The Path to Professorship
For many researchers, an appointment to a professorship is the career goal – and at the same time one of the least transparent selection processes in academia. The same patterns keep showing up in coaching practice: the research vision stays vague. Strategic work on professorship readiness starts too late. The application runs "on the side," squeezed between research, teaching, and grant proposals – which often makes the path longer, because more attempts become necessary. And anyone who doesn't fully understand the process ends up writing materials that miss their real audience: the appointment committee.
The workshop works on both levers – the long-term, strategic development of your professorship readiness, and concrete preparation for the application and appointment process. It's aimed at postdocs at any stage, those pursuing a Habilitation (the postdoctoral qualification that traditionally leads to a professorship in the German system), and junior professors and professors applying for a new professorship. When your own process is concretely underway, preparation can go deeper in small groups or individual coaching – from a dress rehearsal for your job talk to negotiation preparation.
Whether a professorship is the right path – and what alternatives exist inside and outside academia – is explored in the Career Paths workshop. This page is the deep dive for anyone who wants to pursue this particular path.
Content
The workshop content is conveyed through short input sessions, individual and group work, and work on your own situation: every participant leaves the workshop with a realistic assessment of their own professorship readiness and a personal development plan for the next steps.
- Understanding professorship readiness: criteria and expectations of appointment committees
- Strategic profile development: publications, external funding, teaching, visibility – early rather than in hindsight
- Sharpening your research vision and articulating it convincingly
- Application planning: choosing positions, timing, treating the application as a project
- Understanding the appointment process: procedure, actors, decision logic
- Application materials: tailoring your cover letter, CV, and research and teaching concept to the target committee
- The job talk and teaching demonstration: structuring your talk for a mixed audience
- The committee interview: typical questions, composed answers
- After the offer: appointment negotiations and the starting phase
Nach dem Workshop können die Teilnehmenden …
- Assess your own professorship readiness realistically and derive a strategic development plan from it
- Sharpen your research vision and carry it as a throughline across your profile and application
- Understand the appointment process, its actors, and its decision logic
- Tailor applications precisely to the posting and the committee instead of sending standard documents
- Plan your application phase as a project with a clear focus instead of running it on the side
Key Facts
Duration & Format
Audience
Group Size
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Interested?
- Tailored: Every format is customized to your context – from methodology to scheduling
- Practical: Grounded in academia, field-tested, and immediately applicable in everyday research
- Efficient: Clear structures and methods deliver fast results
- Sustainable: Materials and transfer tasks secure the learning effect long-term
- Motivating: Interactive formats boost engagement and team spirit