Career guidance with an international perspective

To this end, the Career Centre team offers a wide range of services, including counselling sessions, workshops, talks and networking opportunities with professionals from the industry. The aim is to give students an insight into different career fields and to support them in their individual career planning. “Ideally, young people should always have two or three career fields in mind,” says Dr Annette Retsch, Head of the Career Centre. The Career Centre therefore raises awareness of career-related issues at an early stage and regularly supplements its advisory services with events featuring experienced professionals.

The collaboration with the Federal Foreign Office fits perfectly within this remit: career-oriented events featuring experts from the professional world are a regular feature of the Career Centre’s programme and enable students to gain a practical understanding of abstract career fields. One example that illustrates how the Career Centre consistently takes a holistic approach throughout the “student life cycle” was the collaboration with the Federal Foreign Office and St. Ursula Grammar School in Würzburg. In the morning, 70 Year 11 pupils were given an insight into the work of the Federal Foreign Office, whilst in the afternoon, just under 30 university students took part in an interactive workshop.

The guest speaker was Dr Grothusen, whose career has spanned three continents and encompasses both academia and diplomacy. In his interactive workshop, he introduced the Federal Foreign Office to the participants as an employer and shared his experiences first-hand. With more than 225 diplomatic missions worldwide, the Federal Foreign Office represents Germany’s interests across the globe. Those who work there follow a unique career model: staff regularly alternate between domestic service in Berlin and postings at diplomatic missions abroad. As a result, many employees find themselves in new places of work and residence every three to four years. During the workshop, Dr Grothusen explained the tasks and structures of the Federal Foreign Office, the various career paths, and the two fundamental principles of the Foreign Service: rotation and global mobility. He also provided information on internship and trainee programme opportunities, as well as the requirements for applying.

The open and informal atmosphere of the discussion enabled participants to put their questions directly to the speaker and gain an authentic insight into day-to-day working life. Time and again, such formats also highlight skills that extend beyond individual professional fields – such as intercultural sensitivity, strong communication skills or the ability to adapt flexibly to new contexts. It is precisely these cross-disciplinary skills that the Career Centre specifically develops in its seminar programme and explores in particular depth through the Professional Skills Certificate. For the Career Centre, the event thus demonstrates once again the added value that interaction with professionals brings to career guidance – and how closely this interaction aligns with the Career Centre’s core mission of preparing students in a practical way for life after graduation.

The workshop was designed as a pilot project and is intended to provide inspiration for further formats. For the coming winter semester, the Career Centre is already planning to specifically involve previously untapped contacts from the faculties as well as personal networks, in order to provide students with even more insights into different career fields.

Suggestions for lecture topics and requests for collaboration for the coming semester can be sent to the Career Centre at any time.

The event, organised in collaboration with the Federal Foreign Office, is therefore directly in line with the Career Centre’s core mission of continuously developing career-oriented initiatives and firmly embedding them in everyday student life.