The network
Fifteen European institutions, one young field, and a generation of researchers to launch.
GlyCoCan was a Marie Curie European Training Network of fifteen leading European partners in glycobiology, glyco-immunology and biomarker research, funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme. Its scientific mission was to understand the role of glycosylation in colorectal cancer and open up new diagnostic and therapeutic routes. Its training mission was just as deliberate: to prepare a new generation of Early Stage Researchers for careers that bridge academic and industrial science.
That second mission is where I came in. Across three annual meetings I delivered the Getting Hired workshop for the network's researchers, helping them translate world class scientific training into the things the hiring market actually reads.
Three deliveries, three settings
Same commitment, adapted to the room, including the year the room went virtual.
Leiden
Delivered in person at Leiden University, working with the cohort face to face across the day.
Edinburgh
Delivered in person in Edinburgh, on home ground, for the next cohort of Early Stage Researchers.
Online
Rebuilt for a fully remote format when the pandemic closed the in person meeting, keeping the workshop practical rather than passive.
The challenge
Exceptional scientists, moving into a market that does not read a thesis.
An Early Stage Researcher in a network like GlyCoCan is a serious scientist, often already published, working at the frontier of a young field. But the transition from a Marie Curie fellowship into industry is a translation problem. The market does not assess a research record the way a supervisor does. It reads a LinkedIn profile, a tailored CV, a competency based answer and a performance in an assessment centre, and none of those are part of a doctoral training.
There was an added dimension unique to this group. These researchers were spread across fifteen institutions in different countries, heading into an international job market, competing across borders and disciplines. The workshop had to give them a transferable method, not advice tuned to one national system.
My design rule was the same one I hold to everywhere: no lecture. Researchers do not need to be told the market is competitive. They needed to leave with their own profile improved, their own CV sharpened and their own interview answers already spoken aloud.
What the day covered
Hands-on modules across the whole journey, from being found to performing on the day.
LinkedIn profile optimisation
Working on each researcher's live profile so it surfaces the right way when industry recruiters and hiring managers search, in whichever country they search from.
Job hunting on and offline
Where roles actually come from across an international market: boards, direct approaches, conferences, networks and the unadvertised roles that never reach a job site.
Targeted search and apply, not scattergun
Why a handful of researched, tailored applications beat a hundred generic ones, and how to build and work a proper target list.
CV workshopping and tailoring
Live surgery turning an academic CV into an industry document, then re-tailoring it per application instead of firing one version at everything.
Understanding and identifying competencies
Reading a job advert for the competencies underneath it, then mapping honest evidence from research life onto each one.
Interview styles
Competency, technical, panel, video and informal interviews: what each format tests and how to prepare differently for each.
Mock interviews
Practised in the room with structured feedback, because the fastest way to improve an answer is to say it out loud to someone who hires.
Mock assessment centres
Group exercises run as they would be for real, so a researcher's first assessment centre is not the one that decides the job.
The day closed the way it did at every delivery, with the recap of best practice on screen and one message: asking for feedback, and using it, is what separates the candidates who improve from the ones who stall.
Why unpaid
This one was not for a fee. It was for the researchers.
I want to be straight about this engagement, because it matters. GlyCoCan predates Chiron, and it sat entirely outside my recruitment work. I volunteered it, unpaid, on my own time, across all three years. I have always been committed to supporting graduates and researchers into industry, and a fifteen partner network of Early Stage Researchers heading into an uncertain job market is exactly where that support earns its keep. The willingness to give the day away, three years running, is the point rather than a footnote to it.
These are some of the most capable scientists in Europe, and they were about to walk into a hiring market that would judge them on a CV and an interview rather than the quality of their science. Closing that gap is work I will always make time for, paid or not. Three years, three settings, one pandemic pivot to online, and the same reward each time: watching a brilliant researcher realise they can absolutely land the industry role they want, once they know what the market is actually testing for.