About Us

The Career Service is a service facility of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and arts and serves as a bridge between the university, organizations and companies.

In this function, it supports "[...] students and graduates along the academic life cycle in developing professional goals and employment-relevant skills and in being able to take up level-appropriate employment after a successful university degree." (csnd 2018: Bremen Declaration; translated).

In 2011, the german Hochschulrektorenkonferenz highlighted three areas of responsibility for career services:

• Information and advice
• Improving the exchange between teaching and the world of work
• Contact management and placement

The Career Service takes these tasks into account with its portfolio and adapts it as required. In cooperation with companies, organizations and associations, our aim is to bring about and support satisfactory cooperation for both students and external partners. The Career Service sees itself primarily as a representative of students' interests.

Guidance and Coaching for students and alumni in the Career Service is based on the standards of openness to results, solution orientation, confidentiality, transparency and person-centeredness. It is voluntary and free of charge.

In detail, this means

We advise you with regard to your concerns in an open-ended manner, i.e. we support you in developping strategies for action, provide you with information and, if necessary, refer you to suitable sources of research in order to support you in making independent decisions regarding your professional orientation and development.

All counseling sessions at the Career Service are confidential. Unless you expressly request us to do so, we will not pass on any information that you give us during the consultation to third parties.

Our aim is always to provide advice as transparently as possible, i.e. as comprehensibly as possible, and to refer you to the appropriate authorities if we do not have the necessary expertise or knowledge to deal with your concerns.

Our work focuses on supporting students and alumni in their professional orientation and career planning, helping them to recognize, acquire and strengthen skills, supporting application processes and preparing them for personnel selection procedures. It is essential to focus on the person seeking advice and to take their interests, skills, attitudes, life circumstances and needs into account.

The Career Service is also the point of contact for companies, organizations and associations with regard to university marketing opportunities and specific recruitment at the TH OWL. The Career Service acts in an advisory capacity and, if necessary, consults with experts in the departments and other internal university institutions.

In our cooperation with external partners we adhere to the following standards:

• Independence from companies, organizations and associations
• Cooperation should be designed for the long term
• Visibility of start-ups, SMEs and large companies alike
• Focus on the acquisition of skills by students and alumni: We expressly welcome the support of our seminar programme by companies, organizations and associations that take the above guiding principles into account with their commitment.

Career Services exist in many countries all around the world. However, the services they offer sometimes differ considerably from one another. It sometimes happens that students who have already had experience with career services transfer the expectations they have formed in the course of this experience to other career service institutions, which can result in them either being very pleasantly surprised or their expectations being disappointed. In order to create the greatest possible transparency, we would like to inform you here about what you can and cannot expect from us.

What we can do

We provide students and TH OWL alumni registered in the alumni network with a wide range of resources to support them in their professional orientation and career planning as well as their employability through high-quality services.

Our services are free of charge and include

• Open-ended, person-centered - i.e. oriented towards your professional wishes and values - career advice in the form of individual consultations and individual coaching sessions, in which we work with you to develop action and solution strategies.
• Confidentiality with regard to the content of counseling and coaching. Unless you expressly request us to do so, we will not pass on any information that you provide to us in the course of consultations and coaching sessions to third parties.
• A range of events, including workshops on the preparation of application documents, skills assessment or preparation for job interviews.P
• Provision of an online career portal, through which you have access
  • to our university job board, where you can search for vacancies (internships, working students, trainees, career entry) for students and graduates;
  • to the appointments module, where you can easily book appointments with Career Services staff;
  • to the company module, which you can use to find information about regional and national companies;
  • to reports on experiences that students have had with companies in the course of internships etc;
  • to the event module, where you can register for all career events (workshops, lectures, company events) organized by the Career Service;
  • to downloads, templates and information on all aspects of career planning and career entry, which are regularly expanded and updated by the Career Service.

What we cannot do for you

• We do not place you in jobs. We will be happy to advise you on your individual job search and support you regarding you orientation, but we cannot place you directly in a company/position or write applications on your behalf.
• We do not have the capacity to translate applications.
• We cannot provide legally binding information on questions relating to residence law and/or work permits or offer any related services. Please contact the foreigners authority responsible for you regarding these questions.