The ability to cooperate effectively and efficiently in interdisciplinary contexts counts among the most important skills of tomorrow. This workshop allows you to reflect on how an interdisciplinary mindset enhances your career options and helps you prepare your next steps.
Topics covered include:

• Working across boundaries and making connections
• Identifying and developing relevant skills
• Different forms of interdisciplinary cooperation
• Respectful and solution-oriented communication
• Finding suitable jobs and career paths

Dr. Matthias Zach counsels researchers and scientists on all relevant aspects of their careers.

This interactive workshop puts you in the driver's seat. We'll move beyond theory and dive into a hands-on review process that will give you practical insights and actionable feedback to make your application stand out.

What We'll Do:
In this session, you will step into the shoes of a recruiter. Using a structured feedback framework, you will analyze real applications from your fellow participants in a confidential and supportive environment. We will:

• Learn a professional framework for evaluating application documents.
• Act as a recruiter and review 1-2 applications from the group.
• Receive constructive feedback on your own documents from your peers.
• Discuss common challenges and tricky questions in a group setting.
• Collaboratively develop stronger, more effective solutions for your CV and cover letter.

What to Bring:
To get the most out of the workshop, please bring:

• A recent job application of yours (CV and cover letter).
• The job description it was for. (Please have a digital or printed copy ready.)

Your Key Takeaways:
You will leave this workshop with a clearer understanding of the hiring perspective, concrete ideas for improving your own documents, and the confidence to create applications that get noticed.

Dr. Matthias Schwarzkopf

AI tools like ChatGPT are everywhere – but how can they be used effectively and responsibly in the professional life of researchers, both within and beyond academia? In this hands-on workshop, we explore how to get meaningful results with AI in ways that align with good scientific practice.

Please bring a laptop with you.

Dr. Maia George is an academic coach and former researcher with expertise in various areas. Her diverse range of topics includes new work in academia, scholarship applications, leveraging social media for transitioning to industry, effective science communication, and AI tools and new work in academia.
Dr. George's experience encompasses her previous roles as a Research Assistant and Research Fellow at LehreLernen, an institution specializing in didactic qualifications in higher education, located at the University of Jena. Furthermore, she is an alumna and current member of the admission committee for the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).

Dr. Maia George

Milina Alber, UFZ