Abstract
The increasingly competitive academic job market has forced PhD graduates in psychology, neuroscience, and related fields to maximize their research output and secure grant funding during the early postdoctoral period of their careers. In the present article, based on a Q&A session presented at a research retreat (Brain and Behaviour Lab, University of Sydney) in February 2018, we draw on our firsthand experiences of navigating the transition from graduate student to postdoc. We offer practical advice to students who may be nearing the end of their PhDs and planning their first steps toward an academic career. Although the postdoc experience is varied, it is important for early-career researchers to make optimal choices to increase their chances of securing a continuing academic position. Ultimately, the goal of a postdoctoral position should be to develop all the facets of an academic career, but with a strong focus on the quantity and quality of research outputs.
Highlights
The lead-up to the end of your PhD is hard enough
This article is based on a Q&A session at a research retreat organised by the University of Sydney Brain and Behaviour Lab in February 2018, where we answered questions from Sydney-based PhD students about the transition to a postdoc career
A lot of us are passionate about science, the pursuit of knowledge, and the possibility of our research findings having real-world impact, but I know a lot of us struggle to reconcile this with the sacrifices that come with the job
Summary
DT: Sorry, but I don’t have a good answer to this question for you. I don’t even have a good answer for myself, or my friends and postdoctoral colleagues who regularly ask themselves this question. You probably think you already know how important it is to publish your work, but I only truly realised and properly comprehended the significance of this when I applied for my first grant and filled out the publication list section. You can still get postdoc jobs with people who know your good work from papers or conferences having few publications. If you have been lucky enough to have a positive PhD experience—your experiments worked, you managed to get some publications, you found the experience mostly enjoyable—you will be in a good position to judge whether the postdoc path is right for you. There’s nothing wrong with contacting researchers who have recently got a grant to do research in an area that you want to work, even if you don’t know them personally
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