On January 26 of this year, the iJOBS program took a trip to East Hanover, NJ to visit the Novartis campus. I say ‘campus’ because this place felt like a community, not a business. Overall, the atmosphere was inviting and everyone we met seemed genuinely happy to be working there. Several employees emphasized how Novartis encourages a place of diversity and comradery, and what a great overall place it is to work. 
We started our visit with a short introduction to Novartis from our energetic host, Dr. John Sun. The East Hanover campus of Novartis is the US headquarters as well as the global oncology division headquarters. It also houses general medicine departments, drug development, cell and gene therapy, the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) and Sandoz, their generic drug company. There are several other Novartis sites around the world from Emeryville, California to Shanghai, China. The Novartis research HQ is located in Cambridge, MA. Next we held an open discussion panel with several Novartis employees ranging from HR and staffing managers to scientists and project managers. Overall, their message is what we often hear from industry panels in the past: network, network, network! You should try to connect with industry professionals through networking events and stay in contact with those people personally through linkedin or via email. Periodically go through your contacts and connect with people you haven’t spoken with in a while; keep your relationships fresh and positive. Panelists from Novartis also stressed the need for your flexibility. You should always be willing to embrace change and new challenges, and be open to entering industry in a field that is not necessarily what you want. Once you are hired, there seems to be much more opportunity for vertical and horizontal movement within the company. This is of particular note for those interested in project management. Once you become an employee of Novartis, you can acquire the skills necessary for project management along your career path (as opposed getting a PMP certification). Novartis will help you with the development you need to get where you want to go. Novartis also has a summer internship program whose applications are currently open for 2016. Positions are in both commercial and scientific fields with topics ranging from development and technical oper
ations to communications and legal. Internships are 12 weeks and are open to both graduate and undergraduate students. This opportunity provides a very good platform for networking with Novartis employees. For post-graduates, they also offer a research based postdoctoral program through NIBR. After the discussion panel, we took a short walking tour of the campus which featured fitness centers, restaurants/cafes, and a brand new daycare center. Since the East Hanover campus is mainly business oriented, we also saw several modern, open plan offices and meeting rooms. We wrapped up our trip with a short reception in one of their restaurants before heading back to Rutgers.
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