Since its launch in 2017, the aim of the Talent Center has been to encourage and support early career researchers, especially postdoctoral researchers, in a pro-active management of their (future) careers. However, to feel empowered to take charge of your own career and feel self-confident in your career development process, one of the most important resources is a strong network, to feel like you’re not on your own. At the same time, especially in these self-isolating corona times, we notice that this is one of the toughest challenges for many early career researchers.
And how to start building a strong network when you can’t even meet your own colleagues in person anymore?
To address this, we started a virtual Postdoc Community. We launched communities on both Facebook and LinkedIn. The main purpose of these communities is to create a platform for all postdoctoral researchers at the University of Antwerp, on which we hope to facilitate the exchange of ideas, interesting events, and tips and tricks on how to manage a career in- or outside academia.
Big success
All postdocs were warmly invited through mail and LinkedIn and with success: after only six days we welcomed 100+ researchers to our LinkedIn-community, while 65+ colleagues joined our community on Facebook.
Networking and exchanging ideas
After a brief survey, it became clear that most postdocs wanted to join the community to get opportunities to network with other postdocs and get tips on how to find positions in- and/ or outside academia. On top of that, it was often mentioned that they would like to hear about the experiences of other postdoctoral researchers at our university, discuss career trajectories and exchange ideas on how to tackle the struggles associated with working as a postdoc.
Once we can leave our homes again, we hope to make a quick start with the Talent Center activities with a strong(er) community feeling.
Take a look at some of our first posts on both platforms: