Mücahit and Yaa Haber If you’re looking for a career in which you can plan, organize, and oversee all aspects of a project to reach a specific end goal, then project management is the career for you! In this iJOBS workshop, Kristin Fitzgerald, Director of Global Project and Alliance Management at Merck & Co., covered the day-to-day aspects of project management within a pharmaceutical company, as well as the skills required to succeed. In order to understand project management, it is first necessary to define the term ‘project’.

This post was written following my participation in the 2Actify Online course offered by the iJOBS program from July 17 to September 15, 2017 We have all been there: you’re attending iJOBS and (Alliance for Career Advancement) ACA events to learn about potential career options, you’re updating your resume and curriculum vitae to be ready for that first application, but then you suddenly hit a brick wall when you realize your LinkedIn profile hasn’t been updated since college (ack!!).

Dr. Evelyn Erenrich serves as the Associate Dean at the School of Graduate Studies and Director of the Center for Graduate Recruitment, Retention, and Diversity (GR²aD) at Rutgers University. In her capacity as Associate Dean, she is responsible for promoting diversity and inclusion at Rutgers the from undergraduate to faculty levels.

This post was written as a follow up to the iJOBS event on August 29 with Dr. Thomas Magaldi discussing career preparation for graduate students and postdocs. Dr. Magaldi led a very personable and informative discussion on August 29 at Rutgers Newark with current postdoc and graduate students regarding their career goals and how to prepare for the next step in our journey after graduate school. He took time to ask each individual person in the room what their plans were for the future and recommend pointed strategies for how to advance to the next stage.

That is the question. The million dollar question! While we may not soliloquize our internal debate like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we’ve all asked ourselves this question. Going to graduate school for a Ph.D. is not a decision to be made lightly. One must take several factors into account, both personal and professional, before embarking on the epic journey that is a graduate dissertation.

When I began my graduate journey, I wasn’t sure what my career objectives were, or how I would accomplish them. I quickly realized that it was ‘trendy’ to make assertions of how I was going to transition into industry, but that was the extent of my plan at this point. Furthermore, I thought the only possible route into industry for a Ph.D. was to be a post-doc or bench scientist for a small startup or large pharmaceutical company. Little did I know that this was just one option of many!

Me: “I’m not applying to the School of Pharmacy after I graduate. I have no idea what my plans are; I just really like research.” My mom: “WHAT?!?” The day I told my Puerto Rican parents that I was not pursuing my dream job, and that I was confused about my future career plans, I knew their hearts sank. They thought their only child was lost and this was not what they had envisioned for me. I started my B.S. in Chemistry with the intention of completing the required 80 credits to apply to the School of Pharmacy.

The following blog post was written after attending the iJOBS Career Panel: Product Development, Tech and Sales Support in Life Sciences Companies on October 3, 2017. Do you like communicating with other scientists about their projects? Do you enjoy being an expert in a particular method and explaining that method to non-experts? Do you enjoy meeting new people? Then boy, do I have a job for you! If you have overlooked sales and tech support as a job opportunity, you may be missing out on a rewarding, meaningful, fun, and interesting career choice.

This post was written following the September 28, 2017 iJOBS event with Regeneron Regeneron prides itself for being a company thriving on quality research and the active role it plays in the entire life cycle of its drugs. The company was found by two M.D Ph.Ds (Leonard S. Schleifer and George D. Yancopoulos) with the goal of creating regenerative medicine for neuroscience research. The company, which initially received $1 million in venture capital funding, now has over 5,500 employees and 6 FDA-approved drugs, which were all invented in-house, from start to finish.

This post was written after the September 27, 2017 iJOBS event: Applying for jobs as an international student, advice from an immigration attorney held at Rutgers University On September 27^th, immigration lawyer Michael J. Goldstein gave a talk on the process of going from a student with F1 status to finding a job with an H1-B petition and further. During a time of turmoil regarding immigration laws, Goldstein stressed how important it is to find a lawyer focused primarily on immigration law.