On Friday, February 27th, BCLA organized the 4th annual Bioscience Talent Connection event at the new Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience at USC. As BCLAs biggest USC event of the year, we expected a great turn out and that is exactly what we got! Over 130 attendees came for a day of highly informative talks and networking opportunities.
The day began with breakfast and registration which saw close to 100 attendees arriving early for the event! Following breakfast, BCLA president, Evgeny Bondarenko, gave a brief welcome and background to the organization. Quynh Nguyen from Kite Pharma then followed and gave an interesting and in-depth talk on how to tailor CVs for industry job applications to a packed-out room of attendees. Quynh gave a detailed run down of the structure and content of powerful CVs, and described how certain ‘power words’ attract recruiters attention. The talk was subsequently followed by a Q&A session which attracted many questions from the audience. The next talk was from David Blancha, from the UCLA career center, who gave an important talk on how to negotiate your position as a prospective employee. Certainly, a topic that is often difficult to address professionally, David guided attendees through the appropriate strategies to ensure prospective employees get what they deserve! Again, this great talk was followed by a Q&A session which answered burning questions from many attendees in the audience.
These successful workshops were followed by lunch and a career fair, where attendees had the opportunity to introduce themselves to representatives from LA’s major biotech companies. This year’s exhibitors included ZS Associates, Kite Pharma, ThermoFisher Scientific, Mannkind Corporation, LabLaunch, Acsel Health, La BioMed, Beyond Meat, La Biostart, and TCR cure. Attendees and company representatives mingled for several hours which gave the perfect opportunities for attendees to ask questions and receive feedback on their CVs and career prospects.
We would like to thank our sponsors, exhibitors, and attendees for making this event a great success and we can’t wait to host this great event next year!