Pre-doctoral career advisory program

CIC nanoGUNE is committed to enabling our PhD students to achieve the best possible record in research as well as developing science & industry soft skills. With the goal of fostering a reflection about their activities at about the midpoint of their research work, PhD students are invited and encouraged to participate in the Mid-term program between months 15 and 20 of their PhD period.

Formally, the Mid-term program it is structured as a series of nanoPeople tasks. PhD students will be reminded of starting their Mid-term program during month 14 by receiving the following task in nanoPeople: “01.Interested in mid-term program?”, in which each PhD student decides on their participation.

The completion of this 01.task will activate the Mid-term update program that involves the PhD student, Career Advisor(s) and Discussion Partners, who are either Senior Scientists or Fellows at nanoGUNE. A PhD student, who rejects Mid-term program participation can still participate in the second portion of the Career Advisory Program, which starts with step 07., and at which point a PhD student can decide to participate in the 2nd phase of the Career Advisory Program or not.

(step 02. is a formal step, handled by nanoGUNE’s administration)

career

Mid-term program

The Mid-term program consists of the following sequential steps:

Career Advisor(s):

 03. Notification of their PhD student’s interest in mid-term program

PhD Student:

 04. Plan mid-term program:

  • (i) Write a short report (4-pages maximum) summarizing the PhD research project, including first results and outlook, and prepare an updated CV. Upload these documents.
  • (ii) Find two Senior Scientists or research Fellows, who are willing and available to serve as Mid-term Discussion Partners, send them the summary and CV, and arrange a one-on-one conversation about the Ph.D. with each of them. The selected Senior Scientists or Fellows do not need to have a close scientific overlap with the activities of the Ph.D. student (even if it would be preferable that one of them does). After the meetings, the Discussion Partners will have to fill out a form (form “Mid-term discussion confirmation”, available at the document list below) confirming their discussions. The PhD student will have to upload this form, once it is filled and signed.
  • (iii) Hold a 20 minutes seminar in nanoGUNE's standard seminar series, ideally, seeking a date to ensure the attendance of the two Discussion Partners. Then the PhD student uploads a file with the abstract of the seminar presentation.
  • Only once all documents related to (i), (ii), and (iii) are available and uploaded, should the administrative step 04. within nanoPeople be completed.

(step 05. is a formal step, handled by nanoGUNE’s administration)

Career Advisor(s): 

06. Notification of Mid-term program completion (uploaded files can be found under CIC57 projects named Career Advisory program)
Mid-term program

Career advisory program

Start of the 2nd phase of the Career Advisory Program

PhD Student:

07. Participation decision and filling of the Individual Professional Development Form:

This document is designed to aid the professional development discussion, by collecting information about the PhD Student capabilities and professional development expectations. The fields under "Describe your capabilities" and "Professional development expectations" are not compulsory. Fill out the fields that you want to fill out.

Career Advisor(s): 

08. Individual Professional Development Form Acknowledgement

PhD Student:

09. Propose an initial meeting

PhD Student:

10. Meeting to define professional expectations and to establish a support plan:

After this meeting, the PhD student will fill out the professional expectation support plan, containing actions that will be carried out to support the professional development of the PhD student. These actions should be agreed upon first with the Career Advisor and only then, the documentation should be filled out online and the administrative step completed.

Career Advisor(s):

11. Confirmation of support plan

Upon agreeing on the support plan, the plan will be followed and its defined actions taken. Thus, it is expected that there is a considerable period in between steps 11. and 12., even if an administrative task associated with step 12. is generated right away upon completing step 11.

PhD Student:

12. Propose a feedback meeting

PhD Student:

13. Professional development feedback meeting + update support plan:

After the feedback meeting, the PhD student will update the professional expectation support plan, that was agreed upon with the Career Advisor, and then complete this administrative step.

Career Advisor(s):

14. Confirmation of updated support plan

PhD Student:

15. Do you want to continue the program?

Here, the PhD student can decide to continue with the Career Advisory program or end it.

PhD Student:

16. Did your expectations change?

PhD students, who want to continue, will be asked if their general career expectations have changed and accordingly, they will either proceed by continuing to execute their updated support plan and have subsequent feedback meetings, i.e. step 12ff. (no general expectation change), or they will redefine their changed expectations by filling out a new Individual Professional Development Form, i.e. step 07ff. (the generation of the related tasks will be done by the administration).

Please, pay attention to the description of each task in nanoPeople before changing its status and follow the indicated instructions.

Career advisory program

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