“You should sell this concept. The engagement with industry was impressive. Also, we made a couple of useful business to business contacts!” ( Charmyn Hall, HR Director, Plasma Technology at Oxford Instruments)
The CDT in Metamaterials hosted its annual STEM industry careers event for PhD students and postdocs on 18 April 2019. We welcomed representatives from quite a wide range of businesses where STEM PhDs could find themselves working in: Babwe Barton Enterprise, BAE Systems, DST Innovations, Granted Consultancy, IOP, Morpheus, NPL, Oxford Instruments, and WaveOptics.
The 15 minute company pitches on who they are, and who they are looking for, was hugely insightful – attitude, mindset, self-starters, problem-solving, and adaptability were key words alongside technical skills requirements.
“The event was fantastic at introducing a wide range of potential employers to PGR’s. It really opened my eyes to possible future careers.” ( Milly Owens, PhD student in Engineering)
A special mention to our CDT in Metamaterials PhD students Conor Price (1st year) and Julia de Pineda Gutiérrez (3rd year): They agreed a few minutes prior event start to chairing the morning and afternoon sessions, respectively, keeping our speakers on time and moderating the Q&A sessions. They’ve done a very good job on this short notice ‘training opportunity’ to expand their experiences. Well done both!
To quote from our PGR-led twitter post: “A huge thank you to all of the companies who attended our Industrial Careers Event 2019. Their stimulating talks on the career paths open to our PGRs might just lead to future meetings as employees rather than students we hope!”
In short: we’re pleased to see that it was such a successful event and will aim to host it again in spring 2020. Put your company suggestions forward and we’ll try to get them on board for the next careers event!
“The event was great, I enjoyed particularly that HR and internal recruiters were there to answer questions, it really makes the event rich and productive for all!” ( Dr Adolfo de Sanctis, Research Fellow in the Centre for Graphene Science)