On April 28th, Career Services hosted a CHOP postdoctoral fellow for an online Q&A for PhD students about finding postdocs. Below is a snapshot of the advice offered to students thinking about pursuing postdoctoral opportunities. As always, students interested in postdocs can schedule an appointment with a career advisor to discuss their approach and strategies. Schedule a telephone or video appointment via Handshake (https://careerservices.upenn.edu/resources/handshake/) today!
- No one is being as productive as they’d like right now (including PIs) and it’s OK to not be as productive right now.
- See a postdoc as an opportunity to gain skills to head in a new direction and to transition to where you really want to be
- Start looking about a year before you think you’ll finish – but this was information gathering and less actually trying to find an opportunity – that picked up speed about 6 months out
- Students should talk to everyone around them (mentors/current postdocs in their labs or neighboring labs/research scientists/PIs) to get their feedback on how they conducted their search
- Look at the postings by professional organizations – he did not find any opportunities this way that fit what he wanted, but it gave him ideas on who was accepting postdocs, who had just received a grant
- Networking is key! Reach out via email to lots of strangers and found most to be gracious and helpful – many did not have opportunities but offered to refer him to other colleagues – over time he started asking for this referral assistance
- Research on pubmed who was publishing articles on topics that seemed interesting to him and reached out directly to learn more
- The NIH Reporter publishes who just received an RO1 grant – he knew this meant they had money coming in and would do research to see if he might have useful skills and then reach out to the PI
- Send brief emails to PIs (not full cover letters) and attach CV to the introductory email
- Spend time thinking about what you want to get out of the postdoc so you can best articulate what you can do – you don’t want to keep repeating what you did as a student
- If you can get funding on your own (T32) lots of PIs will want to talk to you
- Think about what you need – is it better to work with a junior or senior faculty? Working with junior likely means more productivity/publications – but working with a senior faculty likely means more guidance but also freedom to choose your projects
- You will get better at networking the more you do it
- Start early – he wishes he had come to Career Services earlier as he would have done better in interviews 😊
- He was asked about how to negotiate start dates due to dissertation date shifting – he found PIs to be pretty flexible and understanding in this regard (and would think if a PI was difficult about this, that would be a red flag)
- In regards to COVID-19 and postdoc searching – keep reaching out and looking. NIH is still funding grants and everyone is still working, just remotely.
- Understanding how you will be funded going into a postdoc is important – you don’t want to run out of funding before you have been able to accomplish what you set out to
