Knowledge for Growth

Gent, 20 May 2010

More than 90 organisations were present at Knowledge for Growth 2010 with a booth or sponsor opportunity, 90 scientists presented their scientific abstract as a poster at the convention, 95 jobseekers submitted a CV for the Job Fair and more than 900 individual participants (25% academic, 75% industry) registered for the convention. This made the 2010 edition of Knowledge for Growth the most successful since its inception. (from the website)

The Skills³ team used the fair to promote Vividlinks and welcomed a lot of enthusiastic people who were interested in the concept of the Euregional life sciences career community.

Vividlinks.eu present on IKOM in Munich

Munich, 5 May 2010

On May the 5th 2010, the Vividlinks team was present at IKOM Life Sciences in Munich with its booth. With more than 800 Life Sciences students, the fair was the perfect place to advertise the Life Sciences sector in the Euregio-Mheuse-Rhine with all the occupational potential and the diversity of the regional companies. Numerous Students showed great interest in the Life Sciences Career Community Vividlinks.eu and were not reluctant to move to the region in case of a new job. Most were even willing to leave Munich for a master study. The necessary transparency in the job market and decision guidance the students will get from the career community Vividlinks.eu which was accepted enthusiastically. Especially the variety of functions was valued highly by the students.

Master Class Special Edition and launch Vividlinks at Biomedica 2010

Aachen, 17-18 March 2010

More than 60 students out of the 4 regions joined the special edition of the Skills³ Master Class at Biomedica in Aachen. They were presented a full program, both by emphasizing activities of the regular Biomedica offer as by adding attractive opportunities.

Since Biomedica offers an overview of state of the art research in a varity of disciplines and introduced this year the business track, it’s the ideal stage to learn about the opportunities that lay in the Euregio. In addition the skills³ invited HR managers of selected life sciences companies to tell about their companies and the challenges they offer. Moreover these managers had the chance to select students for personal meetings on the LifeTechLimburg business lounge.

Further on the students could discover Vividlinks, our Life Sciences Career Community and make their own profile. We provided them with a professional photographer for a nice profile picture. The official launch of the community was celebrated with a real cocktailbar.

The Life Sciences Career Event

Maastricht, 10 March 2010

The Life Sciences Career Event is a yearly event where science and business meet on the domain of Life Sciences. It is organised by the student organisation of Biomedical Sciences, a study organized in collaboration with the University of Hasselt. The Skills³ team got the chance to present Vividlinks and to explain what's all about on the jobmarket.

HR Seminar on Making the difference with Social Media

Hasselt, 23 February 2010

To introduce Vividlinks, the brand new Life Sciences Career Community, the Skills3 team invited a guest speaker, Geert Conard, specialised in social media and social networking on their second HR-seminar. Full of optimism about the opportunities that the new Internet technology is offering, he took us on a journey throughout the virtual world.

After having set an extended framework, we were proud to present our niche networksite for life sciences professionals: Vividlinks. With Vividlinks we want to open different blackboxes. What is the Euregio? Which

companies are dedicated to life sciences? What news or events and moreover who are the individual life sciences professionals?

Nice to see that the seminar has already resulted in a lot of activities among the 50 participants on the Internet, starting twitteraccounts and sending out invitations to connect. Thanks to our photographer Celke we can renew our profiles with an inspiring picture!

Nacht der Unthernemen

Aachen, 5 November 2009

63 Enterprises took the opportunity to present themselves on the second edition of the Nacht der Unternehmen in the Technologycenter at the Europaplatz. Busses took the 1200 visitors from here to the different enterprises to get further into contact with the industry.

The skills3 team was proud to present vividlinks a first time face to face to the audience. The young professionals could search in a company catalogue filled with 150 companies and find their dreamjob in an offer of more then 100 jobs.

Master Classes in Aachen

Aachen , 5 November 2009

A mix of students from the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium gathered in the center of Aachen to participate in the master classes. In the morning they worked on the topic of presentation skills. A professional actor let them experience that we communicate not only with our verbal language.  Being aware of the non-verbal communication opens the door to work on a good first impression.

In the afternoon, the director of Matricel introduced the group to a series of challenges that entrepreneurs have to cope and more important how you can cope these. In the Master Class section you can make some impressions.

First Skills³ HR Seminar

Maastricht, 24 September

"Recruiting Talents and Sharing Excellence Across Borders": it was the topic of our first HR Seminar. More than 50 HR professionals participated.
The seminar was divided in two parts: first Juanita Wijnands of Ideas4 introduced us to the theory of Geert Hofstede and made us aware of intercultural differences.

During the second part, a panel of representatives of the different universities presented their institutes' look at the ideal Life Sciences study, each of them emphasizing different aspects, but sharing the importance of broadening the world of their students and make them aware of the international context.

You can download the presentations of the speakers or have a look at the pictures at the HR Seminar section.

Techtop 2009

Maastricht MECC, 1-2 July

The organizers of TechTop 2009 aimed at bringing together industry, education institutes, government and science around the central topic of technique.

Having the support of Dutch central government and the Dutch province of Limburg, a diverse program was presented: an expert meeting at Chemelot, an experience and attraction park for children, a congress with over 70 different sessions and a fair with a job market. It was here that Skills³ had the opportunity to present itself to the visitors of which a substantial  part were Life Science oriented.

                                

 

Skills³ kick-off

Château de Colonster, Liège at 12 May 2009: The scenery of the Skills³ official kick-off meeting. Approximately 50 participants were interested in the project and the presentations of the speakers. The topics addressed are amongst others the 'Euregional labour market', 'Life Sciences' and 'internationalization'.

First Prof. Dr. Bernard Rentier, the Rector of the University of Liège held a welcome speech in which he expressed his commitment towards the project.

Jean-Louis Delforge, the Skills³ project coordinator, presented the project, its objectives and activities to the public.

The HR Director of VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, Mrs Marijke Lein held an inspiring presentation about the 'Challenges of an international labour market'.

Furthermore, Pim van Meeuwen, Managing Director of Banenrijklimburg informed the audience how to run and manage a career portal and positioned the Life Sciences labour market in the EMR.

Ute Steinbusch, Head of Business Development at Celonic, shared her positive feelings towards Skills³ and explained the possible benefits for the companies in the Life Sciences sector.

The closing speech was held by Axel Noël, Director of the Interreg Liège Euregio Meuse-Rhine office. He highlighted the need of the Skills³ project to improve the situation of the cross-border labour market.

We would like to thank all the speakers for their contribution at the kick-off! Below you can download some of the presentations.

The Skills³ team has been promoting the project since June last year, but the official kick-off is a real milestone! This means that the planned activities of the project can start running. The career portal is already in development and the HR seminars and Master Classes will soon be announced on this website.

View the presentations of the kick-off:   

- by Jean-Louis Delfore, project coordinator of Skills³ download

- by Marijke Lein, HR Director at VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology download

- by Pim van Meeuwen, Managing Director of Banenrijklimburg download

 

Knowledge for Growth 2009

From the website of Knowledge for Growth:

On Thursday 7 May 2009, FlandersBio organized its annual life sciences convention Knowledge for Growth at the ICC Ghent. With more than 60 exhibitors and 720 registered participants, the 2009 edition was the most successful edition since its inception.

The principal ingredients of the convention are networking, keynote scientific lectures, science, technology and management presentations and a trade and poster exhibition. New this year were the job event, giving companies and jobseekers in the life sciences an opportunity to get to know each other and an Academic Lounge where all Flemish universities and several research institutes presented promising proven research and technologies with potential commercial applications.

The participants were biotech, medical technology and pharma companies, as well as academic research institutes and providers of capital, services and technologies to the life sciences community.

The fair offered the Skills³ team  the opportunity to present the project to the Flemish life science community, to get informed about latest trends and to expand our network.

Biomedica 2009: The Life Sciences Summit                      

From the final report of Biomedica:

International, very high quality presentations, excellent integration of young scientists, are phrases that kept surfacing during the course of Biomedica 2009, April 1 + 2, Liege, Belgium. This summit has shown, for the third consecutive year, the close collaboration between scientists, students and managers alike across Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. More than 850 people gathered at the Palais des Congrès in Liege to take part in life sciences conferences and visit the accompanying exhibition addressing leading breakthroughs.

Over 40 presentations were held by renowned professors and doctors in the fields on biomaterial & polymers, nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and molecular medicine and imaging.

Skills³ ensured that the job fair was full of recently graduated professionals and human resource managers. An overwhelming amount of jobs were posted in the Biomedica Job Fair portal which was further reinforced by the many active conversations which took place in the job fair arena.

The European Career Fair

A strong representation of the South-Netherlands technology sector this year at the European Career Fair @ MIT. Skills³, in collaboration with Brainport International Community, travelled to Boston last January together with fifteen companies and universities to present themselves to graduates of the top American universities.

At the European Career Fair, from 24- 26 January at the technical university MIT, 4000 graduates of the largest US universities were looking for a challenge in Europe. Using the theme ‘talent for top technology’ Skills³ and BIC promoted the region.

The fair was a huge success. On Saturday all the organizations and universities presented themselves on the career fair, the following two days were reserved for conducting interviews. Many job-seekers showed interest and the education level of the applicants was very high. An interesting fact was that many students asked for internships within technology and Life Sciences companies in the Netherlands and the Euregio. In this way they wanted to experience life abroad and get acquainted with the culture and way of living. Many American citizens were present at the fair, but also foreigners who were studying of living in the States at the moment and had interest to come to Europe.

Job-seekers mainly saw the openness of the Dutch and the easy way to communicate in English, as a plus point to choose for this region.

Many job-seekers focused on the job itself, and not so much the region. Because they got acquainted with the region via Skills³, the companies and vacancies were put in an even more attractive light.

 

Workshop Career Portal

Discussing the needs and challenges of the Life Sciences companies in the Euregio:

this was the focus of the Skills³ workshop in November.

By gathering input from the business sector we were able to improve the structure for the Euregional Career Portal, one that will facilitate and support the SMEs in their recruitment processes. The Portal is expected to be online in August 2009.

Fourteen representatives from companies joined our workshop, which was facilitated by Simone van Trier. This kind of soundboard group is very valuable for Skills³; in that way we keep in touch what is needed in a practical day to day setting.