To observe and celebrate the third anniversary of the formation of ELRIG’s Early Career Professional (ECP) Work Group, ELRIG have launched the web-based “Career Zone”, a digital site devoted to ELRIG’s ECP community, which will provide resources aimed at helping an ECP member to develop in their current career or to progress to their next role.
ELRIG’s ECP Work Group, led by Dr. Del Tresize, ELRIG Board member and Business Development Sartorius, was established in 2018 to support ELRIG members who were early in their drug discovery or industrial career, as well as potential drug discovery scientists in schools, academies, and universities across the continent. The aim was to help new scientists and ECP’s in achieving their full career potential, as well as to bring fresh ideas, perspectives, and energy to every ELRIG event.
“Today’s Career Zone launch is the realization of the vision of the founding members of the ECP Work Group, who very early on realized that the ELRIG ECP community needed support.”, said Dr. Tresize. “In 2018 we gathered a diverse group of people, representative of our community, including PhD students, scientific recruiters, and entrepreneurs, to plan out how our vision would be implemented. The Career Zone is the fruition of those plans.”
Emma Howarth, Managing Director of Langton Howarth Ltd., Scientific Recruiter & Entrepreneur, said “Over the years, ELRIG’s ECP Work Group has developed a program of activities, such as CV writing workshops and “Meet the Boss” networking activities, to help ECPs to grow their own career prospecting knowledge and to meet with industry experts to develop their contact network”.
In addition, to the event activities, ELRIG also decided to ensure that all workgroups, ELRIG’s General Committee (it’s advisory board) and its governing Board, all had ECP members. “Having an ECP perspective on our communications, events and decision making has been really valuable” said Dr Chris Williams, ELRIG Board member, Head of ELRIG Marketing Communications Working Group and Founder of Questae Coaching & Consulting Ltd. “Our newer members and sub-group are not only contributing to how we should market our events but are also providing really interesting content that resonates with our other ECP members and has resulted in the formation of the Career Zone.”
The launch of the Career Zone, which contains training resources, employment vacancies and other ELRIG ECP content, precedes ELRIG’s major annual event, its globally renowned Drug Discovery conference, which will return as a COVID safe, face-to-face meeting in the autumn of 2021. This year’s meeting will celebrate the innovation and efforts of the life science industry and its many scientific successes, for the period of the pandemic. ECP activities include CV and science communication workshops, as well as a speed networking event with senior members of the drug discovery community.
