Networking for Early Career Researchers: Strategies for Establishing and Maintaining Your Professional Contacts

This interactive workshop offers access to the possibilities of professional contact management. The idea: Contact with others is best shaped in connection with your own personality. You will find out how to develop connections with others while feeling good about it because you are at eye level and authentic.

Concrete occasions are events, such as conferences and symposia, and professional visibility in the science field as well as influencing institutions that are important for your work and objectives.

The workshop offers orientation, examples and strategies - as well as the mantra that there are always several ways to achieve your goals. And, last but not least, you may realise: A lot is already there!

Target group

Early Career Researchers (Pre-Docs) with no or first networking experience who wish to develop, to improve and to reflect on their networking skills and who are interested in learning more about the possibilities of (authentic) professional contact management.

Goals & Content

Part 1: Contact means "with touch"
Before and during the workshop, you will deal with these questions:
- Why is it a good idea to think about (and practice) networking?
- Which contacts do I have?
- What networking opportunities and platforms do I want to use?
A personal networking checklist offers a concrete inventory and the possibility of targeted planning: Where does networking already work well, where is potential for expansion, what is missing?

Part 2: Networking in practice
The second part of the workshop is application-oriented. Using the example of initiating and maintaining contacts at conferences, you see (and develop) strategies...
- to get into conversation, also with decision-makers (often stressful!),
- to decide which communication strategies work for you,
- to cultivate and nourish contacts.

Methods

The methods are balanced to meet different learning needs: individual reflection and short writing phases, tandem and team work, lecture, case studies.
The focus is always on concrete occasions.

Trainer

Dr. Sylvia Löhken