On the evening of September 12, a casual event between students, post docs, and alumni was held in the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Research Tower at the Bush/Piscataway campus. As a second-year Ph.D. student, this event caught my attention because it was a great opportunity for me to network with other students, ask for advice, and hear about their experiences during graduate school. On the other hand, I was unsure of attending the event because I’m shy and talking to new people is difficult sometimes. Thankfully, this was a stress-free event where everyone shared snacks and drinks while discussing their graduate school experiences. Throughout the event, I spoke with Rutgers alumni about the opportunities that are available to Ph.D students, for example internships, shadowing experiences, and job options after graduate school. I spoke with two alumni who participated in numerous iJOBS events and were also part of the iJOBs blog during their time at Rutgers. I first spoke with Dr. Dharm Patel, who graduated from the Biochemistry program and now works at Leo Pharma in medical affairs. I also spoke with Dr. Itzamarie Chévere, who did her PhD and post-doc at Rutgers and participated in the iJOBS Phase 1 while also blogging for the iJOBs blog. Dr. Chévere is currently the Associate Director at the Rutgers University Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. Drs. Patel and Chévere both agreed on “how important it is for students to take advantage of networking events and fully participate in them They emphasized that their events are a great opportunity to make new connections that could one day help us during our career paths. Indeed, the iJobs blog itself has shown how important networking is to career advancement. Keeping an open mind about new opportunities is also important. They both mentioned that sometimes we “know” what we want to do, but there are always unknown areas that could become the one thing that we could develop passion for. Dr. Patel noted, “We need to learn what we are good at, what we like, and what we are passionate about in order to start building a path for our careers.” Attending iJOBS events provide us with the opportunity to explore areas that might be completely unknown to us. Most of us (including myself) have only known academic research and have never been exposed to research in pharmacological, biomedical, or biotechnological companies. Drs. Patel and Chévere both agreed that learning more about the biomedical and biopharma industries would help give a better idea of what career paths we like and what we could do after graduate school. Another important piece of advice was the need to have good communication skills. An iJOBs networking event is the perfect opportunity to improve your communication skills. For someone like me, these types of events push me to talk to others about my research and to also listen to what others have to say about their experiences in graduate school with lab work and internships. It is also a good idea to check out our networking etiquette tips. My experience at this event was a positive one. I learned that those who have been successful were once in my shoes. My advice to everyone would be to take advantage of the iJOBS events because you will never know what type of opportunities could be there for you.
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