When neuroscientist Nafisa Jadavji entered the job market in search of academic positions in North America, she had successfully completed two postdoctoral projects, secured funding, and published 30 papers in her name.She applied for hundreds of positions, was invited to 10 on-site interviews, and eventually received a job offer: an assistant professor at Midwest University in Glendale, Arizona, starting in July 2019.
For better or worse, Jadavji's experience is typical among academic job seekers.A survey of more than 300 job seekers in the 2018-2019 academic job season showed that the average number of on-site interviews was two, while the average number of job offers was only one.
Recalling his painstaking job search process, Jadavji said postdocs need to be brazen and persistent, especially among women of color in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).Like many other candidates, she found the process lacking in transparency and extremely frustrating.When she asks for feedback from places that reject her, she often gets a casual answer: you don't laugh enough, you have a better candidate, or you don't look like a Principal Investigator (PI).
Looking for a permanent academic position after graduating from a postdoctoral degree is not for timid people.In some ways, postdoctoral fellows have made great strides — the U.S. postdoctoral fellowship this year passed the $50,000 starting salary milestone set by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Research Service Award pay standard.Almost every university or institution that employs postdocs now has an office or program dedicated to their career development.
However, those who want to continue on the academic track face significant obstacles.Only 14 to 20 percent of U.S. biomedical doctors will eventually be promoted to assistant professor, team leader, or equivalent permanent positions.Only a quarter of postdoctoral graduates in popular positions at the University of California, San Francisco, and MIT are promoted to professors.
Still, for those who see it as their own career path, it's possible to shed some light on this obscure process.To that end, Science magazine interviewed postdocs who had recently been successful in their job search.In addition, two recent studies have gathered information to describe the characteristics of successful candidates and the criteria that recruitment committees are looking for.
Core features
Pearl Ryder, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University and founder of the @FuturePI_Slack team and Twitter account, said the standout candidates showed they had a vision for the future lab they wanted to create.
This is largely consistent with the top priority recruitment characteristics revealed by in-depth interviews with members of recruitment committees from 20 life sciences departments.Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and Northwestern University developed a standard that was broken down by university type (teaching, research, and teaching research).For research universities, the top priority candidates are the ability to conduct viable and independent research, the ability to communicate research, a good track record of publication, a strong research vision and strategy, and funding schemes.All types of institutions place a high value on collaboration and fit, defining it as matching research and teaching experience with the institution's mission, meeting departmental needs and bringing the potential for collaboration.The research team released a series of videos on how applicants can best use the standard.
Another study, led by cell biologist Amanda Haage and colleagues at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, surveyed 317 job seekers who applied primarily for academic positions in North America between 2018 and 2019.These applicants submitted an average of 15 applications and spent an average of 4 years in their postdoctoral positions; applicants published an average of 6 first-author papers and were cited an average of 245 times.
58% of respondents received at least one job offer at the end of their job search.Haage's team also surveyed candidates for the 2019-2020 academic job season and encouraged postdoctoral researchers applying for leadership positions in academic teams in North America to participate.
Candidates with interviews have similar research records, and many believe their hiring depends on their ability to demonstrate key soft skills, such as communication skills and problem-solving skills, in applications and interviews.Fortunately, even a postdoc who finds himself in a less than ideal position can find ways to hone the transferable skills that recruitment committees crave.
When to enter the job market
Dara Wilson-Grant, deputy director of the postdoctoral office at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said getting into the job market should be considered from the first day of getting a postdoctoral position."We promote the idea in postdoctoral training that if you come without a career plan, you need to develop one now.”
In North America, a postdoctoral postdoctoral degree spends an average of 4 years in all fields before entering the job market, and many universities have followed the recommendation to limit the postdoctoral period to around 5 years.While it's not clear whether to spend more time as a postdoctoral student, it's clear that the minimum time required is closely related to successful publication and development of a funded research program.
Alison Tebo is a chemical biologist at the Biomolecular Laboratory in Paris, France, who began looking for work in the United States and Europe in her fourth year of postdoctoral research.Not quite ready at the time, she forced herself to start drafting applications and the first independent grant application, which allowed her to find her place in the research ecosystem in a slow process.
"I started just writing something down on paper, which made me keep asking myself, what would my identity be as a scientist?"" In September, Tebo will lead the team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Park in Ashburn, Virginia.
Alexandra Rutz, a postdoctoral biomedical engineer at the University of Cambridge in the UK, took a similar approach and entered the job market before publishing most of her postdoctoral research, despite advice from her peers.But that doesn't seem to affect her prospects, she said, and she will start working as an assistant professor at the University of Washington in St. Louis in March 2021."Nobody has ever mentioned this when it comes to teacher recruitment, so it could be a false pressure on postdocs to put on themselves."" she said.
Applicants point out that postdoctoral researchers should plan a very time-consuming job search process and not expect to produce research results at the same time.In addition, the process can be expensive when candidates have to pay upfront for travel and expenses for interviews.These factors may exclude or severely limit postdocs with care responsibilities, as well as those from underrepresented groups in the STEM field.