What is your job at J&J?
I coordinate antigen formulation preparation for pre-clinical experiments. Interaction with various Bacterial Vaccines teams and Janssen vaccine support departments together with development of innovative methods and analytical investigations is the main focus of my job.
What is secondment (detachering in Dutch) and what does it mean in practice for you?
Secondment is a temporary work arrangement where an employee is assigned to work for another company or organization for a specific project or period of time. The employee remains employed by their original company, but works under the direction of the host organization, usually to gain new skills, experiences, or exposure to different work environments. During the secondment, the employee is subject to the policies and procedures of the host organization.
I haven’t had experience with secondment before I started with CLS. Overall, secondment is an excellent idea to explore various possible career development scenarios by actually trying out the different jobs.
How does your working day/week/month look like?
Since the pandemic, working from home became common practice for activities such as online meetings and data processing. However, I myself am still more based at the office, since method development activities demand time in a lab and interacting more fluently with people on site. Usually, it is three days on site and two days working from home. However often method development or other activities (training of newcomers, lab head duties etc.) require my presence on site for the full week.
My working day schedule differs greatly from time to time. Ranging from being a full day in the lab to a day full of meetings, planning and coordination behind my desk. Honestly, I highly enjoy this versatile setup.
What are considerations in choosing to work via secondment?
One of the considerations for me in secondment is the duration. Ideally this is a good combination of short enough to fulfil curiosity by stepping out of your comfort zone, but also being long enough to keep balance with the stress of having a new job too regularly. Another consideration could be whether you have a say in where you are placed.
How does CLS help you in your career development? (for example courses, coaching etc.)
The CLS team always fully supported (and keeps supporting) my development ideas and often emphasized the importance of it. For example during their coaching trajectories for career and professional development.
Written by Hanna Yendzhyievska, Senior Associate Scientist and Team Lead, Janssen Vaccines & Prevention.
About CLS
CLS Services provides recruitment services for companies, multinationals as well as smaller and more specialised companies, who are active in the field of chemistry, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, food and feed. We recruit, for example, scientists, product developers, technicians or quality assurers. We also place employees at companies via secondment.
