Recap: LSCE 2022
‘Starting your career journey’ with this motto, the Life Sciences Career Expo 2022 (LSCE) brought together over 400 attendees from all across Canada and beyond with educators, government stakeholders, researchers, and industry professionals from over 25 companies. This much-anticipated annual event, facilitated by the Life Sciences Career Development Society and the University of Toronto, took place virtually on May 9th, 11th, and 13th, 2022 between 12 PM – 5 PM EST.
The program kickstarted with a keynote presentation by Dr. Benjamin Dwayne who elaborated on the recent Degrees of Success report and how academic culture plays a significant role in graduate students’ transition to the labour market. This was an eye-opening speech for many participants. The Expo agenda was full of practical workshops, company spotlight presentations, career panels, and plenty of networking opportunities including one-on-one chats and practice interviews with company representatives.
A series of insightful workshops hosted by the Career Exploration & Education Centre at the University of Toronto introduced the essentials of professional development and career transition. Instructors of these workshops pointed out that career development is an act of exploration; it is an iterative process. Self-reflection and exploring interests help professionals find meaningful roles. They encouraged attendees to dedicate some time to research the company before applying and use their research as a tool to highlight their most relevant skills on their resume and cover letter. They also highlighted how interviews are about storytelling and are a two-way assessment, both for the interviewer to find the right candidate and for the candidate to decide if the role is a good fit.
The impact of these workshops was boosted by facilitating practice interviews and job simulation workshops. Trainees practiced their interview skills one-on-one with highly experienced professionals and received valuable feedback. The two job simulation workshops provided a unique opportunity to experience the day-to-day tasks of professionals from medical affairs and consulting careers, respectively.
Career panels highlighted some of the most-explored career choices made by life science trainees: academia, consulting, public sector, medical and regulatory affairs, medical communications, biotech, and pharma. Panellists shared how they embarked on their first jobs, their journeys of post-transition growth, current roles and responsibilities, and provided many tips for attendees. Panellists encouraged attendees to reflect and actively work on their career trajectories, improve soft skills, and network with other trainees and professionals within the field. Speakers of the medical communications panel unequivocally agreed that effective networking is the most important aspect of career exploration.
Networking with professionals is usually one of the top interests in career conferences. Many networking opportunities were incorporated into the Expo through company booths, spotlight presentations, and virtual coffee chats. These sessions were designed for attendees to learn in depth about their companies of interest, ask insightful questions, and network directly with the company representatives. In company spotlights, representatives from companies such as Shift Health, BenchSci, and McCann Health provided the attendees with insights surrounding the companies' responsibilities, values and culture, and the available opportunities to get involved. Virtual company booths and coffee chats allowed attendees to chat one-on-one with company representatives to learn about company culture, responsibilities, hiring processes, etc. Attendees have mentioned in their feedback that throught these sessions they have learned about career options and companies they were unaware of. Attendees were provided with professionals’ LinkedIn profile links and encouraged to reach out to them for any queries.
LSCE 2022 was capped off with concluding remarks by Dr. Nana Lee and a grand networking roundtable finale. All the attendees and professionals, assigned randomly to small groups in break-out rooms, received opportunities to chat in turn. The three days of the Expo were packed with programs to facilitate professional development, lively discussions, and networking. This unique conference provided the best resources for trainees to successfully transition into their careers of interest. The recording of the keynote speech will be available soon on the LSCE website. As Alexandra Malinowski (Team Co-Lead) said, “We hope that new connections were made, professional development skills were improved, and everyone had fun!”.
LSCE was organized by graduate students: Alison Jee, Alexandra Malinowski, Kuganya Nirmalarajah, Melissa Kleinau, Sofia Melliou, Tom Ouellette, Sophia Li, Sofia Zelko, Amy Nouanesengsy, and Alaa Alsaafin, and UofT Faculty members: Drs. Reinhart Reithmeier, Nana Lee, Stavroula Andreopoulos, and Walid A. Houry.
