Highlights from the 7th Annual FACES Symposium

FACES (Facilitating Awareness: Career Exploration for Scientists) is a career exploration and networking event created by graduate students in the Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology Program. Students recruit panelists from multiple scientific fields both inside and outside academia to share how they built successful careers in science. 

This year, we had 5 guest speakers: 

• Saranna Belgrave (PhD) – Associate Director of Undergraduate Career Development at Columbia University; Program Manager at Brooklyn College STEM Now Academy
• Sarah Ellinwood (PhD) – Managing Editor at BioBuzz
• Fatima Saravia (PhD)-  Research Scientist at Colgate-Palmolive
• Mallory Smith (PhD) – Science Policy Manager at ASBMB
• Brandon Zhuang (MS) – Principal Scientist at Prevail Therapeutics

Each panelist had valuable advice to share with students. Here are some of the highlights from their talks:

1. Academic currency; beyond your grades, what you learn from your experiences in different labs, institutions, and workplaces is valuable.
   1. Collect experiences to learn what you like and don’t like.
   2. Sometimes this means pursuing something out of your comfort zone, like doing animal work, to truly rule it out as something not for you. 
2. “Curate your own path”
   1. Pick things that you value and are passionate about to be pillars for your professional endeavors. They will help guide your next career moves or the experiences you pursue.
   2. For example, Dr. Belgrave’s three pillars are: student advocacy, teaching, research. These pillar focus her search on program development and directorship roles within academic institutions
3. Heard of an elevator pitch? Have your own personal narrative ready as well.
   1. How to build a personal brand:
   2. Pick a technical skill, “soft” skill and interest to describe yourself. 
4. Take many opportunities to present your work. As a scientist in any field you will be giving presentations frequently, whether it’s to your supervisor, team, or students. 
5. Wherever you go, there will be a learning curve. Graduate school teaches you to be an expert in one thing; your project. Your skills are transferable but you will most likely need to attain new knowledge, techniques and most importantly, jargon.  There are plenty of online resources to help you regardless of the field. Here’s what our panelists suggested for the following fields:
   1. Industry: Coursera and DataCamp to learn computational skills, attend and present at conferences, pursue internships and co-op opportunities.
   2. Science Communication: ASBMB’s The Art of Science Communication Workshop (You can still sign up for the summer session this year!), volunteering to write blog posts and op-eds, internships
   3. Sciency Policy: ASBMB’s Advocacy Training Program, ASBMB’s Advocacy toolkit, fellowships 

7. Job search tips:
   1. Keep up with faculty and alumni at your institution.
      1. Searching up generic roles like “biomedical engineer” or “R&D scientist” may not help you find entry-level roles. Instead look at the profiles of recent alumni within your network (your lab, department or institution as a whole) and pay attention to their job titles. 
   2. Look up the company and pay attention to news stories, press releases, event notices, etc. You can learn about:
      1.  Mergers and acquisitions which are  potential moments of layoffs and rehiring at the company.
      2. Types of funding (Series A funding, licensing agreements, etc) they have acquired which can indicate stability for the pharma company for the next few years.
      3. Events they are hosting that may be open to the public like Biotech networking happy hours or open lab events. In New York City, community biolab, Genspace will be hosting such an event on June 1st. 
      4. The size of the company, which will dictate how flexible they are when looking at candidates. Smaller companies have a very lean workforce and are looking for experts, while larger companies more likely have the means to teach new hires while on the job. 
   3. Reach out to both current and former employees.
      1. Learn about why they are there and why they left (keep in mind that their reasons may have nothing to do with the company and instead may be personal).
      2. Get a glimpse of the company culture. They have half-days on Fridays in the summer (like Colgate-Palmolive)? That sounds like a company that wants you to have a life outside of work. 
8. Interview tips:
   1. Before your interview, prepare a list of questions to ask your interviewer. What do you want to know about the company? 
   2. Try to relax
      1. Interviews are stressful, make sure you can relax and show your personality
   3. Interviews can be very long
      1. For academic positions, it’s common to have day-long interviews.
         1. Give a 30 min talk or presentation
         2. 30 minutes of questions
         3. You can be interviewed by up to 11 people in one day
      2. Interviews can last many rounds
9. Build your leadership skills
   1. Become a mentor for other students
      1. Mentor an undergraduate student in your laboratory
   2. Take on leadership roles in your community
      1. Get involved in student government, unions or other organizations.
      2. Help mobilize students for causes that you are passionate about like raising stipends, reducing fees, etc.

After the guest speakers shared their stories, students had the opportunity to ask questions. Here are some of the highlights from the Q&A panel:

1. Many of you have careers in which you have to juggle many tasks. How do you balance all of these tasks in your job?
   1. Use your calendar
      1. Many panelists use google calendar to stay organized
   2. Set boundaries
      1. Block out your time
   3. When your boss gives you many tasks, ask which ones to prioritize
   4. How do you negotiate offers?
   1. Don’t undervalue your degree
   2. Know that they will most likely low-ball your offer if this is your first position after graduating so never be afraid to ask for more. Worst case scenario is that they will not be able to go as high as you ask, but they will adjust their initial offer. Rescinding offers is usually unheard of (unless you’ve done something absolutely scandalous). 
   3. Look at the salaries for your position in your city and ask for the average from your research. 
   4. You can also negotiate your benefits and as for relocation expenses if you are moving. 

Last but not least, thank you to the FACES Committee (Jack Bauer, Kathryn Malone, Nina Cintron Pregosin, Rideeta Raquib, Yasharah Raza, Anika Zaman) for an outstanding event! 

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Thank you Nina Cintron Pregosin for your contributions and edits on this post.