Careers

When being understandable is not enough. When speaking with a lay audience, you need to add relevance to comprehensibility

Peer feedback: you need honesty and the ability to critically question the status quo. Such conversations help to gain a clear view

Is it all about money? Success criterion in industry is money; in academia it is publications, in government, it´s service to the citizens and self-preservation.

Good networking usually occurs in three phases: 1. Visibility, 2. Credibility and 3. Profit. First, you have to be seen and stand out from a crowd somehow. In the second phase, you should work on your credibility: your conversation partner should perceive you as professional and engaging. Only after this phase can you move on to the last phase and set your sights on the goal of your conversation.

Diversity in academia vs. industry is compared: geographical dimensions, interdisciplinarity, educational level or age

Applications as an overqualified person are challenging to write. How do you ease the employer’s fear that you will quickly leave again and be perceived as appropriately ambitious?

The Value of Early Grant Applications.
Does applying for a small travel grant make sense even if the professor has enough third-party funding?

We often perceive the poster as a compulsory exercise. To be allowed to attend conferences, we usually have to contribute – the poster is considered the low-threshold version of the prestigious lecture. Why does industry attach such importance to it?

It happens surprisingly often that a position is advertised that doesn’t even exist – or that there is someone who will get the position, regardless of how strong the other applicants are. “How can you tell that there is an insider, so you have no chance from the start and could save yourself time?” I ask the group.

“Chemists get a doctorate! If you don’t like that, drop out!” First-year students are still greeted with such words. Is that still up to date? 25 years after the Bologna reform was signed, are Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees still not established as professional qualifications in chemistry?