Navigator wanted! I have a PhD, now what? Career orientation for PhD students

2 Jun 2016, 09:00 → 3 Jun 2016, 17:00 Europe/Berlin

Seminar room EMBL (Bldg. 48e, Campus Bahrenfeld)

Steffi Beckhaus

Careful planning of a career is most important for achieving attractive career goals and leading a balanced work-life. However, finding orientation for such a career plan can be  challenging. Often we feel confronted with a complex mixture of personal and external interests in work and life, which need to be incorporated into the process of planning. Also, questions need to be answered with respect to potential leadership roles, desired responsibilities, personal development, and others. Fortunately, the job landscape is diverse and provides a wide range of opportunities to pursue a fulfilling, individual path, once we know how to navigate and where to go.
This workshop explores the landscape in which we can orient ourselves in our life and for our next career steps. It does this with a specific focus on MINT academic careers. In this workshop
(1) we look into ‘navigation’ tools that aid both in orienting and proceeding on our own track in a complex, dynamic environment,
(2) we survey our unique potential and interest, explore our personal mixture of needs and wishes for a vital (work) life, and create a first map for career/life planning,
(3) we review the variety of modern jobs and careers and look into opportunities, requirements, working conditions and cultural differences of various careers inside and outside academia to get some perspectives on possible future directions (be it professor, r&d manager, entrepreneur or others).
Trainer: Dr.-Ing. Steffi Beckhaus is a former professor of computing science of University of Hamburg and Technical University of Darmstadt, bridging a wide area of scientific topics from technical to human factors in the fields of virtual reality, human machine interaction, and workplace design. She successfully reoriented herself several times during her career and is currently working as an expert, consultant and systemic coach. Since many years, she is giving lively, hands-on workshops on creativity, design thinking and career development to people in academia.