Empower your PhD: stimulating adaptability and self-management of personal and career development in PhD candidates

For contemporary PhD candidates it is becoming increasingly difficult to anticipate and prepare for their future career. One solution for the university is to help PhD candidates by stimulating them to develop skills for engaging in and steering their career trajectories, the so-called career competencies. Evidence-based practices for stimulating the development of these skills are scarce in current PhD programs but desirable in order to fully reap the benefits of what the university already has to offer in terms of PhD policy and training. This study was set out to examine how career competencies can be developed within the PhD trajectory. Specifi- cally, the present study evaluated the efficacy of three career competencies programs using interventions that are readily available within University Leiden, but not offered as standard practice. In a randomized study, 111 PhD candidates from University Leiden received one of the three programs: 1. Self-assessment of PhD competencies alone; 2. Self-assessment of PhD competencies + personal coaching or 3. Self-assessment of PhD competencies + peer group intervention. Career competencies were measured via a survey administered at baseline and six months later. Results showed an overall increase in career competencies, suggesting that all programs showed positive results, even a simple self-assessment supports PhD candidates in devel- oping career competencies. The data further suggest a need in PhD candidates for using a self- assessment tool periodically to support their development. Although the self-assessment tool by itself already shows a positive effect in helping PhD candidates to work on their develop- ment, additional coaching and peer group intervention is superior to the tool only in providing the PhD candidates with relevant skills to grow. Specifically, while the tool primarily helps PhD candidates to apply self-reflection and identify and categorize relevant competences that are transferable to academic and non-academic careers, the skills learnt with additional coaching and peer group intervention help with a deeper reflection process and concretizing goals next to skills that are also important for sustaining and maintaining success.