Kategorie: Season2

Building a Good Relationship with Your Supervisor

Join Amanda in a conversation with Dr. Marlies Klamt, a PhD coach who provides valuable advice on fostering a healthy and productive relationship with your thesis supervisor. Dr. Klamt shares her experiences, offers strategies for effective communication, and highlights the importance of setting boundaries. This episode is filled with practical tips for PhD students to navigate their academic journey with greater ease and satisfaction.

Highlights

„Check your expectations, check reality, and then work on making the relationship a better one by managing up and by having a better communication.“

„But I think that making your doctorate is not only a chance to grow as a scientist, but also as a human being, and it’s very important to learn to set boundaries.“

from our interview with Dr. Marlies Klamt

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

Links

Find useful links on this and many more subjects that are tackled in our second season here.

transcript

Hello everyone. We are here today with Dr. Marlies Klamt, and she is going to talk to us about the supervisor relationship. So Marlies, I know our podcast listeners probably know your voice, but if you could just briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself, about what you do.

Yeah, thanks a lot for the introduction, Amanda.
I’m really glad to be here on the other side this time, not facilitating, but actually answering your questions. I’m a PhD coach. I help people, I support people from the point of When they make the decision to do their PhD up to the defense. So I’m working with doctoral students pretty much every day of the week.
And my main focus is time management, but also other topics like the one we’re talking about today, which is the relationship with your supervisor. Using communication to have a better relationship with your supervisor. And my vision really is to prevent doctoral students from suffering during the PhD journey.
I know it’s not always possible, but at least it’s possible to reduce the suffering part and to actually enjoy the journey as well and say, okay, it’s like an important couple of years, a couple not, it’s an important few years in my life. And I want to make this time a good time and also enjoy it.
And I have a podcast myself as well. And I called it Glücklich Promovieren, which roughly translates to happy PhD, because that’s really something I want to advocate.

Oh, thank you. So I want to start off With a really basic question why is it important to have a good relationship with your supervisor?
And that might seem a little bit simple, but a lot of people that I’ve worked with and I’m sure that you’ve worked with have said, oh, it doesn’t matter. I’m just gonna, put my head down. I’m going to push through. I don’t need a good relationship with him. I just have to finish. Why do you think it’s important to have this good relationship?

Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s not always on the top of the list of the agenda people have, but I think it’s very important for two reasons. The first one is, if you have a good relationship with your supervisor, it can really have positive effects on your thesis. And people might actually be surprised to hear that.
But I think if you’re not afraid to ask questions, to clarify if you get an answer you don’t understand, and in general to ask for support, then That can really benefit your thesis and the quality of your work. And the, second reason is that a good relationship also can have a positive effect on your wellbeing.
And I think that’s very important as well, because it can be very stressful if you feel your supervisor doesn’t respond when you ask them something, maybe you even think they dislike you or they just don’t. Like permanently, or they just permanently don’t act in a way you’d like. I think this is really a stressful situation.
So having a good relationship with your supervisor just makes your life a lot easier as well.

Thanks. I’d love to hear a little bit more about your relationship with your supervisor. I have some other questions for you here, but before we go to them, how was your relationship with your supervisor? What did you experience?
What went really well for you? We’ll start there.


Yeah, my supervisor was also my boss. He’s actually the one who talked me into doing a PhD because it wasn’t, actually it wasn’t on my list of, on my agenda when I started working for him. I liked the job he was offering me, but when I started working at university, I wasn’t aiming at doing a doctorate.
And he kept on asking, he was quite persistent. And in the end I said, yes, but. only under this and this conditions, but that’s another story. But he had a really supportive personality. So he was really, as a human being, he was very human. He was very interested in not only me, but all the other doctoral students he had as well as the people working for him to make sure that they actually feel good as well, so they don’t just do their work and then that’s it.
But he really had this, yeah, I would say human relationship, which isn’t always the case in the academic system. He wasn’t like my best friend or anything like that. He was quite old. Can you say old? Do you need to say mature? He was about to retire, so he was a lot older than me. He actually retired just after I had it in my thesis.
And so it wasn’t like a friendship relationship, but it was a very supportive relationship from, of his side. And we also stayed in contact after he stopped working at university after he was retired. And yeah, and actually it was a good relationship, even though it all obviously also had some parts that were more challenging.

You said that what made the relationship it sounds like what made the relationship work so was this sort of, this human level, this empathy what do you think a doctoral student can do to build this good relationship if their supervisor isn’t meeting them there with this great relationship or this strong level of empathy or the human feeling to it?
What could I do if I were a doctoral student and I wanted to build that? relationship or support or start a relationship or move my already existing relationship in that direction.


Yeah. I think the first step always should be to check your own expectations. That means to find out what you actually expect from your supervisor.
And that often is on a subconscious level. If we don’t really reflect on it, we don’t, we often don’t know what we actually do expect from them. And then they’re disappointed if you don’t get it. And when I give workshops about the topic of the making the relationship with your supervisor a better one, I usually start with an exercise that I call the ideal supervisor, which is one where we actually look at what do you expect?
What, like, how would your ideal supervisor look like? So in an ideal world, and it doesn’t matter if you have one already or not, and you’re not thinking about the supervisor you already have, or the supervisors you already have, you’re actually thinking about in my ideal world, how would that person behave?
Would they ask me if I made progress or not? Would they hold me accountable or maybe not? Maybe they wouldn’t, they would give me lots of freedom. It can be something different for everyone. That’s the interesting thing. And then the second step is to check, to make the reality check and to actually see, does that person meet my expectations?
And It’s very likely that at least in some points, it doesn’t meet my expectations. So the third step would be to thinking about how making, how you can. So the third step would be to. work on making your relationship a better one. And the different means to do one is by having a better communication, communicating in a better way.
And the other one is by something I call managing up. That’s a term that comes from the business context. And it means that you’re managing a person that in a hurry. that in a hierarchy, that within a hierarchy has a higher position than you. And this can mean thinking about when do I approach them best?
When is the best time, like during the day, during the week to approach them? How do I approach them by which means of communication? Do they prefer to be called? Do they prefer if I show up in their office, whatever works best for them in this case, and not for you, I would use. So it’s really about a change of perspective and to put yourself in their shoes.
And think about what is their agenda, what are their goals and how can I use those also to meet their expectations? Because in order to have a good relationship, obviously it’s important that both people meet the expectations of the other ones, at least in the most crucial points. And yeah, so that would, the goal would be to have a better relationship.
Okay. I think the last sentence you can delete. Hang on, I’m going to, I’m going to just say one last sentence. So these would be the three steps I recommend. Check your expectations, check reality, and then work on making the relationship a better one by managing up and by having a better communication.

That’s excellent advice. I would like to ask you back to your own supervisor relationship. Were there any challenges that you faced or maybe something that you would do differently, looking back, even, or maybe at the time you thought this isn’t working for me maybe what you had to start learning these strategies.
What didn’t go so well?


Yeah, I think I’m not, I wasn’t bad at communicating, but I still could have been better at it because my supervisor was a very, or is a very knowledgeable person. He just had this vast knowledge, not just in the field where I was doing my PhD in, but in like pretty much all the other fields there as well.
History was like a field where he had a lot of knowledge and he often would connect, if he would, Tell him something about your thesis. He would connect that to whatever. This queen in the 17th century, and to be honest, often I just didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but I also didn’t have the guts to ask because I think often imposter syndrome is kicking in those moments and, oh, if I ask him, and maybe that’s a really important queen, and I should know her, and I should understand why this queen connects with my, Thesis, which is set in the presence, which doesn’t have nothing to do with history.
And I think it would have been a good idea to actually ask him right out and say, I don’t really understand the connection. Could you explain to me what that person has to do with my thesis? And then also another anecdote I would like to share, because that would have really saved me lots of work is.
After I did the last revision of my draft and beforehand in my thesis, he told me, like, all the things I mark when I read your chapters, and he had this kind of Yeah, because I said he has had this, I mentioned that he had a lot of knowledge and that he connected your topic with like many other topics.
And he did that when revising my chapters as well, and would make like footnotes like you could mention this queen from the 17th century here, or this theory. And he told me that was all the marks of all the notes I made on your chapter. These are all just recommendations. You choose whatever you want to use.
What you don’t want to use, and I felt every little note he made, I had to research and try to convert that into something that enters the chapter. So that would have been a really good idea to actually ask him, is that just, are those just recommendations or do you actually want me to use that for my thesis?

It’s very interesting and I think also a really common problem is how much can I push back or when can I ask questions? What will people think about me if I ask questions? What will people think about me if I say no? And that connects really well to the next question we have, which is, can you speak up to your supervisor?
They’re grading you. They might be your boss. Are you allowed to say no to someone who is your, is you’re in charge of your future, basically paying your salary maybe. And how do you handle that?

Yeah, that’s a very good question. And I completely understand that many doctoral students hesitate when it comes to saying no to your supervisor.
And for good reason. The reasons you just mentioned, they’re paying your salary, maybe they’re creating you. So it’s not so easy to say no. But I think that making your doctorate is not only a chance to grow. As a scientist, but also as a human being, and it’s very important to learn to set boundaries.
I also think that supervisors are not interested to ditch someone just because they say they cannot or they don’t do not want to do something. I think that’s a fear. Some doctoral students might have, but it’s not very likely, or it’s very unlikely that they would actually consider kicking you out just because you said no.
It might be the other case that they respect you more because you do. And then the other thing I want to mention is that it’s also good to think about how you phrase. It doesn’t need to be. a really clear and strict no in every case. Maybe you want to say, yes, but only I can only do this part of the task you’re giving me, or yes, I can do it, but only next week.
So that’s a no, I’m not doing it right now also, but you’re not saying no. It could also be, I can’t do whatever you’re asking me right now, but I could instead do it. Do this and this. So giving them another alternative, what you’re actually able to do, because often people don’t know what’s on your, what’s on your agenda.
And maybe they don’t even, they’re not even aware of you’re having an important deadline tomorrow. So you could also explain, you could say, I can’t do that tonight because I have to finish this paper, the deadlines tomorrow, for example.

That’s such great advice and I would just agree with it and I think that’s one strategy for really good communication is maybe not assuming what the other person thinks and really asking them or providing information for them.
What are some other strategies that you would maybe share for good communication just in general but with your supervisor specifically?

Yeah, as you already mentioned, not assuming you know what they think is a very good advice already, so if you have doubts, always clarify, because misunderstanding is often a really good ground for conflicts that are not necessary, because you might be on the same page, but you don’t know it, because You never asked.
And then some other tips I could give to our listeners are, is that starting the conversation on a positive note, even though you might have a conflict situation. So you don’t start right away with the conflict. You don’t go into the conversation and say, I really don’t like that you did this and this. I wouldn’t say that anyway, but try to start the conversation on a positive or at least a neutral note. You could do some small talk and just say, Oh, it’s so hot today. That’s not a positive note, but that’s something you might feel you have in common. So you’re still starting the conversation more positively than starting with the conflict directly.
Then I think it’s very important to be clear in your communication, to be friendly, but to really say what you mean. So don’t talk around it all the time, because that means that maybe the other person doesn’t understand what you’re actually talking about. Then another one, which is really cruel, is that you actually listen actively.
What sometimes happens if, especially if it’s a conflict conversation, and it doesn’t always need to be a conflict conversation, but I think that’s like the, one of the worst ones. So it’s important to actually talk about those as well. And that’s why I’m using it as an example. But what happens is that while the other person talks in our head, we are already preparing our next argument.
And we’re not listening to what they say. And you can imagine that it’s very difficult to have a good conversation. If you don’t listen to what the other person says, and obviously that goes in both ways that goes for the other person as well, but that’s something you cannot influence. And then something else is to be prepared.
So supervisors are usually very busy people. So you don’t want to ask some questions where you could find out the answer yourself within five minutes using Google. So try to Like everything you can find out by yourself, do that beforehand, be prepared. Be prepared also means if you go into conversation, bring all the materials you might need during the conversation.
For example, I don’t know, print out your chapter, have it ready on your computer, on your laptop. It means also have something with you to take notes. And then if it’s an important conversation, because The outcome is very important, or because it’s a conflict, you can also practice the conversation with someone else in a role play.
This can be a friend, it could be a colleague, someone you trust, and you just tell them, Okay, I want you to play my supervisor. This person is like that and that. You could, for example, say, Okay, usually my supervisor is quite harsh, so they know how they should play that person. And then you practice the conversation.
You come into the room and you say, Hi, it’s so hot today or whatever. And then you start and you’re playing this conversation and then you get feedback from the other person about how they perceived you during that conversation and what you could do to actually make the conversation even better when you have it with your supervisor in the future.

I think that’s such a great idea to get someone to practice it with you because so often I feel like a lot of people are so worried and if you practice it with someone and tell them to assume that you’re the other person is a nice person at heart, right? And not to try and pretend to be the evil supervisor.

Usually what comes out is that they’re going to react in a nicer way than you think. So that’s such a good idea. And obviously you don’t want to do that with every conversation. But as I said, if it’s an important conversation, if you’re very insecure. And the nice thing is also you’re getting better.
You’re practicing it. You’re having the real conversation and every time you do so you’re getting better at it. So in the future, you might not have to do that. While right now it might feel like a good solution for you.

Yeah. And it’s a skill that you need, not just in working with your supervisor, but it’ll be important later on the more comfortable you feel with these conversations, the easier it will be.
And in many work related and maybe even personal situations in your life. Yeah. So what happens, I still go back to, you mentioned you had this It’s nice supervisor, you would say, I felt really comfortable with, it didn’t always maybe work perfectly, but it was a generally a good relationship, but that’s not always the case.
And so what do you do if this relationship is just really bad? If you have the feeling that they don’t respect you, that you’re not getting maybe what you need and you don’t really see a way to make that better. It’s just not a good fit. What do you recommend that someone can do? What can they do? What options are available?

Yeah, you can try all the things I already mentioned, trying to have a better communication, trying to managing up, but if nothing that you do helps and this person just doesn’t respond in a way you needed and you’re feeling bad every time you talk to them or you go to work and see them, It might, you might want to consider changing your supervisor.
It’s something that is possible. It’s not easy to do, but it’s definitely possible to change your supervisor. And I would always consider also how much of your doctorate you have left. If you’re in the very beginning and you feel like the relationship is really bad, talk to someone else. Talk to the other doctoral candidates if they’re happy or not.
And if they all feel the same, maybe they’re happy because they need a different kind of supervisor as you do. Maybe they’re all unhappy, but it can give you more of a feeling if your perception of how this person is treating you is real or not. And then if you’re like, if you’re about to hand in your thesis, I don’t know if you’re planning to hand in your thesis in two months, I would definitely think about it more than once or twice if you want to change your supervisor, because it’s going to delay the process.
And you’re almost done. But it’s an option. And I think it’s always good to know this option exists that your supervisor can be changed. Then another option is to look for help from the outside, especially if there’s any kind of power abuse involved, or if you feel discriminated, there are different institutions, different departments at every university and also at the FU where you can go to.
If that happens, for example, for this podcast, for the DRS podcast, I made an interview with Professor Heberle, who’s the central ombudsperson at the FU. And there’s another, there are like ombudsperson people, ombudspeople at every department as well. So if you have an issue with your supervisor, like a conflict situation, for example, because They told you would be the first author of a paper you’re publishing together, and then you’re handing it in and you saw that they put their own name first.
You might want to talk to them directly if you have that kind of relationship, but you could always also go to the Ombuds people and get their advice on the situation. And also for cases of discrimination, there is. Is a place like an anti discrimination advice and support department at the FU where you can go to as well.
So getting help from the outside in order to get a better perspective on your situation is a good idea. Knowing that you can change a supervisor and yeah, those are your options basically here.

Thanks. And I really appreciate that you said that you can change your supervisor. I think it’s really important to hear that because a lot of people think I started this, so I have to stick with it until the end.
And we’re going to interview some people who’ve changed their supervisor in the process in our first season of the podcast. All right. It’s not something that’s impossible. It definitely can be done and you should not suffer. And so we, when we want you to finish the PhD and still be ready to do cool things with your, with science or with other stuff as you choose and not feel like this process was just so draining.
That you’re not comfortable continuing in any workplace, right? So don’t suffer needlessly. I have a few more questions for you. The first one is, you mentioned some resources about what you can do if your relationship is really bad. What other resources or support systems are available for students who might just be having a few challenges?
And building a relationship with their supervisor, maybe it’s not terrible yet. They don’t have discrimination or they’re not feeling like they need the ombudsperson. It’s not like they, they just are not feeling so great about their relationship with their supervisor.

Yeah, I think the exercise I mentioned in the beginning, the one about the ideal supervisor and finding out what the expectations actually are is really helpful because then you can also look at the list you made and check if which points does my supervisor what things does my supervisor not want to give me, or he or she cannot give them to me, maybe also.
That was the case, for example, with my supervisor, that I did an interdisciplinary doctorate, and I knew that there was just one discipline he wouldn’t know about. And he told me that straight away as well, in the beginning, this part, I won’t be able to help you. So my ideal supervisor, obviously, would have had this knowledge he didn’t have.
What I did in this case, I was looking for a mentor. I was participating in a mentoring program for doctoral candidates. And I just looked for a mentor who’s actually coming from that discipline to actually check that box. I couldn’t check like the, to fulfill that need I had, my supervisor couldn’t give me.
And you can do that obviously with other resources, not only with mentors, but also, for example, visiting workshops. For example, let’s say, you’re using a method and you’re not sure how to use it and your supervisor is also not able to explain it to you or he or she doesn’t have the time to do, doesn’t see him or herself in the role to explain a method to you, you can look at, is there actually, A workshop covering that topic I can visit or a course.
Can I do a course to do so in order to get that knowledge I need. So just check what other resources there are out there that could cover the needs I have that my supervisor cannot cover. And. I think that’s what I pretty much what I wanted to say. Thanks.

I also would do a little bit of advertising here because we have some workshops in our workshop series that is connected to this podcast.
So we have some workshops that are on different topics. I know that there is one, for example, that I’m doing that’s about intercultural relationships with your supervisor. So if you’re not from Germany and your supervisor’s from Germany, and you want to come and learn about how that can affect the supervisor.


People interested in this topic, I occasionally give workshops about this topic, about making the relationship with your supervisor better. And you’re free to visit workshops at other universities as well. So even if you are doing your PhD, your doctorate at the FU or at the Charité. Or at the HU, you can visit those workshops as well.
So if that’s a topic you’re really interested in, or if you have a difficult relationship with your supervisor, you might want to visit this workshop and just check out when the next one is. It’s usually either a half day or full day workshop where we do role plays as well. So we actually go, we do the things I told you about today, we go, we do the role play and we try to find out how you can make your communication better with your own supervisor.

So my second to last question for you is, what do you do? So imagine you haven’t had contact with your supervisor in a really long time and you’re like, Oh, this is, I don’t know if I can talk to them. I feel really intimidated. You might even worry that they have forgotten about you or that they’re annoyed that you didn’t get in touch.
What can you do to make that happen?

Yeah, that’s a very good question because I know that’s the situation many doctoral students, especially the ones who don’t work at university have. I often have that situation in coaching, that people tell me I haven’t had contact with my supervisor for a month and sometimes even for years, and the longer the wait, the harder it gets, right?
Usually what I ask them is, when was the last time you had contact? Often they still know. Or they tell me, yeah, I wrote him or her an email and they never responded. And then when I ask, did you write a follow up question? Did you write a follow up email and I never did that. So sometimes it’s just that email got lost and they didn’t respond to you because they think you’re a stupid person or they don’t like you but just because they didn’t read your email or they didn’t answer it straight away and then they forgot to do then also I think it’s important to keep in mind that they are very likely not to think about you all the time. So they don’t think, ah, this person didn’t get back to me. Maybe they think about you occasionally, but they usually, you’re probably not the biggest issue in their life. So they also, yeah, then might not be, hang on, how do I phrase it?
So I think it’s important to have that into account, that they might not think about you as much as you fear or as you think. Okay, now let’s come to actual solutions. What can you do to make it easier to get back into contact with them? It might be a good idea to find a reason to contact them. Let’s see.
Okay. It would be December, Christmas is coming up. Maybe you want to send them a Christmas card or a Christmas email and say, I just want to say Merry Christmas. And by the way, I’m still doing my doctorate. And then I think it’s also a good idea to write them what they can expect and to show engagement, to tell them what you’re working on, what you want to work on the next month, actually prove that you’re still on track that you’re still doing your stuff.
You might also want to give them an explanation. You don’t have to, but you, if you feel better doing that, you might want to do that and tell them why you didn’t, why you haven’t been in contact. Maybe you got a child and you have a very good reason why you haven’t been in contact or you have been sick or you changed jobs or whatever.
So you can give them an explanation. And I also think it’s good to Tell them what you actually want. So do you want to have a meeting? When could that happen? The next two months or whenever you feel it’s a good time? What do you want to do at that meeting? What do you want to discuss? And if you feel really insecure?
It might be a good idea to give that mail to someone and say, how did it, how does it sound? Because you also don’t really want to sound, hang on, because you also don’t want to sound too humble maybe. So just give that email to someone else and ask them, what do you think about that mail? How would you, Feel if you receive that mail being my supervisor in case you feel insecure and then you can still make some adjustments and how you phrase things in order to send out that mail with a good feeling.
Or another, hang on, I just had another idea. Another option might also be to try to meet them at an event that’s taking place anyway, which could be a colloquium or maybe a conference where you know you could meet them and get in touch that way if that’s something that feels easier for you than writing an email or making a call.

That’s a great point. And that’s great advice. So I have one more question for you. And that is, if you would think back into your past work experience, maybe back to your doctorate or to work experience that you’ve had, where you’ve had a supervisor or a boss, what advice would you give your past self from where you are today?
So what is something that you maybe would go back and tell your past self about what they’re doing? If you could say one thing to them, if you could time travel back to them, what is one thing that you would say?

I think I would tell myself don’t worry too much. Have trust in that things will work out the way they are meant to work out or in a good way and that also maybe if you have a bad situation, if you don’t feel good at a given point of time, if you have a conflict situation or I don’t know, your boss or your, my supervisor told me he wasn’t happy with something, this will pass.
It’s also not. so important. Like me, my personality, I have the doctorate is not the only thing. And I think that’s something that often happens during your PhD, that it feels like the most important thing, like the thing that defines you. And you really make yourself your well being up to a certain point, dependent on that other person’s opinion about your work.
And it almost feels like the person is judging you as a person and not your work. Maybe I should delete the always because it sometimes it feels like you’re a good person or you’re a bad person. If you wrote a good chapter, a bad chapter, a good paper, a bad paper. And that’s something that also happens to me during my own doctorate that, I very much define myself by my thesis and if other people liked it or not, or gave me good feedback or not. And I think it’s important to actually separate yourself a little bit from that, and to acknowledge that you’re already a full person, you’re a great person, no matter if other people acknowledge what you’ve done there or not.
You’ve done your best, and if you made a mistake or if something, you wrote a chapter which is not as good as it could be, you can still go back and rewrite it and make it better. So that’s always an option too. Yeah, so I think that’s the advice I would give to myself if I could travel back in time.

Thank you, Marlies.

Thanks a lot, Amanda.

This interview was conducted by our trainer and co-host of the podcast Amanda Wichert

Cracking the German job market as an international doctoral researcher

In this episode, we’re not just unraveling the mysteries of job applications in Germany. We are arming you with tools, with strategies for planning your career, no matter where you’re from. Get ready for some insights into the German job market – we are covering aspects you might not have even considered.

Highlights

„Anything that you are doing in your life is, is experience and it’s just that you need to be able to connect the thing that you that you want to do to something that you’ve done.“

„I’ve never worked with anyone who has zero hands-on experience. You all have so much experience and what we tend to underestimate is, all of the work that you’ve done in your PhD, in your master’s, even in your bachelor’s, you have worked with other people to do things…“

„I think it’s really, really important that you sit down as early as you can. Give yourself the gift of the time that you will invest in your own career planning.“

from our interview with Amanda Wichert

Audio

Download or listen to the audio version of the podcast here.

Links

Find useful links for your life post graduation here.

transcript

Intro

Hello and a warm welcome to the DRS podcast brought to you by the Dahlem research school. I’m your host, Dr. Marlies Klamt and today’s episode is extra special because I’m joined by someone you probably already know: Amanda Wichert. Amanda is not only a fellow host of this podcast but also an expert in cross-cultural carriers.
And guess what? We here to talk about cracking the German job market as an international doctoral student. In this episode, we’re not just unraveling the mysteries of job applications in Germany. We are arming you with tools, with strategies for planning your career, no matter where you’re from.
Here’s a sneak peek of what’s on the menu for today. Get ready for Amanda`s insights into the German job market covering aspects you might not even have thought about. We are diving deep into the skills and experiences you need while Amanda offers guidance and strategies for those who lack them. Or who think they might lack them, because sometimes that’s not even the case, you just don’t know yet.
Ever wondered if German is a must when applying for a job in Germany. Stick around to find out Amanda’s take on whether a positive answer to the question „Sprechen Sie Deutsch?“ is a must.
One of the wonderful long words we have in German is „Wissenschaftszeitvertraggesetz“ Yep. This is really only one word and it refers to a law that for many doctoral students is very relevant. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry. Amanda sheds light on it.
Another aspect we talked about is whether or not it makes sense to do a postdoc after finishing your doctorate. Buckle up for this enlightening interview, we’re here to fill your ears with lots of information and with lots of practical tips. Enjoy the interview with Amanda Wichert.

Interview

I’m very excited to have you as a guest in our podcast today with this episode that is especially addressed at international doctoral students who are wondering how to get into the German job market.
Amanda, I have lots of questions prepared for you, but before we get started, please let our listeners know who you are and what’s your profession.

If you’ve been listening to our podcast, you maybe heard my voice before because I am the other podcast host. But when I’m not doing this Dahlem Research School podcast, I offer trainings and coachings on a couple different topics.
You know organizing yourself, well-being at work. But my main topic is cross-cultural careers, so trying to figure out how to successfully launch your career in a new and international setting. And I work quite a lot with doctoral students and postdocs on this topic here at the university.
Marlies: That sounds very interesting and that makes you a real expert for our topic today. I know that many of our podcast listeners come from all over the world and every job market has its own rules and particularities. What would you say is special about the German job market, how is it different from the international job market?
Amanda: So one of the things that I think is really surprising to people that come to Germany, and I know it was really surprising for me when I first came here because I came from the US in 2008 and I thought, well, I can just keep doing the thing that I was doing before, and I was really surprised learn that that’s not really how Germany works.
So Germany still has a very structured job market and it’s a really specific job market and what I mean by that is that most people, not everybody, but most people in Germany do the thing that they studied. So there’s still a lot of connection between whatever it is that you’ve studied and whatever it is you’re gonna do.
And more so than in other job markets, there’s not as much flexibility, so people don’t usually change their careers as much. And this is really changing. So with the startups and with just the globalization of the job market, I think that in, maybe even in like five to 10 years, we’ll see a huge difference here in Germany.
But we’re still at a place where people are really looking at what did you study and what did you do before and how is that connected to what you do next as opposed to sort of what success have you had, which is sort of what we’re looking at in the US or, or are you well-rounded or you know, are you enthusiastic?
It’s much more about how does your profile actually fit the job you’re looking at.

I can imagine that that also has some effects on the job application process itself. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the job application process in Germany, and if there are any specific requirements or expectations that have to do with what you just explained to us, that might not be very common to everybody.

So one of the big things that German companies still want that’s actually really surprising to non Germans to international applicants is this photo, right? And I think the photo is sort of maybe, you know, not a huge element, but it’s kind of a thing that is a, a big symbol for me of the difference between what is expected in the international market and what’s expected in Germany.
So if you’re a German and you’re applying at a German company and you know, you’re looking at a very traditional German employer. You will almost always be expected to include a photo. And when I talk to German hiring managers or German employers and I say, you know, what is the photo for?
And they’re like, oh, I just wanna see like, what do you look like? Are you friendly? Are you „sympathisch“ as this word in German that they’re looking at. And most international employers in Germany don’t really want that photo. And I think again, it’s one of those things that’s changing. But, but there’s that and, and there’s also sort of this traditional German CV structure, which is not quite the same as the CV structure you have in the rest of the world. So in Germany, there’s not traditionally a profile or like a, a pitch at the top of your CV. Usually you just jump right in and it’s facts only, right? Like, so what did you do and where did you study?
And not so much this sort of How do we say it’s very optimistically phrased description of your skills or like a summary of your accomplishments. It’s much more about the facts. What did you do and how does that relate to the thing that you’re applying to?

That’s a great bridge to my next question.
You already talked a bit about the CV structure, that it’s different. About the photo, which is still quite common to include, but would you say that there are also some specific qualification or maybe skill sets that German employers value, especially when hiring PhD graduates?

When you talk to employers about PhD holders in Germany, so people with a doctorate and you say, what do you see? Right. The thing that they’re usually looking at is well first of all, they see you as an expert, in your field. You have, you know, cutting edge experience and information.
What they’re also a little bit worried about is sort of this we can say in English, this ivory tower you know, theoretical approach. And they are really looking to see, have you used your skills or your experience in a hands-on setting. So insofar as the job that you’re applying for isn’t extremely theoretical, and of course there are jobs in the industrial job market that are just theoretical, but even there, they’re looking for, you know, do you know how to do these things in a setting where it’s all about the application and not about just pure science, right? That’s the one thing.
The other thing they’re looking for is your interpersonal skills, your soft skills, and that might seem like, okay, well I’m an expert are these that important? They wanna see like, what did you do, where did you work with people so that they can feel more comfortable about your ability to integrate into this non-academic job setting, because the values are really different. And that’s one of the biggest things that we see when you work with people with a PhD in the industrial job market, is that they say, oh, these are the values of my employers.
They might be really, really different than the values that are central to academia. And so that would be what they’re most likely looking for. And then the other thing would be to look and see: What is it that I wanna do and what do most employers expect me to do in this type of role?
And something I would recommend is just go out and look at four or five job postings for the same position. It doesn’t matter what organization. That could be any organization ideally, like somewhat close to the organization that you’re looking at, but you know, a couple of job postings and look and see what are the key skills that they want for this role that’ll help you get to get a better idea of what really matters.

That sounds like a really, really helpful strategy. I wanna quickly jump back to the first thing you just said that employers expect you to have some hands-on experience as well, some practical experience because I can feel like a lot of our listeners now kind of shivering and saying, oh, but I don’t have it.
I don’t, I don’t have any hands-on experience outside of university at least. So what can you actually do if that’s your situation and you’ve done your doctorate you can call yourself PhD, but you actually lacking still that practical job experience. How can you land your first job?


I’m gonna kind of start off by saying you have hands-on experience. So I’ve never worked with anyone who has zero hands-on experience. You all have so much experience and what we tend to underestimate is, all of the work that you’ve done in your PhD, in your master’s, even in your bachelor’s, you have worked with other people to do things.
So that is hands-on. So where you’ve collaborated with people. Even if you’re, you know, saying, I’m just doing research maybe I’m in the social sciences or the humanities, and I’m maybe even just looking at text and I’m analyzing it. And you say, okay, I can’t really find the hands-on. The hands-on is when you work with other people. In that moment, you are using those skills that you’ll need to do your job later, and then all the other stuff that you’re doing at the university. So when you get involved in let’s say running a colloquium or giving talks or getting together with other students to solve problems in your department.
So you have just this example, it doesn not have to be at a company. It doesn’t have to be in an organization. It doesn’t have to be like a formal hands-on you know work experience because you already have that and it’s just looking for tasks and other kind of things that you can add to what you’re doing right now.
Or you think maybe I need a little bit more practice, then look for something that you can do in volunteering. Volunteering is a really easy way to do this. Get involved in like a student led startup. There’s a lot of them in Berlin. And just, you know, see, can I do this one thing?
Cause I want to try it out and see if I can do it on my own. And that is I think one of the best ways. Internships. You cannot do them in Germany as a student. So this surprises a lot of international PhD students. But if you are a PhD student in Germany, there is no legal or like regulatory framework for you to do an internship.
So you’d have to leave Germany and I actually don’t always recommend that unless there’s something that you really, really, really wanna do and you’re like, I know exactly what it is, and I found somebody that does it, I don’t know, in the UK or in Sweden, and you’re like, I’m gonna go over there and do it for a little bit.
That’s something you could do. But I wouldn’t call it an internship necessarily. I would maybe just think of it as like a, a collaboration or like a, you know, some kind of short work experience.

So what I hear you say, it’s mostly about selling yourself better.
So you actually mostly have the experience, you have the skills, you just have to sell yourself in a way and make people believe that you actually do have them. And then also that if you’re still lacking experience, especially when you’re still doing your PhD, when you’re still a doctoral student and you’re not done yet, that you already think about strategically, what do I wanna do in the future? Do I still lack skills for the jobs I wanna apply to? And then try to get those skills, those experiences, by doing internships outside of Germany, doing some volunteering work or some other work experience you can get hold of.


Yeah, exactly. PhD students focus a lot on, like, I don’t have a job, I don’t have any work experience.
Anything that you are doing in your life is, is experience and it’s just that you need to be able to connect the thing that you that you want to do to something that you’ve done.
That might be a paper that you wrote internationally with different people, and you had to kind of coordinate maybe as a junior researcher on the project you were responsible for kind of getting everybody to answer, right.
And so you might have been the one that wrote those emails to get everybody to answer, got on the phone and called people. And so using that as an example of your ability to reach out and talk to people or, you know, maybe you got involved in a volunteer project where there were a lot of actors involved and you have experience connecting them.
And it doesn’t have to be work, it doesn’t have to be an official job. It can be anything that is remotely related to your professional experience. So, you know, student stuff, all of that is really valid.
Marlies: I really appreciate your optimistic perspective on that, that you actually just have to look at what you already have. And most of it will be there already.
Now I wanna shift the topic a little bit. I know you don’t have a PhD, but you are a foreigner. You have come to Germany a long time ago, and you have successfully established yourself in the German job market. Would you mind sharing your story with us and let us know how you did it?
Amanda: Yeah, so what I think was really important, this is the thing I always tell everybody, is it is about getting to know people along the way. So that I think is one of the most important things about the story. But when I came here, I was teaching high school in the US and university, and I did curriculum development for the us for the school system I was working in and I came to Germany and I thought, first of all, I’m just gonna take a year. That was my idea. I was gonna take a year kind of as a sabbatical because I was at a really stressful school. Although I really enjoyed, enjoyed my work, but I needed kind of a break. And I came to Berlin and I thought, well, you know, in about a year I’ll go back.
And I just sort of looked around at the time and this is not something that I would recommend that people do, and it’s actually, I would say kind of, it worked out well for me, but it’s something that my clients that I work with in coaching that it can often, you can get stuck, but I just looked and said, what can I do?
Who will hire me? Right? And I ended up doing consulting for a kindergarten company, a company that owned a couple kindergartens, and I would help them to work with the English speaking staff. So I did staff training and I did a little bit of educational consulting. And I also taught English what I was doing in the US and through those things that I was doing I met people who who I ended up working with later.
I met one of the partners who used to be part of my company now when we founded a couple years ago, she’s not with us anymore, but she was involved in the kindergarten. Her child went to one of the kindergartens that I was consulting for. And so I got to know her and she was like, oh, you know, I really wanna work in this intercultural field and you’re an intercultural specialist.
Why don’t we do something together as a project? And I also worked in IT for a little while and it was the same thing I was teaching, I was doing communication coaching, and I was working with the CEO of a company and I ended up just saying, you know, hey, I think I could work in IT.
And I talked to ‚em about it and I ended up working for their company doing consulting in IT for a little while. And I think it’s all about you know, I would not recommend just taking any job because that often doesn’t work in Germany. A lot of foreigners come in with this idea that like any job is good because you’ll be able to convince someone that you’re great and then you’ll move up. And that’s not the case. And especially for people with PhDs, that can be really dangerous. I mean, I guess today is a big word, but I would be very cautious to do that because what can happen is you end up in a job that doesn’t fit your profile and in Germany particularly, people will look at you and say, why did you end up there? What did you do? You know what happened that you are at this job that doesn’t match your profile.
And so I wouldn’t necessarily do that, but I would really look at like, who do you know and who are you talking to? And try things that talk to people and say, you know, hey, I’m interested in this. Because the more that you tell people about what you’re doing and what you’re interested in, the more likely you are to meet somebody and come into contact with somebody who’s interested in working with you.

I can imagine that. Yeah. Now, you already spoke German when you came to Germany. How important would you say for someone just finishing their doctorate is it to actually speak German if you are looking for a job in the German job market?


So first of all, there are a lot of jobs in Berlin, especially in this tech sector that are in English and in the science sector. So you can work in English. However, there are two kind of aspects. So one is you will be limited to the work that involves people who speak English. So, where you start running into problems will be in situations where there are colleagues or clients who don’t feel comfortable in English.
And this is quite interesting. In Germany there’s a lot of people who don’t speak English that well, and Germans tend to have a pretty strong connection between language competency and this kind of skill level. Germans don’t feel as comfortable speaking English if they think they’re not gonna be really, really good at it. And a lot of people will say, I can do it, but I feel like I am way more of an expert in German and Germany is an expert culture.
And so that’s an issue if you have like a client facing job and then anywhere where you have to interact at your company with departments of the company that are staffed by people with less likely high English skills.
So that might be like, if you’re working with bookkeeping or anywhere there’s a lot of regulations or all that stuff, that’s all still in German.

I guess your recommendation would really be to get some German under your hood and probably just start learning German while you’re still doing your doctorate.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s gonna make it easier. You can get by without it if you really work hard. And I always say everything is possible, some things are just like a lot more work and the less German you speak the harder it will be unless you are very technical. So if you’re like, you know, a data scientist or you know, there’s some other fields you can usually get by with without it, but it’s gonna be harder. And then Germans tend to speak German with them.
You know, when they’re alone and you leave them alone, you leave the room, you come back and they’re speaking German. So it’s just easier for you if you learn German

And also for your social life, I guess, not just speaking professionally, right?


Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s so much easier. I mean I would say, if you don’t speak German, there are two Berlins.
There’s the Berlin that is, you know, I would say the deep Berlin that’s in German. There’s all this stuff going on that you’re just not aware of, and it’s not, it’s completely different. It’s like a completely different city. And if you are only doing things in English, then you are in this international community, which is also great, but it’s, it’s not like as deep.
And you’ll also find that you will have a bigger network. And it’s just a lot easier to meet people and to get problems solved. It’s a lot easier to get things done and you’re never reliant on other people which is sort of a, a part of being international, we say it’s a lot higher stress.
If you don’t speak the language the stress level will be higher that you have to deal with over time.

It’s worth the stress I have to learn German actually for what I’m getting out of it when I start speaking the language.
Are there departments at the university that actually help me setting me up in the best way possible for the job market, including learning German, but also that maybe help me at university and beyond that help me when I’m looking for a job in Germany that can support me.

There’s a career service department at the Freie Universität, and you are allowed to go there as a doctoral student, and they have info sessions and you can contact them. You can also we have a couple workshops in the Lounjee that you can see that we do and we’re probably gonna repeat them.
You can get in touch with the Dahlem Research School directly if you have like questions and you’re not sure who to talk to. And in the BUA there’s a lot of career workshops. The different BUA universities have different resources and some of them have a little bit more career options.
So there’s that. And otherwise what I really recommend if you’re stuck is to, you know, go look at all those workshops, see if there’s one out there that fits you at any of the Berlin universities. Email, the Dahlem Research School and then talk to people in your department because a lot of the departments they do specific things to support your career development. So if you and your cohort, maybe your colleagues in your department need resources, you can always reach out to the Dahlem Research School as a department and say, look, we would really like this support and the Dahlem Research School can recommend trainers or coaches that you can work with.
And that is also a, a really good strategy if you can’t find something that works for you. And finally I do recommend taking a look at the different resources. We’re gonna put some from the website here. We have an interview we did with a welcome office that’s more for people who already work in the university and, and that can be quite helpful as well.

Thanks a lot for that, Amanda. We will also link the resources you just mentioned on the website about this episode, so that you don’t have to look for them yourself. You’re gonna find the workshops Amanda just mentioned and also the career service and all that on the website and you don’t have to look for the links yourself.
There are two topics I still wanna mention before we come to an end of this interview. One is, it sounds a little bit complicated. Like if I imagine I would be a foreigner to actually enter the German job market, I need to, to learn German, I need to get used to all the different approaches that Germans have.
So it might seem easier to say, I’m just gonna stay at university. You know, why don’t I just do a postdoc so I don’t have to face all those challenges and I just stay at university. Would you, for someone who doesn’t actually see him or herself having a career at university, would you actually recommend doing a postdoc or would you say: No, there’s some danger involved in that as well, and there actually good reasons not to do so.

Let’s start with the statistics. So my, my last number is, and this is not to scare you, it’s just like, you know, we want, we want you to be informed. So we say about 3% of PhD graduates will go on to be professors in Germany. And one of the best ways to increase your chances is to get a junior professorship that’s like something like 40% or maybe even like 70%.
There’s a lot of different numbers that of, of people who do the junior professorship become as a type of postdoc, become professors long term. The junior group leader is also a really good way to kind of get on that tenure track.
Otherwise, I would say the question is how far away is your postdoc topic from the non university job market. So if there is an application for what you’re doing and you think that you could find somebody in industry who would say, yeah, I could imagine that having like a real world use in the non academia world, right? They’re both real, I guess, but the non-academic world that I can go out into industry or in, in, you know, development work and say like, this is something that’s useful, then it’s okay. Then it’s no problem to go on and do a postdoc.
If your postdoc is taking you really far away from an applicable topic, so something that you can really see that somebody would quickly be able to understand, has an industrial application, has an application in NGO work, wherever it is, you see yourself working. That is where it becomes a challenge because the longer you stay in academia, the more employers will worry that you are not going to be able to feel comfortable and be able to adjust to the industrial job market, the values of the industry, which are really different, right?
In industry it’s about making money or maybe even not even just making money, but like creating something with a value, right? So in help and aid work. We’re not talking about like these academic discussions. We’re talking about what can we actually do right now?
And sometimes in aid work, for example, or in development work, the thing you end up doing is not really something that academics would jump in and do. They’d say, oh, we really need to talk about that first, because there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of sides. I’m an anthropologist from my background, so I would say, you know, there’s a really big disconnect between what applied anthropologists are doing in aid work and what anthropologists and academia are writing about. They’re not always, I mean, sometimes they are close, but they’re often very far apart, right? And so if you have these postdocs that are really far away, that becomes a challenge. And so I would really look and see, is my postdoc taking me in the right direction?
And another thing you can think about is you can look for a postdoc in industry or, you know, an industry is not just industry like pharma. It’s also all that NGO and aid work. You can look for a postdoc in what is we call academia adjacent worlds, right? So in science management and civil service. You can also do what I like to call a DIY postdoc, or you find your own funding and then you find an industry partner or you know an NGO partner that you want to work with.
There’s a funding database in Germany. There’s a lot of funding out there. You can look and see if you can find something and you can make a match. And those, those are strategies that will let you stay in academia a little longer.
But if you’re gonna do that, you really, really need to make sure that you’re also building those hands-on skills. So you wanna get involved in other stuff. One example that we have here in the university that I didn’t mention before, is the career day from the Humboldt Graduate School. And that happens every year in February, you can actually get involved and there’s another conference called Incredible Research, which is through the Charité, but again it’s BUA so you all can get involved, right?
And those two events are student organized conferences on different topics. And so getting involved in that is a really good way of building hands-on skills. And, you know, you just show up and you get a lot of support. And I mean, those are really great ways in the career day. Also lets you explore more about careers. So that’s a pretty good, pretty good place for you to be.

That’s very good and wise. Thanks a lot for that. Actually, I would like to talk to you about the „Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz“ (German Act on Fixed-Term Scientific Contracts) as well, because especially for people who feel like they wanna stay longer at university, this will be important at one point.
Amanda, could you enlighten me and my listeners? What’s the „Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz“ and why does it matter? Why is it so important?


So this is, I think, like very unique to Germany. I mean, there are other countries that have something similar, but so in Germany, the German government doesn’t want you to be in a temporary contract.
They think temporary contracts are bad. And the reason for that is basically all these insurance, like maternity leave, health insurance, long-term care injury insurance, unemployment insurance are all paid by the employer. So when people in Germany are on unemployment one (AGL 1), as we would call it their unemployer paid insurance and the government would prefer that nobody ends up on unemployment two (AGL 2) or what you may have heard of as Hartz IV, right? Because it’s not so great, the government has to then pay for it, right? So the first one is paid by the insurance employer. And the idea is they don’t want anyone on temporary contracts, except they’ve made an exception for a couple of things.
And one of the things that they’ve made an exception for is science. So basically the government has said science, it’s okay. Temporary contracts are okay, but you only have a certain amount of time. And right now, and this is gonna change, they’re discussing the change. But right now you have six years before you finish your PhD. And six years after, and that’s cumulative. Not like the clock starts today, but adding up all the time that you worked in a certain type of job.
And so a lot of the jobs in academia especially the postdoc positions a large, large, large portion of those jobs are „Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz“. So, that means that they fall under this category of jobs and you only have six years and sometimes you can borrow, and if you have kids, it’s longer and there’s like all this stuff that you can do. So what we would recommend is if you’re worried about it, you’re not sure and, and you haven’t finished your PhD, but you’re about to, each employer who is employing you under this kind of law, this exception, they will tell you how much time you have left.
So you can ask them. And again, right now, the clock resets when you finish your PhD most of the time. So you can ask them like, how many, you know, years do I have left? And why is this important? Because basically if you don’t get to tenure track before you run out of time, it makes it very, very difficult because, and again, it depends on the job, it depends on the type of funding.
It’s way too complicated to explain like you know, in a short podcast. But there are positions out there that are science positions that are funded in a way that doesn’t impact this. But a lot of them do use this type of exceptions. So that means you really only have, I would say like, those six working years, once you complete your, your PhD.
If you run out of that time, then you can’t take another postdoc, and that makes it really, really hard for you to, to kind of make that jump to tenure track because those pre-tenure, like the, you know junior professor, the junior research group leader, all of that is usually on this contract.
So if you don’t have any time left, you won’t be able to take on that job. And what we usually tell people to do is if you, if you run out of time and you wanna stay in academia, you have to go abroad. So there’s always kind of this loophole. You can just leave. It doesn’t count. Work done abroad is not part of this this exception.
But it’s just important to keep that in mind because if you’re not aware of it and you run out of time and you really wanna stay in academia, yes, you can go abroad, but we want you to be able to make that decision yourself and not have that decision made for you. And so being aware of it can make you give you permission to make your own decisions.

So that’s definitely something you wanna consider, especially if you wanna stay in academia. Amanda, is there anything important that we haven’t discussed yet? Is there anything you would like to add?


Maybe one thing. I think it’s really, really important that you sit down as early as you can. Give yourself the gift of the time that you will invest in your own career planning. Even if you have no idea what you’re gonna do, just like make a deal with yourself and say, I’m gonna take some time for me. You deserve this. Like this is your time. Even if you don’t know what you wanna do and you’re not sure where you’re gonna go.
Giving yourself permission to maybe take like half an hour a week or maybe you’re closer to the end of your PhD. Take a little more time. Take like an hour, set yourself some time aside and really spend some time on yourself and don’t wait until it’s done. Don’t wait until you’re finished.
Cause a lot of people mistake or they mix up career planning with applications, those are two different things. So applying for a job, that’s one thing, but deciding what you wanna do, that’s actually like a completely different project. And so give yourself time to spend on yourself and like end up thinking about, you know, what do you wanna do, where do you wanna go?
And you might say, oh, that feels so overwhelming, I don’t wanna do it. But the earlier you start and the more time you give yourself, the less scary it becomes because you can break it down to tiny pieces and you can say, today I’m just gonna start by making a mind map of all the things that you think you might wanna do.
And then start from there and like, learn about those things. Talk to people who are working in the field and the more time that you have, the more likely you are to be able to use the time while you’re still a student to like, take advantage of the university offerings or go take a class or build some soft skills or, you know, sit in on a, a lecture on something that you might need. You can do all this stuff because while you’re a student, you have access once you’re not a student anymore your access is much more limited.
And so we would really recommend I would recommend everyone that I work with recommends take the time for yourself. Give yourself that, that gift, gift of time which just for you where you’re focusing on yourself and what you wanna do.

Amanda, thank you very much for your gift of time. Thank you very much for this interview filled with facts, with information, and with great advice and thank you.

Outro

Hello again, dear listeners. I hope you enjoyed the interview with Amanda Wichert as much as I did. Remember to explore the resources mentioned during our conversation.
For your convenience you find all of them on our episode’s website together with a transcript of our discussion in case you want to revisit certain parts of the interview. Wishing you a great date and until next time.

This interview was conducted by the co-host of our podcast Dr. Marlies Klamt