You are completing your PhD (at last!), and might be asking yourself, ‘What do I have
to accomplish as a postdoc if I want to get a faculty job at one of the top 25% of
research universities?’ This article is a follow up to last year’s essay on picking
a graduate studentship, and here I lay out the advice I give to young scientists who
have determined that they want to make the next step towards a research faculty post
(however, see Box 1).
See related comment on picking a graduate studentship, http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/4/114
What is success?
If your career goal is to be a contender for a top-tier research group leader position
in this day and age, the goal of a postdoctoral fellowship is profoundly different
than that of a studentship. In a graduate studentship, solid success is a couple of
good, mid-level peer-reviewed papers. In a postdoctoral fellowship, success would
be counted as having published leading articles (note the plural) in top-tier journals.
There are obviously exceptions to this, but they are exactly that: exceptional.
The most reliable way to be seriously looked at as a faculty candidate is to have
cold, hard proof of your research caliber, meaning one or two major, highest impact
stories as first (or co-first) author, followed by one to three additional stories
as first (or co-first) author in field-leading journals such as Molecular Cell or
Genome Biology. The first triage that a typical search committee does is to remove
all CVs that do not have any publications, followed by those that have no substantive
first author publications. Papers listed as ‘in preparation’ are generally ignored.
Committees almost always look favorably on candidate experience in multiple scientific
environments, and some committees may also consider strong expertise (read: good publications)
in multiple diverse fields to be attractive.
When to choose a host laboratory for your postdoc?
Answer: 12 months before you want to start a postdoc.
With that in mind as a graduate student, you must plan on where to go and what to
do a full year in advance. The guidelines I gave last year for where to go as a graduate
student produce a reasonably large and diverse set of prospective host laboratories.
These include many nationally prominent groups who rarely publish papers in journals-with-one-word-titles,
and are often awesome training environments whose graduate students go on to great
careers. The postdocs in these labs, however, rarely can compete directly in the job
market with those that have the biggest name journal articles - with or without demi-god
advisors. The faculty job market is just too competitive.
It is imperative that you contact potential advisors twelve (12) months in advance
(yes, I have said this repeatedly), because all the best labs are always oversubscribed
and need lots of lead time for a new hire. Besides, there will almost certainly be
a (serious) interview as well, for the same reason. It also gives you, as a postdoc
candidate, sufficient lead time to both informally inquire in your extended social
network about the host lab, and to obtain your own funding, which may increase your
perceived value to any host lab immediately - you were a free hire. Some labs require
you to get outside funding, fullstop: it is imperative that you directly ask what
funding you are expected to obtain, and when. And of course, don’t forget that many
countries have bureaucratically slow and occasionally xenophobically paranoid visa
systems to navigate, even for citizens of economically more-developed countries.
Characteristics to look for in a host lab
Now, who do you look for? This is where the decisions a graduate student would make
are a bit different. Postdocs unfortunately require high impact papers, so you must
identify a laboratory where there is a consistent and conscious commitment to do everything
possible to enable and ensure every postdoc to publish these. Evidence for this commitment
can be seen simply by looking at how diverse the first-author names are in the prospective
host lab’s biggest papers, combined with frequency of publications.
Obviously, there are never guarantees in life, but if a prospective advisor flatly
refuses to commit to doing their best to help your career or says ‘it’s mostly up
to the concerned postdoc’s work ethic’ - well, you should probably find a different
postdoc home. It is rarely said overtly, but this stage of your career is a mutual
and two-way agreement: you give your most productive years, and the advisor in return
will break their back to make sure everyone wins (read: publishes outstanding stories).
Lab size
If you are high caliber as a postdoctoral scientist, then you are not going to need
nearly as much attention as when you were first starting, so you can choose a host
lab head who is a bit more hands-off. The default option often means an established
and prominent lab in your scientific area. However, the size of the lab is as crucial
as when you were a graduate student: it is my personal opinion that (except for rare
cases) in excess of four, maybe five, postdocs in a typical laboratory, in genomics
at least, is a recipe for an unhealthy environment.
First of all, ideally, everyone in a lab knows everything else that other folks are
doing to ensure scientific cross-fertilization and criticism, as well as prevent intra-lab
competition. More than five postdocs (in a group of, say, ten total workers) means
that this goal is not realistic. Secondly, as a postdoc, you need to be seriously
considering what your own special niche will be once you leave, and how to reduce
the chances of your creative ideas being stolen out from under you. In a huge Darwinian
lab, everyone is aggressively looking for high-impact projects - any high impact project.
Three years into your new faculty job, just as you are writing up your first story,
you may find the cherished idea you were collegially discussing before your departure
comes out in a big name journal, led by someone from (or, worse, even still in) your
old lab, just as you are writing it up yourself with your very first postdoc (note:
I have witnessed this exact situation happen to numerous new faculty). In a case like
this, some former bosses can argue, with plausible deniability, that they had no idea
they were scooping you - because they have too many people to keep track of.
Problems can occur in the other direction with an established lab that is too small.
If a lab has less than about seven active researchers, it can be hard to have sufficient
diversity of co-workers to drive a broad scientific programme. However, this certainly
does not apply to starting up, junior group leader labs.
Regardless, established labs should also be evaluated based on their placement record
for prior postdocs and the political and scientific connections to place folks in
the future, as well as how fairly and evenly resources are distributed among projects.
You can always ask around for good information from neighboring labs: people love
to gossip.
Lab stage
Most of the above has been directed at how to find a good established lab. However,
folks who have just started as junior group leaders at leading research institutes
are very often overlooked, and are about the best and safest bets out there - if you
can get on board early enough. By the time they win prestigious ‘Young Investigator’
type prizes, it may be too late. Most searching grad students think these labs are
high risk as a postdoc, but if your goal is to survive with a highest impact paper,
well, let’s just say that these group leaders’ interests and your interests are almost
perfectly aligned. In contrast, does Prof. Nobel-Prize care about your first (but
their 17th
Cell paper)? Maybe, but nowhere near as much as Assistant Prof. Small-Fry, who cares
a whole awful lot!
The main risk of this strategy is that really junior groups in the first four years
can be micromanaged as well as very tense places, as everyone worries about the lab’s
survival. There are also almost certainly going to be serious birth pains and discomfort
when you leave, as junior group leaders have to be more concerned than established
labs about what can be taken away by departing postdocs. On the other hand, they are
probably less likely than established labs to ‘inadvertently’ steal your ideas, as
they just faced this problem from the other side and will have more compassion.
Leave your comfort zone
Challenge yourself, and don’t limit your search to the place where you have been for
the last 10 years (yes, I mean you, Oxbridge, San Diego, Boston!). Having sat on faculty
search committees, it is attractive to know that a faculty candidate had the courage
to face the world by proverbially moving out of their comfy, rent-free parents’ cellar.
The future is your responsibility
Regardless of what you do, the choices you make in choosing your new lab home are
the biggest determinants of your future. Be polite but pressing in your questioning
before and during interviews. Ask folks hard questions. Seek gossip about what the
lab’s dynamics are. If you discover after your failed postdoc that ‘everyone knew’
that Prof. Nobel-Prize always pits people against each other on the same project,
then it is your failure that you did not ask around enough before you joined the lab.
In sum, if you don’t have the passion, resiliance and sheer bloodymindedness needed
to struggle through all this, it might be safest to find an alternative career that
is more supportive and laid back, even if less well remunerated than science. Perhaps
art therapy, accountancy or investment banking.
Box 1: Is a postdoc the right career choice for you?
Dear reader, please know that I cannot and will not defend the justice of the system
I am describing; instead, I am attempting to give practical and conservative advice
on how to increase your probability of surviving it. My most honest advice is that
you should only pursue an academic career if you literally cannot see yourself doing
anything else and living a fulfilled life. Academia is training far too many graduate
students, instilling ridiculous expectations of a rosy future, and then losing way
over half our personnel investments at the faculty job interview stage (see Box 2).
If you, for instance, always wanted to make blown glass sculpture, then for your own
sanity, escape now! A further caveat to my advice is that it is grounded in the experience
of a basic biology/modern genetics laboratory, and other fields may differ in specific
details and relevant advice.
Box 2. Further reading
• Schneider L: Observations of a frustrated scientist.
LabTimes 2013, http://www.labtimes-archiv.de/epaper/LT_13_06/#57. Leonid does a great
job highlighting the bad behaviours of labs you should try to avoid and crystallizing
the bitterness this system engenders. I am slightly more optimistic with my pragmatism:
just try to avoid the worst aspects by carefully choosing your path.
• Supply-side academics.
Nat Neurosci 2007, 10:1337. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n11/full/nn1107-1337.html
• Wadman M: A workforce out of balance.
Nature 2012, 486:304. http://www.nature.com/news/a-workforce-out-of-balance-1.10852
• Afonso A: How academia resembles a drug gang.
http://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/.
A very enjoyable read that, in part, suggests interesting gaming strategies based
on geographic movement to sidestep the worst of the market distortions. He has great
references, too.
• The disposable academic.
The Economist 2010, http://www.economist.com/node/17723223