The invitation
A world class research institute preparing its researchers for the world beyond it.
IPBS-Toulouse, the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology, is a joint research institute of the CNRS and Université Toulouse III, and one of Europe's leading centres for research into infectious disease, cancer biology and structural biology. Each year it runs a week long industry preparation programme for its third year PhD students, the point at which the question shifts from finishing the thesis to what comes next.
I was invited to design and deliver the Getting Hired: Best Practice Workshop as part of that week. One full day covering the entire journey from being found to being hired, and the invitation was repeated across two years for successive cohorts.
The challenge
Brilliant researchers, and a market that does not hire theses.
A third year PhD at an institute like IPBS is, by definition, an exceptional problem solver. But the hiring market does not read a thesis. It reads a LinkedIn profile, a tailored CV, a competency answer and an assessment centre performance, and none of those are taught in a lab. The gap is not ability. It is translation: turning years of deep research skill into the language employers screen for, in a market where PhD candidates are competing with each other and with industry experienced applicants at the same time.
The design brief I set myself was simple: no lecture. A room of researchers does not need another hour of slides about the job market. They needed to leave with their own profile improved, their own CV sharpened and their own interview answers tested, which meant every module had to be workshop based, working on their real materials in the room.
What the day covered
Nine modules, one journey: from being found, to applying well, to performing on the day.
LinkedIn profile optimisation
Working directly on each student's live profile: headline, about section, keywords and visibility, built for how recruiters and hiring managers actually search.
Job hunting on and offline
Where roles really come from: boards, direct applications, networks, conferences and the unadvertised market, and how to work each channel deliberately.
Targeted search and apply, not scattergun
Why fifty generic applications lose to five researched ones. Building a target list and tailoring every application to it.
CV workshopping and tailoring
Live surgery on real CVs: reshaping an academic record into an industry document, and re-tailoring it for each application rather than sending one version everywhere.
Understanding and identifying competencies
Reading a job advert for the competencies behind it, then mapping genuine evidence from research life onto each one.
Interview styles
Competency based, technical, panel, video and informal formats: what each is testing for and how preparation changes between them.
Mock interviews
Practised live in the room, with structured feedback. The fastest way to improve an interview answer is to say it out loud to someone who hires for a living.
Mock assessment centres
Group exercises run as they would be on the day, so the first assessment centre a student experiences is not the one that decides their job.
Asking for feedback
How to ask for it after a rejection, how to actually use it, and why the candidates who ask improve fastest.
The outcome
Invited back. That is the metric that matters for a workshop.
The clearest measure of a training day is whether the host runs it again. IPBS invited the workshop back across two years for successive cohorts of PhD students, keeping it as part of the industry preparation week. Each cohort left with tangible assets rather than notes: an optimised LinkedIn profile, a workshopped CV, a personal competency map, and first hand experience of interviews and assessment centres before either could cost them a role they wanted.
Researchers at this level do not need convincing that preparation matters. It is how they work. What they need is someone to show them what the hiring market is actually testing for, and then a safe room to practise in. That is why the day is one hundred percent workshop. Nobody's career was ever advanced by watching someone else's slides. It is advanced by a sharper profile, a tailored CV and an interview answer you have already said out loud.