Hopeful Students Flock To Biotech Expo
Peter Pontbriand says he worked for a computer company for 28 years before being laid off. Now, he drives a school bus for 26 hours a week and works as a security guard on the weekends.
He also takes classes at Mount Wachusett Community College’s Devens campus, in an effort to break into the biotechnology field. He was one of hundreds of students who attended a recent “Biotech Expo” at the campus to talk to representatives of more than a dozen companies about job openings in the industry.
Second Careers
Many participants in the expo were nontraditional students like Pontbriand who see the life sciences as a likelier growth industry than their previous fields.
But biotech hasn’t been immune from the recession. Reid Ruberti, a scientific recruiter for LabPros, a Waltham recruiting company, said the demand from his clients has been relatively slow lately.
“The economy has affected the industry, as it has everyone else,” he said.
But Chris Tamburrini, who works in a similar position for the staffing firm Aerotek Scientific LLC in Woburn, said he’s been finding more companies looking to fill contract and contract-to-hire jobs lately.
“Things are definitely picking up in the industry since late summer,” he said.
Tamburrini said he’s placed people in companies from start-ups to huge conglomerates over the past few months, and found jobs for people with scientific backgrounds ranging from certificates to PhDs.
The range of skill levels needed in biotech is one of the big draws for some.
Pontbriand said he hopes to continue his education in the field, perhaps eventually getting his PhD and doing research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, which is now building a major new life sciences facility.
“They have a lot of work down there,” Pontbriand said.
Another student, Lori Tokarowski, said she has a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering but took some time off of her career to stay home with her children. She said she’s glad she decided to study biotechnology at MWCC.
“I’ve been just fascinated with it,” she said.
Tokarowski said she hopes to eventually get work at a research laboratory, but she may look for a job in biotech manufacturing initially to build up her resume.
Playing The Field
Manufacturing jobs are available across the street from the campus at the Bristol-Myers Squibb plant that is gearing up to start making a rheumatoid arthritis drug in 2011, and the Bristol-Myers table at the expo drew a long line of students looking to make a connection. BMS spent about $750 million on its biologics manufacturing plant in Devns.
But other companies said they were taking part in the event less to search for talent than to market their products.
John Fitzpatrick, a sales representative with Groton Biosystems of Boxborough said he wanted the students in attendance to learn about his company’s laboratory automation products in the hopes that they might remember them after getting jobs with biotech companies.
He said automation can save laboratory workers from devoting too much time to rote tasks, but it has not yet caught on with many companies.
Alison Price, a sales representative with Milford lab equipment company Waters Corp., also said her company was at the event less to recruit workers than to network.
“I thought it was a good opportunity just to get our name out,” she said.
Watch highlights from Mount Wachusett Community College's Biotech Expo:
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