Ruth Winden, career consultant at Shinton Consulting in the UK, finds
the ‘Amsterdam’ room packed with some forty to fifty, mostly female
students, PhD-researchers and post-docs. They have all have come
together to learn how to take charge of their careers.
Demand
Stefan de Kok from TU Delft / Kluyver Centre is one of them. Although just starting his PhD research, his choice fell on this workshop. “Time is not quite pressing for me, but you never know when a chance like this comes again. The title of this workshop intrigued me. ‘To take charge of your career’. How do you go about that? You tend to think in terms of supply: what positions are offered? It is interesting to consider demand: this is what I want, who can offer that?”
Choice
That’s exactly the question you have to ask, Winden says, if you want to
prevent winding up with a decent salary, while doing things you don’t
really like. “The genomics sector in the Netherlands comprises 7,500
people. Where exactly do you want to make a contribution? And how do you
know what is the right choice amidst a confusing amount of options?
Leaving your career to fate certainly isn’t the best way to deal with
that.”
Postcards
Winden has thought of all sorts of activities to make the workshop active and to make the participants conscious of the relevant questions. She had for instance torn up postcards. Participants had to go and seek out the holders of the other pieces to discuss some questions with them. For instance: Why did you choose the line of work you’re doing now and why do you like it? At the end, new postcards showed up. Everyone had to select one of these to send to yourself, with three actions that should be performed in a few months time. Always believe in initiative: that’s the motto.
Refreshing
“It was really useful and refreshing”, Peter Theunissen, PhD-researcher at the RIVM concludes. “This was a really interactive workshop, and that makes it stick better in your mind. I didn’t learn any revolutionary new things, but Ruth Winden structured all aspects in such a clear way, that this workshop had real added value.”
[Leendert van der Ent]
