Anyone else in postdoc/job application hell?

I have noticed that getting in touch with prospective postdoc supervisors is a horrible experience. Sometimes they can be super keen, other times you don't hear back from them for months. See I've had a phone interview a month ago and while I was promised to hear back within two weeks, I've had no contact yet and it's really driving me insane because I really want the job but I have other applications I should pursue if this doesn't go well, asap.

How long before giving up? Anyone in a position of having to chase the employee, as it were?

On top of that, my thesis writing is going bad. I've written most of it but it's kind of officially crap. Bah.

I just wanna eat my own toes.

Ah bless, your post made me laugh (I mean the bit about eating your own toes!). I am in a similar situation, ie post doc hunting hell, but my problem is that I can't find suitable/enjoyable looking post docs- and on top of that I just feel really under confident and miserable :-( I keep wondering if I should leave science completely, but then that makes me feel like doing my PhD was a waste of time...
Anyway... PI's are busy people, you could just send a quick reminder email to prompt them into replying?? esp if you need to move on if they say 'no' You have nothing to loose, Good luck!!

x

I'm not in that position yet and I'm sorry you're having problems, but it's interesting to know there's yet another stage of PhD hell to go through - there are so many!

I'm glad I'm in a discipline that grants one's first academic job as a 'lecturer' rather than a postdoc 'research fellow' or what not.

It seems somewhat arbitrary that some disciplines have this additional layer of postdoc work before one can achieve a full-time and permanent post.

Possibly this is why science disciplines tend to plough through their PhDs much quicker than soc.sciences/arts/law/business as they know there is another 1/2 years of postdoc underdog status to go through.

Hi People

Sorry to hear you are having troubles finding work Actually_no, I'm probably going to be looking for jobs/post-docs pretty soon and am not looking forward to it one bit

Just wanted to set Miss Spacey straight, it's not 1-2 years of being a post-doc in science, it's more like a minimum of six these days. Seriously, the fortunate and the excellent get a 5 year career development fellowship type thingy which more or less guarantees a lecturer's post somewhere at the end. If you can't get that, scientists simply bounce between 3 year post-doc placements untill they can get something permanent. A fair number never make it, or spend their entire working lives on 2-3 year contracts with no guarantee of renewal.

Seriously, my lab has a 47 year old post-doc who is essentially trapped, he is too old to become a lecturer, and also probably too old to start a fresh career, so what does he do exactly?. He's been a post-doc since Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, and needs money this summer to continue, and is becoming increasingly expensive to employ due to pay scales etc.

Anyway, rant over, my advice is get out while your young

Hopefully that's what i shall do

I'm finding that even the super-keen ones are letting these things slip, especially during the teaching term. And yet we can see deadlines etc getting quickly closer. I haven't written any of my discussion chapter this week because of proposal writing etc. A good lesson in time and task management I suppose. Don't worry, we'll all get there in the end!

I didn't realise there was such a difference between disciplines with this post-doc situation. I'm glad I'm in the arts and humanities where the likely outcome post-PhD seems to be a mixture of lecturing and research, unless there's a possibility of being written into a bigger research project as a research fellow.

Cakeman, I'm shocked that you think that man at 47 is too old to become a lecturer, he's got about another 20 years of work until he officially becomes a pensioner! Maybe that's another wrong assumption on my part, I'd thought that scientists would teach as well as do research, so could always shift the balance of what they do if they want to - some people in my area move towards more research, less lecturing, others go the opposite way, but it's not really a big problem as you're likely to be doing both anyway.

Im sure he has been trying to get a lectureship, but there is a lot of competition for permanent positions.If he hasnt secured a position by now there is likely a reason - either not enough publications, not bringing in enough funding...etc. It must be quite disheartning to be on the post doc merry go round for so long, but sadly I know of many people in his position. There simply are not enough permanent jobs to go around.

Uhmm post-docs rnt always underdogs, and very many times, i have seen excellent students, great achievers during their Phds actually opting for a post doc in another country, under one great scholar, or on a great project before joining their academic post...differs from case to case...

Personally, on my own list of targets is a great post doc, before anything else, which is why (and i agree with the previous poster) I am on a mission to plough through my PhD in 3 years...and the reallly really competitive Post docs, the awards and trusts kind make so many clauses mandatory it really then beomes a question of managing a PhD AND a required number of blah bkah blah and other factors, in that many years...so it is a very tough call....

My Dad is 53 and has just starting lecturing (in the last year or two). And he's certainly not a rarity.

A

My problem probably stems from the fact that I don't want to teach! and being a post doc is certainly not lowly or any thing like being a phd student (for one thing you actually get paid a decent enough salary!). SO perhaps I should leave science, because it looks like the alternative is scrabbling round for post docs every 2-3 yrs with no definite assurance of work where or in what I want to work in.. urgh. I wish I hadn't bothered doing a phd now!! Don't get me wrong, I love what I work on, but career wise, academe is perhaps not for everyone...

What type of pay is offered with the average postdoc? Does it equate to (or eventually equate to) a lecturer salary? i.e., 28-34k.

Hi Again

Just to clarify, I'm not ageist, the 47 year old in question is perfectly capable of lecturing, as indeed are those older than him, not to mention probably more capable than myself. It's just that a lot of the time people get left on the shelf after 2 post-docs as they can be dismissed as being to old. If they had the great publishing record required to lecture, they would have made it by now also, not to mention facing a possible pay cut to become a junior lecturer

Cakeman, you didn't sound ageist at all!

oo, cakeman, i don't think you have a problem!!! i hope i didn't make you feel like you did. am merely providing an example to facilitate modelling (my psych talk is coming out now!!).

A