Countless career paths are open to postdoc candidates, but many doctoral candidates have little insight into potential professional fields. What are the application procedures? To what extent does a completed doctorate help? And what factors should be considered when choosing a career field? At the "Career Day" of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) at the end of February, doctoral candidates had the opportunity to obtain extensive information on these and many other questions and talk to experts from the field. About 200 interested people took advantage of this opportunity. The event was launched by professor Peter A. Frensch, vice president for Research at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and member of the BUA Executive Board.

The digital Career Day offered a mix of presentations – for example on the academic job market in Germany – and roundtables as well as world cafés with selected experts from various professional fields, some of whom had joined in from abroad. These small discussion groups were the highlight of the program: Here, participants were given the opportunity to interact directly with mostly young professionals with doctorates from fields such as the public sector, academia and research, communications, culture, data science, and non-profit organizations, and receive valuable insider tips about starting a career, required skills, and everyday working life in these professional fields. Such a selection of program managers is rarely found elsewhere, emphasizes Paramjit Singh, a doctoral candidate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and one of the organizers of the "Career Day." In addition to the world cafés, the roundtable on data science was also very well-received.

Sónia Alves, who is doing her doctorate at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, is also pleased with the new findings and insights. Especially the direct contact to former doctoral candidates helps her and the other participants to develop a real postdoctoral perspective. The transition period will take some time, but is manageable, Alves notes.

She and a team of doctoral candidates from all the partner institutions – Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – organized the event together and were thus able to gain experience in moderation and event management in addition to receiving career tips.

The funding of junior researchers is one of the objectives of the Berlin University Alliance (Promoting Talent). It has set itself the goal of improving conditions for all doctoral candidates of the four partner institutions. The Career Day took place as part of the “Graduate Studies Support Program” which bundles qualification offers for doctoral candidates and develops new event formats.