Online Career Site Helps Life Science Professionals Move Up....
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Online Career Site Helps Life Science Professionals Move Up....and On - 09/01/2008
While the nation considers options to upgrade its science skills gap in the K-12 area, a curious phenomenon has occurred in the highest reaches of the academic world.
More and more Ph.D.’s have graduated from U.S. life sciences programs - the envy of the world - without the warm embrace of a tenure-track, academic position waiting for them. In fact, U.S. research institutions now graduate approximately three times as many Ph.D.’s in the life sciences as there are tenured faculty positions opening up to absorb them. The result is a large number of highly trained and highly talented scientists at the top end of the training scale looking for work even as the country has difficulty training scientists in the K-12 grade levels.
Some employers have jumped on the opportunity to hire these capable scientists. Several biopharma companies and government agencies have been hiring for years from this group. However, there are a broad range of career paths that are in different stages of development for life sciences Ph.D.’s, including science policy, science writing, management consulting, equity research, non-profit research and background legal research.
In response to this gap, entrepreneur Nick Folger founded Bio Career Center – an online site which partners with training institutions to expand opportunities for life science postgraduates, M.D.’s and alumni of member schools.
“The life sciences trainee population is a precious national resource,” says Folger, of Santa Cruz, Calif., where Bio Career Center is based. “They represent the best and brightest in the life sciences in America and anything we can do to more strategically place them into our nation’s economy, into positions that they are passionate about, will be useful on the national level.”
Bio Career Center features a jobs board that gathers the communities of each member school into one place, a staff that liaises with employers and deep and rich content that focuses on all of the alternatives that life sciences Ph.D.’s and M.D.’s have before them.
To date, Bio Career Center (www.BioCareerCenter.com) has 12 member institutions, including Berkeley, Caltech, Emory, Scripps, Stanford, University of California at San Francisco, University of Colorado Denver, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington, Vanderbilt and Weill Cornell. Fifteen additional institutions, rounding out coverage across the country, are expected to join over the next three months.
“We work closely with the recruiting functions at our member schools,” says Folger. “We add needed services to what they do on the ground, putting them in touch with employers. Since this is the schools’ Jobs Board, our priorities of who to contact is largely led by the wishes of the schools themselves.”
Another key component of the site is that alumni are active participants. In fact, more than 70 percent of the candidates in the Bio Career Center database are alumni with up to 15 years of work experience.
“Many of our alumni come back to our center when they are in a career transition,” says Michael Alvarez, director of Stanford Medical School’s Career Center. “It’s a natural place for them to look for resources as they consider their next steps.“
The purpose of the site’s content, according to Folger, is to enable job seekers to take a multi-step journey through their search. Candidates join the process at different steps depending on their needs. For those first considering a non-academic job, the primary task is to find a second passion.
“Since all of the candidates on our site are postgraduate life scientists and M.D.s, we know they have a passion for science,” says Folger. “The question then is, ‘What is your second passion that you can marry with your first?’ If it’s to commercialize a product from the lab, then biopharma is for you. If it’s writing, then science writing is for you. If it’s advocacy, then science policy is for you.”
Passionate candidates, in jobs that are a good fit for them, are more productive and last longer in their career paths, according to Folger. They also tend to show more energy and ideas during the interview process, leading to more successful placements.
The Bio Career Center, through its expanding membership, is opening opportunities for employers and candidates to meet each other, helping solve an important matching problem with national implications.
Interested employers can contact Bio Career Center at 877-862-4656 x. 102, while educational institutions can call x. 103. Candidates are welcome to sign up to the jobs board at www.BioCareerCenter.com/JobsBoard or find postgraduate career information at www.BioCareerCenter.com.
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