Doctoral course - Career skills for scientists
Learn more about career options for PhDs and increase your awareness about all the transferable skills you obtain during your doctoral education.
The course includes reflections over what career options that exist and sessions where academic and non-academic careers paths and entrepreneurial options are presented and discussed. In addition, the course includes the process and steps in a job application procedure, networking practice and gives you the possibility to use your communication skills in various contexts.
Informational Interviews & Career Portraits
As part of the course, doctoral students conduct informational interviews with researchers from different sectors and may turn these conversations into career portraits for the KI Researcher Blog. Here are some examples from the previous course:
Course Structure and Schedule
The course is organized in person. As always it is spread over multiple weeks, and equivalent to 1 week full time (40h).
The course runs over 8 weeks and is built up as follows:
August 18th – September 17th
- 10 sessions in-person sessions, five weeks in total.
- The time of the course is from 10.00-12.00 every Tuesday and Thursday, including private study (total +- 6h/week).
September 22nd – October 1st
- 2 weeks of individual exam preparation (total +- 4h/week).
October 6th – October 8th
- 1 week of exam presentations in smaller groups (+- 2h)
A more detailed schedule will be available to course participants on the course web (Canvas).
Application
The next course occasion is Autumn 2026, for which applications are open from 15 April to 5 May 2026.
Here is a direct link to the course in the doctoral course catalogue, where you can read more details on the content of this course.
Also, have a look at the Important when applying for doctoral courses info.
Internship Program
Career Service organizes an Internship Program for KI doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. It is important to note that the internship program is only available to doctoral students currently enrolled at KI. However, all course students are welcome to participate in networking activities related to the internship programs, including mingling and informative webinars. More info is on the page dedicated to the doctoral students internship.