NTNUs PhD education maintains high international standards. Our candidates find relevant jobs and are highly attractive for by employers outside of academia. However, it is not always easy to look beyond the in-deph scientific knowledge and skills that one gains or has gained as part of the PhD trajectory. PhD candidates, postdocs as well as potential future employers sometimes struggle to see the broader personal development and the set of skills and competences that one gains and trains during the PhD education. Hence, we would like to raise awareness of important personal as well as transferable skills developed during a PhD in this conference.

The goal of the conference was to look 

– towards the working life outside academia – how may an employee with a PhD contribute to development?

• Raise awareness of the benefit of a doctoral degree in all sectors of working life.
• Strengthen the reputation of our PhDs as highly relevant to society.
• Help PhDs improve their ability to market their expertise and the advantage of a doctoral degree over a first degree

– towards the PhD candidate and the post doc – what can you offer to a future employer?

• Help to boost recruitment of PhDs in the job market through increased insight into the benefit of a doctoral degree.
• Increase PhDs’ awareness of their own skills, what they can bring to the workplace and the challenges they can help solve.

– to Interdisciplinary networking.

• Be a place where postdocs and PhD’s can meet colleagues from other disciplines
• Build networks between job seekers/potential future employees and employers from the public and private sector