Annual alumni survey
Where do former employees of the research center go?
At the end of 2025, we at the Career Center & Alumni Management launched our first annual alumni survey, in which we address the question "Where are our alumni?". The aim of the survey is to find out more about the career paths of our former employees, i.e. our alumni, and to gather feedback about their time at Forschungszentrum Jülich. We also want to link these two aspects. To this end, we have selected 29 questions from four different categories to be included in the survey.
Initial results of the alumni survey
Thank you very much for your active participation in the alumni survey!
We are delighted that 601 alumni responded and shared their experiences. This commitment forms an invaluable basis for shaping the future of the Career Center and our alumni work, and helps Forschungszentrum Jülich to highlight its contribution to society, science, and industry.
We want to continuously improve the support we offer our employees and alumni at all stages of their careers. The survey results help us to adapt our programs, develop new formats, and ensure that our services remain relevant, accessible, and effective for our current and former employees.
For our initial analysis, we evaluated 78% of the responses because they answered more than 70% of the relevant questions. One result that we are particularly pleased with and would like to highlight is that 94% of all respondents would recommend Forschungszentrum Jülich as an employer. In line with this, around two-thirds of respondents who are not yet retired stated that they themselves would take up employment at Forschungszentrum Jülich again.
The survey shows that the proportion of participants from academia (63%) is higher than the current average at the research center, which is approximately 49%, counting guest researchers as they are also considered alumni and are welcome in the JuLumni network. We also see that the PTJ is underrepresented, but this can be attributed to the sometimes very separate structures.
In the survey, 43% of respondents stated that they were retired. Among those who are still working, it is clear that a significant proportion of alumni work in industry, which was already apparent in previous years based on the information available. Around 40% currently work in industry, while 21% are employed in academia. However, it is also clear that the represented professional fields are diverse.
Furthermore, we also looked at whether and why alumni would recommend Forschungszentrum Jülich as an employer and how well they felt prepared for their careers by the research center. These results are, of course, particularly useful for adapting the center's offerings. Although we are very pleased with the very high recommendation rate of 94% and the fact that, on average, the alumni felt well prepared for their careers, the free-text responses contain a lot of valuable feedback on how things can still be improved.
In their comments, alumni frequently highlighted the following aspects: “a supportive atmosphere and great colleagues,” “world-class research facilities,” and “the advantage of working in an international and interdisciplinary environment.” At the same time, many respondents provided valuable suggestions as to what kind of support would have been helpful during their time at the research center. The initial impressions point in a clear direction:
- a stronger focus on career counseling and orientation toward the job market,
- more opportunities to establish contacts with industry and non-academic sectors,
- training and certification in project management, leadership, and soft skills,
- as well as more structured mentoring and exchange with alumni.
These perspectives provide important insights for improving our services and designing future offers.
A more comprehensive analysis of the survey is already underway, and we will keep you informed about more detailed results in the future. We hope you find the results as exciting as we do, and once again, thank you to everyone who participated!