Even though many of our graduates will have progressed in their careers since completing a case study, they are still of interest to students who wish to gain an understanding of the world of work.

I am responsible, as Conference Producer, to produce the agenda for some of our life science events. I work within the Health and Biologics team, and all of our events are focused on the discovery, development, and commercialisation of biologics and therapeutics associated with these.

My main role is to carry out research around interesting topics within the field of my conference and put together an exciting agenda/programme, with a great speaker line-up, for the event which will attract many industry professionals. I invite all of the speakers, write the agenda, manage the speakers taking part at the event, have a big hand in the marketing of the conference including strategy and copy writing, and manage the programme side of things, onsite at the event.

A typical day will involve a number of the following tasks:

- Carrying out research calls with high-level people within pharma, biotech, and academia to learn about the work that they're doing within a specific area, and to see what topics they would be interested in hearing about at a conference
- Putting together an agenda for my conference, looking at key big topics and a good narrative over the 1/2/3 days of the agenda
- Inviting people to speak at the conference, and chasing up previously invited people
- Maintaining relationships with people in industry both for current and future events
- Writing marketing copy to be sent out via emails, blogs, journal adverts and letters informing potential delegates of the conference
- Meeting with operations, sales and marketing to manage the event and how it's being handled within the logistics for the actual event on the day, the revenue from a delegate perspective (i.e. people attending the event), and the coverage that our conference is getting.
- Keeping up to date with industry news, in case interesting things happen that we can include in current or future conferences.

I enjoy speaking with interesting (and sometimes very important) people within the scientific community, and I get to learn a lot of really cool stuff about new breakthroughs. I also enjoy the fact that although it is an office job, we have meetings and conferences to attend so you're not constantly bound to the desk day in and day out.

As a producer, I have a lot of great relationships with really interesting people which is really nice, and I often have a lot of fun at conferences catching up with people I'm in regular contact with over the phone. I also get to travel with my job, as our conferences are normally held abroad. Currently, I have an event in Germany, one in Switzerland and one in London, but we're hoping to move our German one to Portugal next year!

The job can be quite stressful at times as we have lots of deadlines. We have deadlines to finish our events by and targets for how many speakers we need to have on our programmes. The weeks running up to a conference can often be stressful as we normally get a few drop outs before the conference which we have to fill or risk having an empty space on the programme. Of course, we have lots of tricks up our sleeve when this happens, but it can still be stressful!

I liked the fact that it was still very related to what I did my degree in (Biology) but not strictly working within science. I also liked the idea that I would be speaking with people that were important within the scientific community and hopefully helping the community in some way, by putting on a great event and bringing people together. There have been some biotechnology companies put together and great breakthroughs that have come out of our events!

I definitely use the scientific knowledge I gained in my degree a lot, and that helps me when understanding the advanced science that my speakers are working on. Other things like time management, good customer service (both on the phone and face to face) and relationship building is important. Organisation is critical to this job, as you're often working on a hundred different things at the same time, so you have to organise your tasks well as most of these depend on other people getting back to you etc. Being good at copywriting is always a plus too, because I probably spend about 15% of my time writing email campaigns and articles promoting my events.

The most important skill though is probably to be interested in your area. If you aren't interested in the topic then you're never going to be able to produce an interesting agenda that people working in this area will be excited about!

Since leaving university I moved back home for a short while and worked as a waitress/housekeeper/bar staff. I then moved to Italy about 5 months after graduation and worked in a chalet in a ski resort for 6 months.

When I got back to the UK (a year after graduating) I moved to London and worked as a Recruitment Consultant within Renewable Energy for a year and a half, before moving to my current job as a Conference Manager within Health and Biologics.

I'm currently hoping to work towards Project Manager within my current company, which will give me more responsibility within my team, and manage a producer, whilst still working on my own events. Eventually, I'd like to move to Project Director or Head of Production, where you manage a large portfolio of events, and the Conference Producers producing them.

If you're interested in becoming a Conference Producer I'd say try to apply to a company that does conferences that interest you personally. There are so many conferences out there, and there will definitely be one in an area that you're interested in (e.g. finance, transport, energy, life sciences, software development, HR etc).