Career Development
Starring at the Sun
The summer is over for a long time now, yet, I’m in a mood to bring some memories from this summer. Of course, it wasn’t a typical summertime but rather, quite an unusual one. It’s hard to neglect that the corona crisis changed the landscape of what you can or...
Read MoreHow to (De)motivate an Employee?
Can a raise in salary infuriate an employee? Yes, it can. Especially if that employee is an ambitious person with a PhD. And it’s all about the timing.
Read MoreCome on, Ladies!
As we all know, women don’t have an easy time in their professional lives. However, while working with lots of people in pursuit of improving their situation in the job market, I noticed that some women also involuntarily make their situation in the job market even harder than it already...
Read MoreHow I Fail
This blog post is a recording from an interview I did for Veronika Cheplygina's blog series "How I Fail." It's all about the mindset and personal strategies that helped me in getting over hardship and difficulties—both in academia and in industry. Most of these strategies, I learned by trial and...
Read MoreShould you consider working as a career advisor?
Sep 11, 2020 | Should you consider working as a career advisor? Some time ago I wrote about the bright sides of working as a career advisor in the blog post entitled “Affection.“ What a crazy ride this is! So many turns and unexpected events down the line, and so...
Read MoreAll the online resources for PhDs in transition to industry
The space of online resources for PhDs thinking of transitioning to industry is massive! This blog post lists courses, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, content platforms, and online communities dedicated to helping PhDs in the job market.
Read MoreCan you marry research with entrepreneurship?
Living a double life between entrepreneurship and academic research is not easy. This blog post reviews the reasons why this is so, and ideas for how you might nevertheless succeed in balancing on the edge of the two worlds.
Read MoreWhat you should know before starting a PhD
This blog post is dedicated to Master students who are at the end of their Master’s programs, and consider going to grad school. What are the pros and cons of going for the academic career, as compared to starting an industry job? What is the best motivation to start a...
Read MoreSafety vs freedom: the landscape of post-PhD careers
In this blog post, Natalia Bielczyk and Elisenda Bonet-Carne discuss the similarities and differences between different post-PhD career tracks. There is a whole landscape of possibilities!
Read MoreWhy is it cool to work as a career advisor?
The past few weeks were quite interesting — I had some strange symptoms. I lost a lot of weight, I was often blushing, I was putting on loud Tiësto music and jumping around my garage like a maniac and bumping into things (to such an extent that I was getting...
Read MoreThe jobs of the future
It’s not a secret that both the Millennials and the Z-generation are vision- or mission-oriented. Young people are no longer looking for a paycheck in their jobs, but also a broader purpose (or, from Japanese, ikigai). This can have really interesting long-term consequences for the job market. In particular, one...
Read MoreHow would you like (them) to feel
Interviewing people with interesting (and difficult!) career paths and rare professions, yields interesting conclusions. Namely, these people they tend to share one interesting characteristic: from a very early age, they know what role towards other people they would prefer to play.
Read MoreA wrinkle in time
Recently, I was invited to record a podcast for the PhD Career Stories series. The point of this episode, was to explain how I found myself in the place I am in right now, both career-wise and mentally. This is always an interesting question as most people—including me—are rather poor...
Read MoreThe millennial curse
Is this me, or is this my millennial brain? I am asking myself this question a lot these days.
Read MorePeople is the answer
It’s been a long road up to this point, since I left my parents’ place at the age of 18. But, when I look back at the past 15 years, I some some patterns clearly, coming over over again. First of all, I see that there is only one asset...
Read MoreThese dark hours
The peak is so close; glowing somewhere on the horizon, yet looking like a fata morgana - step after step, and you do not feel like you are coming any closer. I felt exactly the same way while approaching the peak of Kilimanjaro in 2013. I am making this last...
Read MoreReal choices, fake choices
At some point I realised that the decision on whether or not to stay in academia - or in other words, whether to do research or focus on commercial projects instead - is not the real choice I need to make right now. In fact, the real choice is: how...
Read More15 years later
I spent Christmas among family and friends quite as every time before. However, this time, I also had a few afterthoughts as there are some examples of common knowledge that stroke me really hard. You might hear some simple truths from your parents and teachers over and over again -...
Read MoreThe gap year – vol. 2
In August this year, I wrote a compilation of seven things I had learned from having a gap year. Funny thing is: the gap year was only halfway back then. Now, when it slowly comes to the end, I can easily add yet another seven things I learned since then....
Read MoreThe Tangle Approach
I was recently recommended to read the book by Emilie Wapnick ‘How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up' (2017), dedicated to the concept of multipotentiality. In the book, Emilie refers to her own experience as a...
Read MoreMission: Impossible
How to predict the future? That’s the whole difficulty when it comes to making any choices, from choosing the right studies, through choosing the right friends, choosing the right investments, to choosing the right projects at work. A mundane, typical scientist (such as me) can produce one, two, sometimes three...
Read MoreThe gap year
As Confucius famously said, choose the job that you love - and you will not need to work for a lifetime. However, this is all not that simple. As a matter of fact, the school system (or at least Polish school system), kills a lot of natural talents: knowledge served...
Read MoreTaking risks as a path to safety
In the famous riddle, you are supposed to connect all the dots with four straight lines. You can sweat and try as long as you like but you will always be just one line short from connecting all of them. Unless you look outside the box, and make yourself space...
Read MoreArtists and craftsmen
Researchers have their personal styles of working, and some of them are more like craftsmen, whereas others are more like artists. And the irony is: in order to produce a novel scientific study and publish it well, you need to be an artist, but you also need to be a...
Read MoreTo read or not to read
‘Yes, people do become successful after reading motivational books but the thing that made them succeed is the same thing that had driven them to read the motivational book in the first place - The desire to succeed.’
Read MorePassive income
Passive income became a popular key term over past few years. It comprises all the possible ways of making money which you initiate and then can let go, so that the money, in a word, keeps on producing itself. Most of the time, passive income relates to online activities, such...
Read MoreCompetitiveness
What does the competitiveness come from? It is not a very prominent feature of the Dutch society - this society is more about equity and cooperation. No wonder: once you look at the educational program at the Dutch primary schools, the first class they ever have is ‘working in teams’....
Read MoreLuck
The popular belief is that people who perceive themselves as successful and lucky, are those who just take opportunities – notice the money lying on the street and take it. Or, those who interpret some events as lucky whereas others would rather perceive the same events as unlucky. For instance,...
Read MoreWhat do successful people say
Singers, sportsmen, writers, famous bloggers and motivational speakers, Noblists, inventors, enterpreneurs and famous CEOs. All these people think shockingly similar about the rules for success.
Read More