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New online career-planning resources for life science researchers
EMBL Fellows’ Career Service launches new online resources for early-career researchers at EMBL and beyond, aimed at providing comprehensive career guidance
By Rachel Coulthard-Graf, Fellows’ Skills & Career Development Lead
Tailored career guidance is essential for early career researchers navigating an evolving life science career landscape. The EMBL Fellows’ Career Service has just released a comprehensive set of career guidance resources on their website. These resources are openly available and can help life science researchers proactively make informed decisions about their careers – whether they plan to stay in academia or transition to the wide range of other available options.
Since its launch in 2019, the EMBL Fellows’ Career Service has provided life science researchers at EMBL and beyond with individual and group career planning support through a diverse range of activities and resources – including a popular career webinar series that has attracted over 4700 attendees to date.
Many of the new online resources were originally developed for EMBL’s highly popular internal career workshops, which had nearly 1,000 participants in 100+ sessions over the last five years. The resources include slides and handouts from eight workshops and focus on key areas of career planning, including self-awareness, career exploration, networking, job search strategies, CV writing, and interview preparation.
These resources are also informed by EMBL’s extensive experience in career support. EMBL’s career advisors have conducted over 800 individual career guidance sessions with PhD students and postdocs across its six European sites. Additionally, they have hosted over 60 career events, panels, and webinars featuring more than 270 panellists across a range of academic and non-academic careers in 22 countries. This experience has helped refine the offerings based on the specific needs of early-career researchers. Insights from a published career study and surveys on topics such as CV reviews and faculty hiring trends further enrich the materials.
By equipping early-career researchers and institutions with tailored and valuable tools, EMBL ensures that the investments made by its member states in training are maximised. This support empowers life science researchers to advance confidently in their careers and integrate into a vibrant scientific community across sectors.
This initiative also reflects EMBL’s strong commitment to making resources freely accessible to the global scientific community. Universities and research institutes are invited to use and adapt these materials to meet their specific needs and enhance the support they offer to researchers. We look forward to knowledge exchange and collaborations with institutions interested in investing in career services for researchers.
