You can be active to promote your career opportunities. Do this early before finishing PhD or Postdoc period. Broaden your network more than from mainly by attending conferences.

One way is to be active on LinkedIn. Comment, post. You do not need to have ground-breaking results to post. Even updates or personal thoughts are interesting for the right community (your network). Career is not about our research topic, it is about you. LinkedIn is always there even if you change work place and contact information.

Another way is to invite people to meet. Forum, workshop, etc are very convinient. The important is to not plan too detailed agenda. Leave space for people to interact. The new opportunities at conference do not come from presentations. Those come from meeting after presentation, or meeting new person in a way that was not planned (for example coffee or dinner, excursion). Posters are very good for discussion and exchange. Be active to talk. The same goes for online Forum or Workshop. You do not have to be professor to organize workshop. Make space to discussions. That is why IW-Global was founded as support platform.

Do these things and you may have next career step before your current PhD or Postdoc period ends. Or your network will respond to you when you are finishing since they know you already (and you have grown larger network by being active).

It will actually also grow your career because other researchers may be interested to collaborate. If they know about you…