'Is it a struggle to provide effective career development support for your PhD students and postdocs?'

  • Have you found it hard to get training initiatives off the ground and had disappointing take-up because people are too busy to attend?
  • Would training in career planning and pathways help give your emerging researchers greater direction, momentum and motivation?
  • Could your researchers benefit from developing their skills in managing time, people and projects effectively, improving productivity and increasing funding for their research groups?

The context for researcher training

Research productivity and quality of output depend on effective training that gives researchers the direction, capability and motivation to work to their full potential. The impact of relevant, focused training in terms of improved skills, accelerated career progress and higher morale, is also an important factor in attracting and retaining the best researchers in the highly competitive global research arena.

PostdocTraining workshop at Lund University

Training for researchers: essential but it can be challenging to provide

At the same time, the situation of PhD students and early career researchers in academia internationally is one of insecure employment and uncertain career direction. Short-term contracts, an over-supply of postdocs competing for positions in academia globally and a tough research funding climate are all major challenges. Researchers need abilities and confidence to deal with these challenges that are not typically developed during postgraduate studies.

Who are we... and what do we do?

PostdocTraining is a private training provider specialising in career development support for researchers. We offer a unique combination of online, on-demand training with group workshops and individual tuition, advice and mentoring.

The content, tools and interactive support in our programs have been created to give PhD students and early stage postdocs clarity about their options and career direction, and to develop skilled, effective researchers. We provide strategies, advice and tools that trainees can apply immediately in their roles to secure short- and longer-term results.

Our services aim to equip researchers to create well informed career plans with clear milestone goals; to compete successfully for projects, funding and positions; and to have the capacity and confidence to pursue high level careers in academia or beyond.

Approach and benefits

PostdocTraining's services offer the opportunity to reach large groups of researchers in a highly cost-effective manner, irrespective of diverse schedules and locations, but without losing the benefits of personal interaction. Beyond direct training outcomes, institutions find our programs also support greater cohesion amongst research staff, especially those with multiple facilities.

PostdocTraining's programs are fully out-sourced services that do not add to the burdens on staff at host institutions. The programs can be customised to include institute-specific content and branding. They can also be adjusted to cater for local preferences in terms of components, such as the amount of personal mentoring offered, and webinar training or workshop themes.

From the university admin perspective, it was remarkable how little effort and time we had to put into the programme. Having said this, the programme organisers were also flexible when it came to making adjustments according to our needs and preconditions.

We at Lund University made evaluations along the pilot programme [of Postdoc Career Success]. I've never seen responses like the ones we got - to see (almost feel) the motivation within a group of employees newly empowered, makes an HR person happy in a way that very few other things do!
"

Asa Thormahlen
International HR Officer, Lund University, Sweden

PostdocTraining's programs

Postdoc Career Success - a comprehensive package of support for the professional and personal development of researchers.

The program combines online training content with personal mentoring and career advice, and is specifically designed for early career researchers working full-time.

PostdocTraining partners with institutions to tailor Postdoc Career Success for larger groups of postdocs, while individual participants can also join up independently.


Career Control for Researchers - a focused career planning program to give postdocs and PhD students clarity about where to take their careers and map how they should focus their efforts to accelerate their progress.

Career Control combines on-line material and exercises with interactive components including webinars. The live events allow participants to ask direct questions, learn from specialists about strategies to support their career development, and share in their peers' experiences.


Training Workshops - PostdocTraining delivers workshops in various formats on-site at institutions internationally on topics such as career planning, navigating academic careers, productivity, transferrable skills, research leadership, and managing equality and diversity.

We tailor our sessions to cater for specific needs, from day-long, highly interactive facilitated workshops for small groups, to shorter 'direct training'-style events for larger groups.


Our service to you

We understand that if you choose to support your early career researchers using our programs you would like to be able to measure the benefits of your investment.

We survey all participants in all our programs and prepare reports for you on their feedback about training content and its impacts and outcomes, for you to use in institute reports and reviews, and for encouraging others to undertake professional development.

We can also tailor delivery at host institutions by supporting creation of self-sustaining researcher networks and peer mentoring groups, linked to the training we provide.

Contact us

If you would like to talk through options based on any of our services, please contact us directly on either kerstin@postdoctraining.com or stephen@postdoctraining.com. We will be delighted to answer your questions in person.