Career workshop: Know your competencies – find your job (March 6-7, 2017)

Careers in German universities and research institutes are difficult. Towards the end of your PhD or at the beginning of your postdoctoral years you need to decide whether you like to continue your career up to the professor or if you leave academia and public funded research institutes. This step is difficult to the biggest part of PhD-students because until then they did not find or try alternative career paths.

In the workshop, we first discussed which competencies the participants had gained up until that point. They learnt different techniques to explore and express their competencies. Being able to express these competencies was also relevant for applications, which was the focus of the second workshop in June.

Based on these competencies, participants explored the labor market: how the German and international labor markets are structured, the differences between the public and private sectors, etc. They then developed ideas for job profiles that suited them, with a particular focus on typical jobs for physicists and chemists.

Participants received an introduction to job searching and different job-hunting strategies. They learnt about relevant job listings, the use of networks, and more. The workshop also covered how to read job offers and how to ensure they were the right candidate to submit an application.

Additionally, the workshop considered when participants should start applying for jobs and how long they could successfully manage leaving academia.