Development opportunities

Career development

The career development plan is a document to support you in thinking about the goals/deliverables of your postdoc, your career ambitions, and (training) activities you can plan / follow to optimise your career perspectives. The document is a tool to constructively discuss these plans and ambitions with your chairholder/PI. Ideally, you do this at the start of your postdoc and afterwards, at least once per year, e.g. during your Progress and Development (P&D) conversation. You can find the document here. More information on the P&D conversation can be found through the Career and Development page on intranet (WUR login required) .

Courses and training opportunities

A variety of courses, seminars, workshops and symposia is available to increase your in-depth knowledge of specific research topics, or to broaden your scientific horizons and your professional network. Additionally, the general skill training activities will enable you to continue your career inside academia or to explore alternative career paths outside of academia.

Think, for instance, of a training on Writing Grant Proposals, support with Developing your Research Vision, or Getting on Track with your Veni Application. For the full overview of courses offered by WGS click here.

At the Teaching & Learning Centre, you can also register for courses to work on obtaining your University Teaching Qualification (UTQ; in Dutch “BKO”).

When you would like to explore career paths inside and outside of academia, you could join the training on Career Development for Postdocs: Science and the Alternatives.

If you are looking for discipline-specific courses, the courses posted on the VLAG course pages are open to Postdocs as well. Also, we provide a list of suggestions where to look for external courses.