Dutch NWO grant interview training and support

'We offer a personal, individually tailored and educationally focussed journey of excellence.'

Preparing for NWO grant interview (be it collaborative of individual) is a challenging and time consuming process - on top of the everyday challenges of academic life. Our focus is on making this process as enjoyable and as stress free as possible - for all individuals that we work with.

All of our work is also highly educationally focussed. I.e. the applicant learns much more than just how to prepare for an interview. We teach researchers how to better review their own work and further enhance their presentation and strategic analysis skills – all of which can be taken and used into the future with other granting bodies and schemes.

A hallmark of the way in which we work with applicants is the personalised interactions throughout the support process - allowing for a fully tailored trajectory for each applicant and/or team that we support.

The support is directed towards candidates who:

• Want to prepare for interview in a way that is as stress free as possible, and yet comprehensive enough to fully prepare for interview.

• Want to receive personalised and in-depth support, supporting and guiding you throughout your preparation process.

• Want to be able to deliver a clear and powerful presentation

• Want to be prepared for any type of question (including unexpected and potentially irritating questions)

• Want to be able to answer all questions in a crisp, direct and informative manner; and

• Who want to learn new skills that they can take away and use in their everyday working lives within the scientific arena

Format of the support:

• Our support is generally provided in several online one-on-one private training/coaching/presentation/mentoring sessions over several weeks, however we tailor the number of sessions to whether it is an individual grant interview or for a consortia.

• In addition to this, we provide the candidate(s) with specific ‘homework’ research/tasks to help them with their interview preparation.

• We also require candidates to undertake numerous other practice sessions (including online sessions) within/outside his/her Institute/Faculty etc. to optimise their preparation.

• Outside of the training sessions, we interact with the candidate via email for questions, queries, and review queries etc.

The method of delivery is via personal ‘one-on-one’ online training sessions with either Fire Sanders or Willem Bouma, both highly qualified and highly experienced senior trainers. Both Willem and Fire have experience working with all panels and areas of research, and have worked with a host of  applicants and institutions throughout around Europe and beyond. We do not outsource any of our work.The method of delivery is via personal ‘one-on-one’ online training sessions with either Fire Sanders or Willem Bouma, both qualified and experienced senior trainers. Both Willem and Fire have experience working with all panels and areas of research, and have worked with numerous applicants and institutions throughout around Europe and beyond.

Our in-depth and focussed NWO Grant proposal interview coaching/training is available for individual and collaborative/group grants and optimised for both face-to-face interviews as well as virtual/online interviews

As part of our support, applicants that we support will also receive:

• Strategic advice and assistance in the development of presentation content, and in-depth preparation for the question and answer component of the interview.

• Critical review and feedback on the presentation delivery (identification of potential weaknesses/advice on how to remedy them).

• Feedback on potential areas of concerns (criticism) from reviewers in order to better prepare for the Q&A session.

• Q&A Practice sessions and a list of critical questions from our own review of the proposal.

• Presentation, communication, interview and life skills coaching.