Rarely does a university degree programme completely correlate with real-world occupations. Therefore, it is almost always necessary to present the students' desired occupation in concrete terms and transfer academic qualification to professional practice.

The courses offered in this competence area help students develop an individual professional profile, establish contacts to potential employers and optimise the application process. In this learning and reflection process, academic orientation is placed in relation to other important aspects, such as personality, life planning, value placement, labour market developments and career trends. In addition to preparing students for the transition from university to professional life, this focus on one's personal career and the perspectives of working life forms a solid foundation for actively shaping one's future professional-biographical development in the longer term.

In the courses offered in the area of "Career Preparation and Practical Competence" in General Studies, students acquire the following skills:

• They develop the ability to confidently identify and assess qualifications, personal prerequisites and individual objectives (reflection).
• They learn to make decisions and find viable compromises that reconcile their personal goals with the dynamics of professional life (decision-making).
• They assess how their qualifications, which they have gained during their programme, can be applied to concrete problems and issues in the working world (transferral).
• They gain experience in researching, selecting and evaluating information concerning the labour market and the professional field (information gathering).
• They learn to present themselves in the application process in an argumentatively convincing, target-group specific and linguistically precise manner both in written and oral forms.
• They receive the chance to establish contacts to employers which they can use to build a long-term professional network.
• They acquire interdisciplinary skills for professional life, e.g. in the areas of IT applications, presentations, project management and time management.

The thematic scope of the programme corresponds to the various course forms, e.g. information presented in short lectures, supervised project work in case studies,  visits to potential employers and individual reflection in workshops. The course forms have one key characteristic in common, namely the interdisciplinary composition of the participant groups which allows for diverse points of view and occasions for reflection. The students' interest and willingness to explore individual issues are absolutely essential for gaining personal insights and achieving learning progress in this competence area. The classroom-based instruction is supplemented in part by e-learning elements.

Responsible for the area of competence: Andreas Eimer, M.A. MSc (Careers Service)
Participating faculties and institutes: Innovation Office (AFO), Careers Service, FB 04, FB 06, FB 08, FB 09, FB 10, FB 14,  Writing-Reading Centre, CIT (Center for Information Technology), Centre for Dutch Studies (ZNS)