iJOBS Event Summary

By Vicky Kanta On October 4^th, I attended an iJOBS workshop on the topic of emotional intelligence. The presenter was Juliet Hart, the founder of Hart & Chin Associates, LLC., a start-up offering workshops for science professionals. Juliet started out as a bench scientist working for biotech and pharma companies such as Johnson & Johnson. However, she soon realized that she particularly enjoyed the human collaborative aspect of science.

It is the dream of every young scientist; after many agonizing years filled with hard work and perseverance, you are at the finish line. Everything falls into place and you receive the most satisfying email you may ever receive: “We are pleased to announce that your manuscript has been accepted for publication in Nature”. This is the ultimate reward for all the long hours spent in the lab and undoubtedly a sign that your work matters.

The annual iJOBS/BioNJ career fair is the epitome of what you can do with a Ph.D. The iJOBS program stresses that Ph.D.’s can do much more than practice science in the traditional sense. The opportunities are essentially boundless.

This past Thursday, March 22, 2018, I attended a seminar about Medical Affairs held at the Medical Science Building in Newark, NJ.

By: Tomas Kasza On March 16^th iJOBS hosted a career panel of four Rutgers PhD alumni, all of whom have secured impressive positions following completion of their graduate school education. If you have not had a chance to attend one of these Alumni career panels I would highly recommend it because these alumni may be able to direct you toward opportunities available at Rutgers for your desired post-graduate career. One of the panel members was Dr. Abigail Harris, an Assistant Professor at Bloomsburg University located in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and graduated in 2013.

By Huri Mücahit Edited by: Tomas Kazsa, Maryam Alapa, and Eileen Oni   The following blog post was written after attending the iJOBS Seminar: How to Prepare for the Industry Job Market For many Ph.D. students, a career in the pharmaceutical industry is considered to be the ultimate goal. However, the job search and application process can be more daunting and lengthy than we would like.

The following is a re-cap of an iJOBS event—Regulatory Writing Workshop—held on January 30^th, 2018 on Busch Campus. Doreen Lechner, director of the Biopharma Educational Initiative and Clinical Trial Sciences Program at Rutgers, moderated the event and provided information on relevant courses offered at the university.

By: Huri Mücahit The following blog post was written after attending the iJOBS Workshop: Strategic Online Networking to Propel Your Career on January 18th, 2018. With this workshop, iJOBS once more offers the opportunity to expand networking skills with the program 2Actify. Following the success of the pilot program launched this past summer, (see Fatu Badiane's experience with 2Actify), the founder, Penny Pearl

When I imagine myself in industry I often see myself wearing a suit performing a task, but the details of those tasks are unclear. After speaking to other trainees about what tasks they envision performing in industry, they describe job definitions, but not specific tasks. This becomes problematic because while you may think that you are a good fit for a profession, performing those unknown duties might make you feel differently. I am surely not the first PhD student to ask the question: what job duties would I do in industry, more specifically Medical Affairs?

I didn’t know what I expected on Thursday when I traveled to Bridgewater, NJ to visit GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Medical Affairs office. This was my first opportunity to get a day-in-the-life industry perspective during my time in graduate school. If you read any of our previous blog posts or even just the description of the iJOBS program, you will understand that its sole purpose is to expose graduate students and post-docs to non-academic career options.