Career counselling and coaching for postdocs offers you temporary support for professional orientation, career planning, decision-making and structuring your everyday academic life. In a confidential counselling process, you will work on your personal issues, consider a variety of perspectives, reflect on and strengthen your resources, develop solutions and prepare possible next steps.

enlarge the image: Ein Beratungsgespräch in der Universität
Orientation towards resources and solutions are key guiding principles of our individual career counselling. Confidentiality is a matter of course. Photo: Christian Hüller

Issues and concerns

After completing your doctorate, you have taken an important step towards an academic career. In addition to the possibility of further professional qualification, employment as a postdoc often offers you the option of gaining your first management experience, working more independently and organising your day-to-day academic life more consciously. There are a number of issues that characterise your further career that you can clarify for yourself in a career consultation with our support.

  • Do I stay in science or do I leave?
  • Do I apply for an advertised position?
  • Do I go abroad as a postdoc or do I stay in a German institution?
  • What are the paths to obtain a professorship?
  • What does the non-academic job market look like for me?
  • How do I enter a career in as a science manager?
  • What are my strengths, skills and competences?
  • What inspires me? What do I want?
  • What do I like about my day-to-day work? Under what conditions do I want to work?
  • What is important to me in my future job?
  • Is my current CV suitable for a position in science management?
  • Which career building blocks should I develop in order to apply for a professorship?
  • What specific steps should I take to pursue a particular career path?
  • Should I apply for my own job in order to have follow-up funding?
  • To what extent could I ask my supervisor to support me more in my career development?
  • Do I want to (continue to) accept the costs of an academic career?
  • Is the long-held career goal of becoming a professor really the right one for me?
  • Can I be happy in the long term in a position with a high teaching load?
  • How can I accept the fact that I will/have to give up my "Plan A" of an academic career?
  • How can family planning/care work and a career in science be reconciled?
  • How can I (even) better demarcate myself in everyday life?
  • How do I deal with increasing work-life blending?

Further Topics and Contacts

Applying for a Professorshop

If you are currently in the process of applying for a professorship or a (first) "audition", please contact us with confidence. We will support you in the application process depending on the availability of our own resources or by referring you to external coaches.

If you have been offered a professorship and would like support with negotiations, please contact the DHV directly.

Issues concerning the mediation of conflicts

Read more

Issues of good scientific practice

Read more

Issues with high psychosocial distress

Read more

Discrimination and equality issues

Read more