Hubert Detmer from the 'Deutscher Hochschulverband' started this session by providing a whole host of background information on the German professorial system. He started with the diffrent levels of professors, moved on to the general application process and then talked about the selection process at the universities. Finally, he described the negotiations that take place between candidate and university. Not much new information so far.

New to me was the information about what will be rquired from the successful candidate once the university has offered the position. The candidate needs to write two 'papers': a concept paper detailing the financial needs of the new lab and one explaining the financial expectations of the salary of the candidate.

Detmer told us about an example of successful dual career couple negotiations and then started to talk in plural. I think he's exaggerating the potential for such support. In my experience hardly any German university I interviewed at offered any dual career couple support.

One of the main messages of Detmer was that every university is different in terms of the details of the negotiations, which administrative officials are involved in it and which different stages the negotiations go through, etc.

Detmer provided a really interesting table showing the differences between the 'C' salaries and the new 'W' salaries. Differences range between 700€ and 2500€ per month less for a W professor compared to C professors. He explained that successful candidates should try to negotiate these differences as performance depended co-pay. On the whole, he told us, total professorial pay did not decrease in the transition from C to W, but the differences between different professors increased dramatically. The W span today is 45,000-240,000€ annually.

Manfred Nettekoven, chancellor of the RWTH Aachen, explained the process at his university. He emphasized that teamwork is becoming a much more important quality universities are looking for in applicants. The reason for these tendencies are the increasingly large groups of laboratories funded by German and European funding agencies.

In the Q&A session, Detmer answered a question about application coaching by saying that they charge 600€ for one course. In another question he answered that candidates are allowed to communicate with the committee. Indeed, the panelists emphasized that early and interested communications are expected and show the eagerness of a candidate to work in the chosen institute. Again, the topic of tenure-track came up. I heard for the first time that the legal prerequisites for tenure-track exist in all 16 German federal states. However, in reality, the number of W1 positions which become tenure-track positions is negligible. Another point that can be negotiated is how much teaching will be required for each professorship. The final question was about the right time point in a career to return to Germany: as a junior group leader or as a professor? The answer was that both work and there is no golden rule.