Advice for doctoral students
Application and appointment phase
If you want to become a professor, you have to fulfil certain formal requirements in addition to your personal achievements in research, teaching and third-party funding (see below).
You can apply for suitable advertisements, if you meet the requirements for a professorship.
If a call for applications fits your research profile particularly well, but you do not yet meet the hiring requirements 100 percent, an application could still be successful.
In this appointment phase, you will simultaneously qualify further as an advanced postdoc and improve your scientific profile.
The legal hiring requirements for professorships are regulated in the higher education laws of the federal states of Germany. Here you can find the Higher Education Act of Saxony-Anhalt (HSG LSA) (German only). On the website of the German Association of Higher Education Institutions you will find the Higher Education Acts of the other federal states.
Specific requirements for a professorship can be found in the respective job advertisements for professorships.
Recruitment requirements
You can apply for a W1 junior professorship (qualification professorship) already in the first few years after their doctorate.
You should have a very good doctorate. A habilitation or comparable achievements are not necessary. Depending on the discipline, teaching experience and/or experience in third-party funding may be required.
A junior professorship is always limited (usually six years in total). If it is advertised as "with tenure track", it is converted into a permanent W2 or even W3 professorship after successful mid-term and tenure evaluation of the position holder.
The hiring requirements for Saxony-Anhalt are regulated in § 40 HSG LSA.
Further information on the tenure track at the OVGU is provided by the Appointment Management and Strategic Human Resources Development of the OVGU and is noted in the OVGU regulations on the structure of appointments with a tenure track at the OVGU [PDF, 140 kB; German only].
You can apply for a W2 or W3 professorship if, in addition to your doctorate, you can demonstrate a habilitation or equivalent achievements. Habilitation-equivalent achievements can be the leadership of a junior research group or a junior professorship. The decision as to whether the achievements are recognised as equivalent to a habilitation is made in each case in an appointment procedure by the Appeals committee that reviews the application for a professorship. There are different practices depending on the subject culture. In addition to the higher education laws of the federal states, there are local standards.
For Saxony-Anhalt, the recruitment requirements are regulated in§ 35 HSG LSA. The procedure of an appointment at the OVGU is regulated by the appointment regulations [PDF, 522 kb, German only].
In addition to permanent W2 and W3 professorships, there are also temporary W2 professorships (usually for a total of six years). If it is advertised as "with tenure track", it is converted into a permanent W2 or even W3 professorship after successful tenure evaluation of the position holder.
Further information is available from the OVGU's Appointment Management and Strategic Human Resources Development. Information on the tenure track at the OVGU can be found in the OVGU regulations on the structure of tenure-track appointments at the OVGU [PDF, 140 kB, German only].
More general information about the different paths to professorship can be found at Academics (German only) and at the German Association of Universities (German only).
On the pages of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) you can get more information about the Tenure-Track-Programm.
