Laurence is an entrepreneur passionate about career development for PhDs. We spoke with her about her journey from a PhD in ant biodiversity to co-founding and directing the Benelux Office of Adoc Talent Management. In this interview, she reflects on her career path and shares valuable advice for early-career researchers. Read on for insights and inspiration.

Your career took you on a really interesting path. How did you make the initial step outside academia and then progress to your current role?

It was step by step. After my thesis, I stayed three years more in the university to work on scientific communication projects. I was still in contact with researchers, but also with young people in secondary school.

Then, my boss at that time gave me a job offer to become the director of Focus Research. Focus Research is an association dedicated to researchers. Specifically, the first goal of the association is a valorization of the doctorate.

At Focus Research, one focus was to manage projects funded by Walloon region and European grants. I started with an existing project, where I had to jump in and make the follow up, develop my network with the contact point in each university we were collaborating with. We developed the first training program for PhDs and research staff on career development questions and skill development issues as well.

I learned by doing and we also put creativity a lot in the work we have done by proposing and testing new topics and seeing if it matches well to the interest and the needs of the researchers.

I also followed coaching training to become a coach, and I accompanied a lot of people individually on personal and specific questions.

And the last aspect there was also creating and developing events. So, the main goal was definitely to organize meeting between researchers, companies, associations, and representative of society on a large scale.

And how did you then move into your current role?

In 2018, after 10 years at Focus Research developing coaching and training for PhDs, I was thinking about the fact that in Belgium, we didn’t have any specific consultancy firms specialized in the recruitment of PhD holders. After thinking about it and having the idea, I decided, after about two years, that maybe it’s me who should do that. I had then the chance to meet Amandine Bugnicourt and Matthieu Lafon, directors of the French branch of Adoc Talent Management. And we discussed creating the Belgian branch together.

My current role still focuses on supporting and companying PhDs and research staff on career development questions. But at Adoc, we also accompany candidates and employers to help them recruit the best profile. So, I have added recruitment itself to my tasks and activities.

So we can say that, my career was built around researchers – and I changed from the ants to people.

In those roles, what were the skills that were most essential for you?

There are quite a few:

• the capacity to learn many different things,
• curiosity,
• the capacity to manage projects,
• and networking was also really essential.

And I think it’s not specifically linked to my research activities, but maybe my personality is that I am really comfortable and at ease with people, and have a lot of initiative.

Those are the main skills that come into my mind.

And were there particular activities or training that you did to develop those skills or was it just learning by doing?

Both, by doing, but I also have followed certain specific training. In particular around, coaching, and techniques we use in coaching such as nonviolent communication, active listening, tricks to accompany and face different situations we can have in coaching or training.

Are there particular skills that became more important as you’ve become more senior and leading your own agency?

We are still developing, we learn all our life, and becoming an entrepreneur pushed me a little bit outside of my comfort zone. It’s more responsibilities, so managing stress, it’s something we need to learn and develop.  Resilience, I think is really something we learn during research. And I use this resilience all my life and this is really precious. Additionally, self-organization, self-discipline is again more and more required as you become more senior. In project and people management, I also still develop new aspects.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

Oh, for me, it’s always helping people. For any kind of task or activity we have: for the recruitment it is helping candidates, but helping recruiters to find the right person. It is a beautiful story of collaboration. I really like to be the bridge between people and regarding training and coaching, I always enjoy sharing experience, discussing with people. I learn from people all the time and I really, really like this. I also regularly get good feedback from people, which is something that nourishes me and makes my day.

And what are the aspects you find most challenging?

From university to associations and then companies – the realities, the objective are not the same. I really like to develop these activities and make money, hire people in the company, offering jobs myself this is really valuable. But in companies, the market change, is really difficult to anticipate. We read a lot of news and regularly conduct studies on the economy, but it’s not easy to anticipate all the time. And in recruitment, we can say that anything can happen at any time. A candidate very, very well advanced in the process can change his or her mind, the client as well. So, you know, a lot of issues we need to solve. In a way, I like it, and sometimes it’s difficult.  Sometimes we would like something easy.

Adoc has a really interesting mix of different activities, working as recruiters, offering training, and developing knowledge of the job landscape. Based on that, do you have advice for scientists on building a career based on your experience that you’d like to share with the readers?

Yes, certainly. Developing a network in and outside of academia very soon is really key. Not staying only with the nose in the research, without connecting with other people. That is really important.

Working regularly on ourselves to make a brief assessment of where we are, what we have developed, and where we would like to go with different options in mind can also help a lot.

So, to summarize: being open to others and regularly reflecting on our own development.

If someone’s really inspired by your career journey and wants to go into entrepreneurship or recruiting, is there’s specific advice you’d like to share with them?

Well, for entrepreneurship, they probably have some opportunity to follow training on the topics. So, my first advice is definitely knowing a little bit more about what means entrepreneurial journey. EIC, the European Innovation Council, has a huge website with a lot of information also on entrepreneurial journey and different stories about PhDs that made that jump from academia to creating a company. I think this can be interesting for those interested in entrepreneurship. Adoc is involved in the EIC Pathfinder, as a coach for entrepreneurs at European level, for DeepTech in the project Tech to Market.

The second is networking. We learn by meeting other people and by discussing with a lot of different kinds of entrepreneurs. Participating in networking events on entrepreneurship is a very first easy. This can help check if it can be a good journey for the person or not. And then to become an entrepreneur, it’s a question of willing first, more than skill directly. We can develop the skills needed or we find other people to complete ourselves in the team, if we have the motivation.

And for recruitment?

For recruitment, we recruit PhDs who demonstrate a motivation to go for the job. We are not expecting an HR background. We train them with the different tools and the process when they start. And the team at Adoc is a mix between PhDs and HR professionals so we develop our expertise on both profiles. To join, you should demonstrate that recruitment is really something you want to do, that you have a good feeling with people, and that you have good communication skills. Other kinds of activities you have done that can prove that you have the capacity to manage meetings and interviews will, of course, be an added value. But we do not need specific training besides the PhD for this. And certain R&D companies can be very interested in the PhD profile for their recruitment teams.

And for researchers who are interested in working in, for example, R&D – and see that there are recruiters like you hiring for roles in that area. How can they be visible to you and other recruiters? And how can they work with you?

Through LinkedIn. I would say it’s still the best place to meet recruiter companies. That’s where we are. At Adoc, we are really active in finding and sourcing candidates, as we say in the jargon of recruiters. We look for candidates mainly through social media – LinkedIn, or other platforms. This is where PhDs can connect with recruiters and understand a little bit more about what they do concretely.

If they do connect with recruiters or they follow employers, one message is that when you communicate, you need to be very clear and show a real reflected motivation. You can have several career paths in mind. That’s perfectly fine. But being balanced between open-minded but also clear about what you are searching for is important.

If you are completely lost, definitely start by making skill assessments and clarify first what can match your personality and the things you like.

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Laurence can be found on LinkedIn here.