CONTACT2025 Workshop

Christelle Pillot is an experienced career change coach and consultant who specializes in helping international professionals navigate career transitions effectively. She is passionate about empowering individuals to identify their strengths, explore new career paths, and develop strategies for successful transitions.

With a background in Chemical Engineering and 15 years of experience in International Sales Management, Christelle brings a unique perspective to her coaching. Her own journey of transitioning from engineering to life coaching has equipped her with firsthand insight into the challenges and opportunities of career shifts. This makes her ideally suited to guide doctoral students and early career postdocs transitioning from academia to industry, offering practical strategies and actionable advice.

As a multilingual coach fluent in English, German, and French, Christelle is skilled at working with diverse professionals across cultures. Her approach celebrates individuality, optimizes career potential, and strengthens professional connections. Through her coaching, she helps individuals uncover new sources of energy, clarity, and fulfillment in their careers and personal lives.

This workshop will provide you with actionable insights and practical strategies to successfully transition from academia to industry, focusing on identifying transferable skills, building a professional network, and crafting a compelling personal brand.

How do you make a lasting impression in a job interview? In this workshop students receive practical tips and strategies on how to optimally prepare for job interviews and avoid typical pitfalls. From the right self-presentation to to confidently dealing with tricky questions - find out what really matters. Use the chance to learn from an experienced HR manager!

The importance and positive effects of networking are obvious: It enables collaborations, can open doors, facilitates career orientation and career transition. Regardless of this, it is too often perceived as a chore - we tend to let it slide, procrastinate and nothing happens. In this interactive workshop, we want to encourage you to get started. There is nothing to lose but a lot to win! We will share and discuss hands-on tips and tricks on how to prepare for networking conversations, how to approach people best and how to follow-up to create long lasting relationships. A good start for effective networking is curiosity (which comes naturally to all scientists) and a mindset that everyone can learn to adopt. You will systematically analyze your already existing network (there is more than you might think!) and work on a strategy for using your network more effectively and expanding it in a targeted manner. Most importantly, you will have the chance to practice network conversations with your peers in a safe environment to eventually discover the fun aspects of it.

Are you a scientist looking to boost your career with business knowledge? Join our 90-minute workshop and gain essential business fundamentals tailored for professionals in the natural sciences.

In this interactive session, you will:
- Understand key financial and economic concepts relevant to your field
- Learn how businesses operate and make decisions
- Discover how business skills can enhance your career prospects

No prior business knowledge required! Gain insights, ask questions, and take the first step toward a well-rounded career.

In the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, it is desirable for science graduates to have not only specialised scientific knowledge, but also business knowledge and soft skills such as the ability to work in a team and strong communication skills. Pharmaceutical companies use assessment centres to identify high potentials for their trainee programmes
for their trainee programmes and use them to check the extent to which business management thinking communication skills and the ability to work in a team. As the tasks and interview situations encountered in the assessment centre are very varied and complex, you should and complex, you should prepare intensively for an assessment centre if you want to be successful.

In our workshop, we offer preparation for two modules of an assessment centre.
- We will give you a guideline and a concrete example of a convincing self-presentation
- We will develop a business case with you so that you will be able to convince with business management mindset in the future
We look forward to meeting you!

This workshop provides practical tips and tricks to optimize your LinkedIn profile, showcase your skills, create engaging content, and expand your professional network, helping you unlock career opportunities in the life sciences field.

Overview
Successful entry into the profession requires not only professional expertise, but also the ability to ability to present yourself convincingly. The rhetoric and application training at Contact 2025 prepares you optimally for job interviews, networking and professional communication.

Training units and content
1. application training
- Preparation of professional CVs and application letters
- Successful presentation of skills and experience
2. rhetoric training
- Strengthening verbal and non-verbal communication skills
- Dealing with stage fright and nervousness
3. interview coaching
- Simulation of job interviews
- Feedback and suggestions for improvement
4. presentation techniques
- Visualisation techniques and use of media
- Voice, body language and presence as the key to success

Advantages of the training
- Confident appearance - optimising your personal communication strategy
- Targeted preparation - practical tips for job interviews
- Career booster - increasing your chances of getting the job you want

SCITARIS is a consulting firm focused on R&D strategy support for pharma and biotech companies. With its interdisciplinary team of scientific consultants, it supports clients along the entire value chain of drug development: from rare diseases to oncology; from small molecules to the latest cell therapies.
During the workshop you will gain insight into the everyday life of a R&D consultant. You will work on the scientific validation of a drug candidate by analyzing clinical trial data. From this, you will make business considerations for clinical drug development. The workshop will be very interactive and you will have the opportunity to ask questions during and after the workshop.

Have you ever thought about joining a consultancy that specialises in your area of interest? ZS is a renowned consulting firm that specializes in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. If you‘re interested in cracking a real-life business case within the life sciences field, then you should attend our Consultancy Case Cracking workshop. This workshop is designed to provide you with an honest look into our work, and an opportunity to gain firsthand experience in case preparation and frameworks.