Take charge of your career
What are your dreams and ambitions for your professional life and career trajectory? You’re the only person who can answer that question. But as an AU employee, you can get help and guidance to help you clarify your goals and develop your qualifications. Read on for inspiration, resources and information about services and resources.
For researchers on fixed-term contracts
You might be employed on a fixed-term contract as a PhD students, postdoc or assistant professor. A fixed-term position can be the first step on a number of different career paths: a position at a different university, a job outside academia or a permanent academic position at AU.
If you’re a researchers on a fixed-term contract, you have a right to structured, regular dialogues with your management about your career prospects, options and aspirations – and alignment of expectations about realistic possibilities for a permanent position at AU. AU is committed to limiting the number of successive short fixed-term contracts individual staff members are offered.
Annual career development dialogue
Your manager is responsible for to conduct regular career development dialogues with you: at least once a year and additionally as necessary (for example, in connection with SDDs). In the event that an academic staff member (excluding PhD students) is appointed to a third fixed-term contract, their realistic career prospects must be discussed and clarified by that time.
These dialogues are an opportunity for you and your manager to align expectations about your future career path, based on the following terms:
- The PhD is the conclusion of a PhD programme that qualifies graduates to conduct research. It is not necessarily the beginning of an academic research career.
- A postdoc is a fixed-term position that may lead to an assistant professorship and, in some cases, to a permanent academic position at AU.
- An assistant professorship/researcher position, which provides important teaching qualifications, is generally considered the first step in research career at the university.
Reach out to your manager for more information about the annual career development dialogue. On this website, both you and your manager will find inspiration and resources to help you get the most out of the career development dialogue.
Tools for reflection
The tools below can help you think through what you want out of your professional life and clarify your career aspirations.
- What is most important to you? (Word)
- Clarify your priorities in relation to your professional life and career before you start looking for new positions. Rank the many different factors that influence career choices.
- Clarify your priorities in relation to your professional life and career before you start looking for new positions. Rank the many different factors that influence career choices.
- The four choices (Word)
- Should you stay – or should you move on? This question can be boiled down to four options, each with their own pros and cons.
- Should you stay – or should you move on? This question can be boiled down to four options, each with their own pros and cons.
- Get to know yourself through others (PDF)
- Become (more) conscious of your own strengths and weaknesses by asking three different people with different perspectives.
Career development dialogues
SDD or career development dialogue?
If you’d like to discuss your career, you can either bring this up at your annual SDD or you can ask your manager to schedule a career development dialogue. If you’re a researcher on a fixed-term contract, you have a right to an annual career development dialogue with your manager.
Career development dialogues and SDDs are not the same. However, there are some shared themes:
- SDDs focus on your professional development, well-being, and performance, while also exploring how your role and skills might be developed to contribute to AU's broader organisational objectives. In other words: The university's need for thriving, talented employees is the focus of the SDD.
- On the other hand, the career development dialogue centres on your personal and professional ambitions and aspirations and should only have a minimal focus on organisational objectives.
About AU’s career development dialogue guides
AU offers two different ways to structure career development dialogues. You and your manager need to decide whether you prefer a very structured dialogue or a more free approach.
- The ‘classic dialogue’ is highly structured, similar to an SDD.
- The ‘visual dialogue’ has a looser structure and is organised around your reflections on different themes.
In both cases, after the dialogue you are responsible for summarising the agreements you and your manager make in writing. You may decide to do this together to round off the dialogue.
The classic career development dialogue
In this approach to conducting career development dialogues, the dialogue is divided into three phases:
- A preparation phase : you prepare for the interview by filling out a questionnaire that contains with questions about success, feedback, motivation and career development.
- The dialogue: You and your manager review and discuss your responses and evaluate them together.
- The reflection phase: You consider your manager’s feedback and reflect on the dialogue.
The guide to the classic career development dialogue contains a guide to all three phases for the manager and the questionnaire for the staff member.
‘Visual’ career development dialogue
This approach to the dialogue is also divided into the same three phases, but is less tightly structured.
- Before the dialogue: you are invited to reflect on a variety of topics, including the future, current status, challenges, resources and options.
- During the dialogue: Your manager asks you questions about these topics and helps you summarise the discussion afterwards.
- Concluding the dialogue: You summarise the dialogue by creating a mindmap of the most important reflections.
Courses and training programmes at AU
Get an overview of internal courses and training programmes for AU employees.
