ABG

The Association Bernard Gregory (ABG) is a French non-profit organization founded in 1980 as a follow-up of a task force organized by Bernard Paul Gregory, a physicist who was head of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) among other positions, and committed to fostering scientific careers in France.

Currently, ABG works on a membership basis and includes among its Board of Trustees companies, institutes of higher education, research institutes and other research-related associations.

ABG specializes in the recruitment and career development for doctoral candidates and PhD-holders in both academia and business sector. It focuses on raising awareness (to both PhDs and Industry) of the complementarity between the two worlds and the opportunities to collaborate.

Engagement activities

ABG’s mission of matching researchers and researcher employers in both academia and beyond academia is done by addressing several lines of action:

Sharing information on job offers:

ABG’s website offers their members the possibility of posting job offers. The target audience of these offers are mainly of professionals holding doctorates, but also doctoral candidates and students enrolled in Master’s or engineering degree programs. Thus, member organization can publish formal job offers but also thesis proposals or internship opportunities.

The job offer platform is linked also with a CV library, where it is possible to find candidates from every discipline, excluding medicine and pharmacology.

The job platform is further reinforced by the possibility of accessing personalized services offered by ABG and aimed at to helping the organizations in the recruitment of PhD-holders. Furthermore, ABG also collaborates with other job boards, including job offers from abroad, and regularly organizes networking events designed to:

• Bring researchers into direct contact with industry
• Facilitate intersectoral mobility experiences to early-career researchers.

Industry mentoring:

Being an intermediary between academia and business, ABG offers a range of support services for students and academic researchers aimed at preparing a career move, this includes workshops, coaching sessions, seminars and online tools, all developed and led by experts in PhD support services, and which can help with the promotion of one’s competencies, learning to supervise scientific teams.

As part of their support services, ABG also offers member business organizations with the possibility of designing tailor-made training programs in response to the needs

To advance in its mission of bridging the gap between academia and business, ABG focuses on bridging language barriers. Their development framework, actually aims on supporting a common language between both worlds.

Stakeholders involved:

• ABG staff
• Network of advisors within their member organizations (universities, doctoral schools, engineering schools, research institutions). These ABG advisors are in charge of the PhDs career training and follow-up.
• PhD candidates and PhD holders making use of the ABG services and resources
• Business organizations making use of the ABG services and resources

What can EURAXESS learn from this?

EURAXESS Jobs can also be used to publish non-academic research positions. To foster the publication of business organization job offers, other EURAXESS services potentially useful for these organizations can be used to attract their membership (e.g., finding project partners, learning about funding opportunities).

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