Testimonials
Career Orientation and Skills Training for Postdocs
Testimonials
Information
Take a look at the testimonials to find out more about the benefits of our career counseling!
The testimonials are chronological by year and anonymous and reflect the personal experiences of the postdocs.
Postdoc end phase I July 2024
‘Thank you for this session! It was very insightful and gave me lots of food for thought.’
3rd year Postdoc I June 2024
‘The COAST events were well organized and helped me to define my strengths and refine my career goals. Especially the one-on-one counseling is a valuable resource as it directly addresses all questions to one’s specific situation.’
3rd year Postdoc I June 2024
‘As a postdoc, I have benefited greatly from COAST, both in the form of workshops in which I was able to train myself, e.g. with regard to soft skills , and in the form of individual career counseling. In terms of career counseling, I really appreciate that I was taught which of my skills are relevant for industry and to what extent applications for industry and research should differ structurally. Without COAST, I would have missed important insights.’
End of 1st Postdoc I May 2024
‘COAST was an invaluable resource throughout my entire postdoc phase at DESY. It served as an easily accessible and welcoming reference point for me. I benefited from a variety of their services, including leadership and social media workshops, networking events, and counseling sessions. COAST provided me with guidance on exploring career paths outside academia, helping me recognize the importance of my skills and the value of networking in my professional life. Overall, it is a service that every postdoc, even PhD students, should experience!’
Postdoc end phase I 2023
‘These sessions improved my self-awareness with regards to soft skills and values, not in terms of vague formulae but in concrete terms related to my own experience. This comes as something orthogonal to my technical skills, which I was more easily able to assess by myself. It also pushed me to reconsider my vision of networking and of some of the common "codes" of the job-hunting environment.’
Postdoc I 2023
‘The Career Counseling at COAST was for me personally a good opportunity to grasp my current situation and my motivations for the transition from academia. In particular, understanding the values that are important to me and the skills that I can bring, helped me to create a much clearer future vision. As a result, my job search got more focused and I receive more invitations for job interviews.’
Doctoral Researcher I June 2023
‘By having a set of priorities, I have been able to identify a few directions that I am now exploring. It helped me identify the points with which I wasn't satisfied during my PhD. It was also an opportunity to remind myself about my strengths as a person and regain self-confidence.’
Postdoc end phase I 2023
‘The possibility to discuss my personal situation individually represented a huge emotional support to me, which I think is critical at this stage of life. The sessions provided me with tools to carefully assess my personal profile in a broad sense (e.g., hard and soft skills, but also personal preferences with regards to my future). They helped in learning and developing an appropriate language to communicate with recruiters and elaborate Resumes, and also in learning how to conduct informative interviews. Additionally, I had the opportunity to attend the "COAST Role Model Events" to discuss with former PhDs about their personal experience, which was a very positive and rewarding.’