Shape your career

Your professional future is in your hands! While you can’t plan every last detail, change brings new opportunities – and with the right preparation, you can make the most of them. Whether you are looking for a new direction, want to expand your skills, or are ready to take the next step in your career, we can offer you valuable support. Some of our support measures are aimed specifically at scientists, while others are available to all colleagues at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Career planning and advice for scientists

The Career Center & Alumnimanagment at Forschungszentrum Jülich offers doctoral researchers in the final stages of their doctoral degrees and postdocs comprehensive support in terms of career planning, such as consultations, mentoring, networking opportunities, and events, for example on topics including the reconciliation of work and family life.

The video provides an overview of the services and support that our Career Center offers to Jülich employees.

Further training and professional development

Employees can choose from more than 500 internal training measures each year for their own professional development and receive advice from Human Resource Development on external training. This allows employees to take advantage of specific opportunities that meet their personal needs. Training is offered in various areas. Here are a few examples:

• Communication and personal development: unconscious bias, action instead of reflection, conflict management, quick-wittedness and rhetoric, resilience
• Leadership skills: lateral leadership, preparation and basics for a new leadership role, effectively shaping change processes
• Flexible working arrangements: change and transformation – the changing world of work, virtual and hybrid collaboration, desk sharing
• Health and sport: first aid course, mental health first aid, healthier eating, business yoga, Zumba

E-learning often offers a high degree of flexibility in terms of time and location, making it particularly well suited to balancing work and private life.

Further education and training are also an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and personal experiences with other women on specific topics and personal experiences and to build networks.

Women in leadership positions

Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions. We are aware of this fact and want to pave the way for a leadership culture characterized by diversity and equal opportunities. Women in leadership positions at Forschungszentrum Jülich can draw on professional support to successfully shape their area of responsibility and develop in their leadership role.

The services include individual counselling sessions on starting a new management position and, if required, coaching, mentoring, development programmes, training, networking opportunities and management feedback. At Forschungszentrum Jülich, leadership is also possible on a part-time basis and through top-sharing, i.e. tandem leadership.

Family-friendly leadership and the reconciliation of private and professional responsibilities are always taken into account.

Leadership culture in transition

At Forschungszentrum Jülich, around 700 employees have leadership responsibilities. How these employees fulfil their roles affects all of the approximately 7,500 colleagues in their daily work and is crucial to Jülich’s overall success. But what does good leadership look like? Many employees have worked together on this in recent years as part of a project on leadership culture. We are now delighted to be putting this into practice.

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