Workshop | Successful Applications Beyond Academia: CV & Cover Letter Training

Successful Applications Beyond Academia: CV & Cover Letter Training

Trainer: Dr. Maria Grazia Annunziata from Potsdam Science Park

Are you a PhD candidate or postdoc thinking about a career in industry? This hands-on workshop helps you build application documents that work outside academia. You will work with real job advertisements and receive individual feedback on your own CV and cover letter.

What you will take away

• How to tailor your application to a specific job ad
• What recruiters in the life sciences are looking for, including the hidden signals in an application
• Practical feedback on your own materials, and shared learning from the whole group's examples
• The key differences between academic and industry CVs and cover letters

How it works
The workshop is built around your own application documents. About six weeks before the session, you receive two sample job advertisements (one wet lab, one bioinformatics, both in the plant sciences) and a short application guide covering how to structure an industry CV, how to write a targeted cover letter, and the common mistakes to avoid. You then prepare a tailored CV and cover letter, in a small team of 2-3 people. Groups will be formed after registration closes. Up to twelve sets of documents will be submitted to the trainer at least three weeks in advance. All documents are reviewed beforehand, so the live workshop is based on real examples from the group.

The workshop in four parts

• A short input session on what sets industry applications apart and what recruiters look for
• A case-based feedback session on anonymized CVs and cover letters from the group
• Practical tips on structure, clarity, impact, and the hidden signals in an application
• An open Q&A for your individual questions

Trainer
Dr. Maria Grazia Annunziata (Standortmanagement Golm, Potsdam Science Park) is a plant biologist and a former postdoc at the MPI of Molecular Plant Physiology and the University of Potsdam. She is an official YES (Young Entrepreneurs in Science) trainer and talent scout, connecting scientists with companies.

Please register here by 24 July 2026: www.uni-potsdam.de/en/ppp/summer-school-2026/registration-workshop-cv-cover-letter

Only for CRC 1644 members!