Hi all,

My first postdoc position is ending soon and my long term goal is to work in an industry. But I have visa issues for shifting to industry now and not interested in doing one more postdoc. Is it possible to get Molecular biologist kind of positions in Academia and will it affect my transition into the industry later.

Thanks

Generally the longer you stay in academia, the harder it is to move into industry.

rewt, what are you basing that on?

The depressed postdocs in my university, so maybe not the best source in hindsight

Ha ha. Yep that sounds familiar.
Academics will or should have a host of softskills which are highly sought after in industry.
I wouldn't worry too much about it to be honest.
Sounds like your postdocs have been ground down a bit. Not surprised by that. It's not a great environment from what I have experienced.

I think they mainly have the overqualified problem. Some of them have done 2 or 3 very technical postdocs and now find that they cant get graduate jobs or senior roles due over qualification and lack of "real world" experience respectively. I honestly think with a post-doc you need an exit plan.

It's good to have an exit plan when you walk into any job regardless of qualifications or experience.

As for their lack of success applying for jobs, it could be down to a number of things. I wouldn't necessarily accept that it's over-qualification and/or lack of real world experience unless they are being told this explicitly. People do use these two things as a ready excuse. I'm not saying that this is the case for your colleagues but the majority of people I have met throughout my career who struggle to get work, struggle for very good reasons unrelated to their ability.

This real world experience thing is interesting. Employers will be looking for academically minded people who understand time budgets, cost awareness and have an understanding that if you are trying to create things like a new chocolate bar recipe, you don't look at reactions which use Rhodium catalysts etc.
I have seen some large companies insist that you have at least one or two postdocs before they'll hire a PhD researcher so it's not a clear picture.

My advice to these colleagues would be to look at the job specs and work out which things they are missing. Then actively figure out how to acquire those things. It's probably not a good thing to wait until the end of your academic career to work these things out.