Bas Rodenburg, postdoc researcher
My name is Bas Rodenburg. I took part in the Training and mobility program in 2005. At that time, I was working as a post-doc on welfare of laying hens at the Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research in Merelbeke, Belgium. Previously, I obtained my PhD on feather pecking in laying hens at Wageningen University and worked as research scientist on poultry welfare at the Animal Sciences Group in Lelystad, The Netherlands. My participation in the Training and mobility program helped my define my career goals and also stimulated me to write two applications for research projects, one on the problem of red mites in laying hens and one on behaviour genetics of feather pecking in laying hens.
In July 2006, I obtained a personal grant from the Dutch Technology Foundation (STW) of about 200.000 Euro to work on behaviour genetics of feather pecking in laying hens for four years. I currently work on this project as a Research Associate at the Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre of Wageningen University in Wageningen, The Netherlands. The research project deals with the effects of genetic selection and of early rearing environment on feather pecking in laying hens. The work includes designing and conducting experiments and analyzing and reporting the results.
After this project, in the summer of 2010, I hope to acquire a new research project or to find a new position in applied ethology. This could be a position as a researcher or research in combination with education. In the future, I would also be interested in management tasks.
I spent about three days in exchanges with the Training and mobility desk. I found it time well spent and I would recommend it to other young researchers!

Céline Tallet, postdoc researcher
I subscribed to Training and Mobility in 2006, at the end of my PhD position. I was looking for a post-doc position out of France and this program helped me a lot to achieve this goal. Training and Mobility was of great help because it made me reflect on my wishes and my abilities. It also gave me the tools to express clearly my ideas thanks to many oral and written exchanges with APEC. The association of personal reflections and of interactions with another person appeared for me very efficient. Now, I feel more comfortable when writing a cover letter, I know how to adapt my CV to a position, how to behave during an interview, etc.
At present, I am a post-doc researcher at the Research Institute for Animal Production, in Prague (Czechia) for two years (November 2006-end of 2008). I am studying the vocal communication of pigs, for intra- and inter-specific purposes. This position allows me to develop an expertise on pigs breeding, behavior and on bio-acoustics (recording sounds, analyzing their characteristics…). It also leads me to improve a lot my English communication, which is of great importance in scientific communication.
This experience is of great interest for me professionally but also personally. Living in a foreign country of course leads to learn a new culture and language. Working here is different from working in France in many ways: the management of money, and experiments, and students for instance. There is also a different way to consider our work and its importance, and our importance. There are so many manners to do research and each person has to find his/her own. This is also why stays abroad and collaborations are so constructive, especially when you are a young researcher.
I have not completely made up my mind on what I will do after the present mission. My initial wish was to return to France to continue my researches on animal welfare, but I now do not exclude staying in Prague.It took me an average of half a day to fulfill the Training and mobility questionnaire. Then, my exchanges with the Training and Mobility desk have been spread over a period of 3 months. I estimate that I worked on these exchanges for a total of 5-6 full days

Mickaël Mazurek, predoc researcher
I qualified as an engineer in agronomy in France in 2005. I started my training in Ireland in January 2006. I am based on a beef research centre, quite close to Dublin. I work as a Master Science student (Msc) and I am registered at the University College of Dublin. I conduct researches on cattle welfare with a focus on behaviour and I contribute to the elaboration of welfare guidelines. This position was proposed to me by the training and mobility desk of Welfare Quality® that I would like to thank again.
Training and mobility allowed me to get a different view of the research field I was interested in, and of techniques used in Ireland. It allowed me to travel, meet a lot of really interesting people, for my studies or just personally, from farmers to researchers, technicians to vets, etc., not only from Ireland but also from all over the world. Here, I started to learn a new culture. I also made large progresses in oral and written English. Beside the main programme of my researches, I am involved in a European project on the safety of workers in contact with animals, both from the human and the animal perspective. This gives me the opportunity to work with researchers and safety officers from Ireland, France, Germany, Netherlands and Poland. I am also collaborating with French researchers in relation to my master thesis. I found working with many different people very stimulating.
My present mission will end at the end of December 2007. I plan to convert the Master thesis into a PhD thesis by prolonging my research work for one more year.

Sophie Hild, predoc researcher
I am Sophie Hild, from France, and I am currently a PhD student at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science in Oslo. At the end of my Master degree, I was postulating for a PhD position in Paris, France. This is how I discovered Training and mobility, as all selected applicants had to fulfill the questionnaire on the webpage. It took me a great amount of time to complete the questionnaire - nearly a week - because I was writing my Master thesis at the same time. But I have to say, and this is of greater importance, that answering questions about my motivation and future plans made me think a lot about what I really expected from the work of researcher, and what really motivated me to continue on that way, despite the fact that it is very hard to find a position in this field. It made me discuss with researchers or other trainees about research and expectations for the future. Above all, answering this questionnaire gave me great tools to answer “tricky” questions later on, during interviews, as my mind was already trained to think about what employers/supervisors really care about. I was selected for the interview in Paris, but did not get the position in the end. Nevertheless the good point is that, thanks to this first interview, I started to correct my flaws and became more self confident. Also the Training and mobility desk helped me by regularly sending me PhD positions to apply for, and providing me with advice when I asked for. I like to think that mentioning the Training and mobility desk as a reference helped me obtaining the PHD position I currently have. I work in the field of Animal Welfare, and more particularly I am looking into the mother-young relationship in sheep and pigs, and what modulates maternal behaviour. I am very pleased of working abroad, especially in Norway with its very friendly inhabitants and high living standards. Working abroad gives me the opportunity to work in an international environment, to improve my English, and to put my motivation and expectations to the test. I am also learning new working methods which help me develop my professional plan position. As a conclusion, I am very thankful to Training and mobility, and I am happy to give back a little bit by writing this paragraph on my personal experience.

Agroparistech, Host institution
Direct supervisor: Christine Duvaux-Ponter
Training and mobility was very helpful to recruit a young researcher in our team Animal Welfare and Behaviour. It would have been more difficult to discriminate between the candidates without them filling the questionnaire. The good thing about using the questionnaire was to put all the candidates in the same situation i.e. filling the same questionnaire on line. It was also interesting to take into account the reactions of the candidates to the exercise: some were lost and had to ask for advice while others were very efficient and resourceful.
The person recruited is a PhD student who is going to work on the effect of under-nutrition during pregnancy on the development of feeding behaviour in the offspring. This position allows our team to carry on some research on the perinatal period.

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden : Host institution
Supervisor: Harry Blokhuis, Professor of Ethology
In January 2007, I got the opportunity to employ a post-doc for a two year research project on broilers at SLU (Swedish University of Agricuctural Sciences). The position was advertised on the Training and mobility pages of the Welfare Quality® website. Probably due to the specific requirements I requested for this position I did not get too many applications. However, it was clear that some of those came through the Welfare Quality® website. On the basis of their written applications I made a first selection of the candidates, leading to a ‘shortlist’ consisting of three candidates who all had their specific ‘pros and cons’. Obviously I made my own ranking of these three but I also asked them to fill in the questionnaire on the Training and mobility pages. On the basis of that the Training and mobility team provided a professional analysis of the candidates’ qualities and suitability for the job. This was of great help for my final decision and I felt reassured in my choice of candidate.
The selected post-doc was from Germany. He started his work in March 2007 and is at present involved in work that is related to WelfareQuality®. He is carrying out research in three different countries (UK, Netherlands and Sweden) in relation to on-farm assessment of broiler welfare and is very much supported from different partners in the WelfareQuality® project.

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden : Host institution
Supervisor: Linda Keeling, Professor of EthologyI had recently advertised two PhD vacancies and we had got a large number of applicants for both positions. One PhD would involve work with horse behaviour and welfare in a large Nordic collaborative project and the other was a behavioural genetics project on abnormal behaviour in pigs and poultry. This large number of applications was good, but even when we have selected out those students who did not fulfil the educational requirements, there were several potential candidates. The training and mobility support helped us structure up the process of selecting between the top candidates.
For example for the horse behaviour and welfare position, the staff on the training and mobility team helped identify those candidates who wanted to do postgraduate work first and happened to have horse experience, from those that wanted to work with horses and doing a PhD was a way to do that. For the behavioural genetics position, it was useful to get help comparing students with very different backgrounds. In the end, having the evaluation from the experts helped us ask better questions during the interview and when their evaluation coincided with ours, it gave us confidence that we had indeed selected the best students for the positions.
It didn’t take much additional time to use the site and considering how important it is when selecting a person for a 4 year PhD position, I would definitely use the option again.