{credit}David Fox{/credit}

On Tuesday May 20th the Naturejobs team hosted their first  international Career Expo in Boston. We’d like to give a big thank you to everyone who made it and we hope you managed to get a lot out of your day with us: making new contacts, become inspired and picking up some freebies!

As with our previous London-based Expos, we like to learn from your experiences to make sure that each time our Expo gets better and better; that you continue to gain career inspiration and insights from our conference speakers, and that you meet the right people at the exhibition. In order for us to do this, we would be delighted if you could give us some feedback. We will shortly be sending out some evaluation forms, but if you want to leave us some feedback now, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below, use Twitter or Facebook, or email them directly to naturejobseditor[at]nature[dot]com. 

{credit}David Fox{/credit}

We would also be very keen to know if any of your new contacts and networking opportunities lead to something further. Whether it is just an informational interview, a coffee or (wouldn’t this be a lovely) a job, we want to hear about it.

For those who couldn’t make it, there was plenty of live Tweeting on the day, and you can find many comments, thoughts and discussions under the #NJCEBoston tag. We will also be uploading our coverage of the day, thanks to our #NJCEBoston journalists. But just in case you can’t wait for those pieces, here are the three key points that people took away from the day:

Networking: it’s not a bad thing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing people – it’s all about who you know, that’s how business works. Joanne Kamens from Addgene did a great presentation on this, and a write-up will follow shortly.

It’s all about the story: from the moment you start looking for a job to the moment you’re in the interview, it’s all about telling your stories. Interviewers dont want to hear facts, they want to know you, and your story.

Communication: according to both industry and academic experts, this was The most wanted transferable skill. After all, without any communication, nothing gets done.

But now that the Expo is over, take a look at our handy tips for how to follow up on your networking at a science careers fair: After the fair.