Everything you don´t learn in the lab
Goodbye academia?® It has been a pleasure
Topic area
Career development
Format
Online or in-house workshop
Workload
Online: 4-6 x 2.5 h-webinars plus self-paced work on our learning platform
In-house: 2-3 workshop days each)
Trainer
Karin Bodewits, Philipp Gramlich or Lisa Steinhauser
Target group
PhD students and postdocs
In brief
In this comprehensive career workshop, you will go from analysing yourself all the way to scoring the job – be it in academia, industry or any other sector.
Finding your own career path
An academic degree allows you to enter a wide variety of job fields, but where to start? And how should you navigate a tightening labour market and a job search increasingly shaped by AI? These challenges can feel overwhelming. Our experienced trainers with academic, industry, and NGO backgrounds will give you orientation and tactics that have proven themselves in real life.
In this course, you’ll learn about:
Introspection: Analyse yourself
• Understand your interests and values.
• Which skills do you have, which can you still develop, and which do you enjoy using?
• Your private life: Family plans, hobbies and big dreams.
Career options within…
• The private sector.
• The higher education system: From postdoc to professorship.
• The ‘alternative’ career options: Governmental institutions, patent law, entrepreneurship, consultancies, teaching… and many more!
Application documents
• Adapt your CVs and cover letters to academic and non-academic employers and recruiters.
• Using AI strategically: quality vs. quantity.
• Using AI without sounding generic.
Job interviews
• Interview formats: From the video call to the assessment centre.
• Tackling illegal interview questions.
• Elevator pitches.
• Using AI as an interview training coach.
Salary negotiations
• Salary benchmarks.
• What to negotiate for beyond salary.
• The gender pay gap and its implications for negotiation.
Networking
• Expanding and keeping your network.
• Networking for introverts.
• Networking via social media.
Workshop format and materials
Online: Four interactive 2.5-hour webinars, combined with self-paced work on our learning platform. Alongside the webinar phase, participants have three weeks to deepen their learning and can receive individual feedback from the trainers.
In-house: All participants receive a PDF script of the course, allowing them to revise the material at their convenience.
More information and next steps
This course combines the content of the workshops PhD, and next? Career options, skills and orientation for scientists and Job application and interview strategies for scientists.
This course can be tailored for long-term postdocs who haven’t secured a professorship and face challenges transitioning to the private sector. We place special emphasis on redefining your skill set and career options in light of that background.
AI will change the job landscape and our view on human skills forever. If you want to dive deeper into this topic, we have written two articles about it: Applying for Jobs in the Age of AI and
The unique selling point of chemists.
Already interested to learn more about the workshop content? You might be interested in the articles My last day as postdoc or PhD stereotype or Philipp’s book about addressing your values and idealistic drivers in your career development: Careers with impact.
Goodbye Academia? – A glimpse into the workshop
Philipp offers a brief insight into Goodbye academia? and our approach to career workshops for researchers.