It’s a question that comes up again and again here at the Postdoc Careers Service. The good news is that you have plenty of options, but they take a bit of time to navigate. In the spirit of a new year, let’s make a start….
Academia
Your experience in academia is the baseline against which all options will compare. I rarely meet postdocs who feel that their research is going as well as they’d like it to. But do you feel you are ‘sort-of’ on track to become a lecturer/PI? Not sure? Get feedback from academics in your field and find out what achievements postdocs who have recently got these positions had. If you don’t feel you are competitive, what can you do to make a difference? How realistic is that plan? Would you actually like being a lecturer/PI? Heck, you meet these people every day. Observe what they do for a while and imagine yourself in their shoes. Being a lecturer/PI may be the best known career option for postdocs, but it’s certainly not the only one. Are there other options in academia you would consider as an alternative? Support roles such as scientific facilities or being a long term postdoc, bearing in mind, you may have to move research groups and locations as required?
Research outside academia
OK, let’s say you love doing research but don’t have a burning, some would call it, er, dogged, desire to pursue your own research questions. At the same time you are sick of being a postdoc. How about doing research outside academia? You are, after all, a professional researcher. We have tons of postdocs getting great research jobs in what we often call ‘industry’ – scientific and technology based ones. The pharma/biotech sector is popular but there are many more. Interested? Employers will look for relevant specialist skills or subject knowledge and a willingness to work towards what they, not always you, deem important. That normally involves teamwork, which many postdocs tell me they yearn for.
Non-research roles
Perhaps you’re done with niche techniques and digging deep into one area, y-a-w-n, but you realise that you enjoy parts of your job. Do you prefer analysing data to generating it? Yup! Got good feedback from a presentation? Like writing papers and reports and, in fact, right now, you have a line of people queuing for you to edit theirs? That’s just a few examples of how to identify your skills, you have many more. ‘So what’, you might say, these skills are ubiquitous in the job market. Actually, employers tell us that they find it hard to get people with many of the skills which you use day in, day out in research. But how do skills translate into actual jobs? Look at some of our examples of amazing jobs postdocs in your shoes have got.
It is healthy to be aware of your career options; there is enough pressure in academia without feeling your options are limited. They’re not.
Wishing you a good start to 2019, dear readers.
Anne Forde, Postdoc Careers Adviser