Early career professionals, individuals in their first ten years in the industry, bring much-needed fresh perspectives, skills, and new approaches that can help us shape and achieve a vibrant future. Join the SSP Early Career Subcommittee members for a lively conversation with early career professionals. Our panel will discuss expectations for an organization's approach to professional development, career progression, and mentoring. Our panel will also share organizational culture recommendations to fully engage early career professionals. We will hear the viewpoints of individuals who have successfully grown their careers: one who has developed their career within an organization and another who moved organizations to support their career growth. We'll also hear the perspective of someone just starting their career.

Publishing can be a tough industry to break into, and scholarly publishing can feel particularly insular and unwelcoming to newcomers. In response, many industry organizations provide mentorship/development programs to support early-career professionals. This session will provide viewers with the information and tools they need to identify and participate in mentoring programs and strategies to develop a replicable framework for career development. To frame our conversation, we will review SSP's Professional Survey and Skills Map to help viewers understand how to use the map. Panelists representing several mentorship programs will discuss how to get the best out of a mentor/mentee relationship, discuss approaches to developing your "elevator pitch," and share ideas for less formal networking. Viewers will hear from individuals who have participated in various programs to help further demystify how mentoring works and how it helped their careers. The session will run as a lightly scripted live podcast. || Learning Level: Mixed-Learning