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The Pros and Cons of Doing a Postdoc

What inspired you to guide PhDs in their career paths?

Jen Polk: I finished my PhD in History in 2012 and what I have learned over the past decade as a career coach is that in a lot of fields in STEM, a postdoctoral position is thought of as a requirement if you are hoping to continue in an academic career. It’s strange to me, coming from a humanities background, and it shows how there are differences even within academia. That said, I acknowledge that a postdoc is assumed to be the default next step for many people considering an academic career trajectory.

However, that's where I fit in as a career coach and say that it really depends on what you want to do. We’ve got two folks here; one who didn't do a postdoc and is happy with her choices, and one who did and is happy with her choices, too.

Choosing a Career Path

What factors are involved in choosing the right career?

Nicole Quinn: I did a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry here in Vancouver, at Simon Fraser University, and was very much on the academic train. I had a postdoc opportunity lined up, and ultimately, at the eleventh hour, decided not to pursue it and came to work at �����ƽ��. That was more than 11 years ago, and I have grown my career here since as a science communicator and leader in part of the Marketing Department. It was absolutely the right decision for me.

Brenda Raud: I'm originally from Argentina and moved across “the pond” for a PhD in Immunology in Germany. I graduated about 5 years ago, and now I'm living in the Netherlands doing postdoctoral research. I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam for almost 4 years and I'm now in my second position at a different institute, also within Amsterdam. I've been in my second postdoctoral position for roughly 10 months. So, I'm committed! It's been an interesting experience. But, there are people who may be starting their first postdoc and are not sure if they want to do a second, or can’t decide whether to do one year or more in a postdoctoral position. I also have friends who did a year or two in postdoctoral research, knew they got the experience that they needed, and then they just moved laterally. There are so many different options.

JP: Yes, and I’ve learned that doing a postdoc is not essential to continue your career in research or industry. They were only introduced a few decades ago.

Availability of Faculty Positions and Funding Challenges

What can scientists expect once they have completed their postdoctoral position?

BR: From my limited experience as a postdoc and my exposure to the academic field around me, I think the reason why postdoctoral positions exist has to do with the availability of faculty positions. I see it as a waiting room in which you get ready to be the person closest to the door, for when the door opens. It also comes down to money. In my field at least, immunology research is extremely expensive. The time that you spend as a postdoc depends on the grants that the institutes want you to get, in order for them to give you space as part of the faculty. You can be a self-motivated scientist and have this plan of what kind of research you want to do, but you have to convince other people to fund your ideas. Often, the only way of doing that is by showing that you have some sort of track record, and usually, a PhD isn’t sufficient to establish that. Unless you are a very talented, extremely illuminated researcher, you probably don't have enough experience from your PhD to demonstrate what is required to receive funding. To me, a postdoc is a bit like this second chance, where you can do research that you are passionate about, hopefully with some support from a Principal Investigator (PI), who will provide the funds for you to show that you know what you're doing, so that further down the line you can acquire your own funding.

JP: There's this real tension in postdocs—I say this as an outsider, as somebody who often works with postdocs and helps them get jobs that aren't postdocs. Some professors will think of new PhDs not as independent researchers, but as trainees that need extra training, and some will see postdocs as independent researchers. Yet either way, you’re a working scientist with a professional job who can contribute to the scientific enterprise, get grants, and mentor other students. So I think the line between “Am I a trainee or a working professional?” is very unclear.

Evolving Skills and the Complexity of Research

BR: In my experience in the biological sciences, postdoctoral positions are thought of as an evolution in your skills and your knowledge as you move through academia. I think that in the case of STEM fields, especially in disciplines like biomedical research, the complexity of the infrastructure that is required to conduct research is increasing, so it's hard to convince someone to fund you to get the reagents and people, and find the lab space, if you don’t have the experience to show that you’re not a trainee. Without the funding, you're not going to be able to realize your research. It becomes a lot harder, unless someone vouches for you, to get the money to pursue your own research. There are some grants to help you pursue research if you’re less experienced, which I think is great, but that's not always the case. You really need to fight for those thousands of dollars or euros that you need to do even the simplest research.

JP: Graduate school should be thought more of like a career path for all of those different types of roles so that not everybody is being ostensibly trained for a job that most of them will never get; not because they suck, but simply because the jobs just don't exist. But there are more career paths and that's where this question of whether to do a postdoc comes in.

NQ: I can certainly say that in the 12 years or so since I finished my PhD, I've seen more and more career paths pop up. Maybe they always existed, but you had to find them, and it seems they're more prevalent now. They're easier to recognize, and some of those may or may not require a postdoc, or some of them may benefit or may not benefit from having done a postdoc.

To Postdoc or Not to Postdoc?

Tips and Tricks to Help Graduate Students Make This Important Decision

Read the Article >

JP: You should next ask yourself, “What are the positions? What are the career paths that are going to align with me?” And that should mean all of you, not just you as this person with this degree and this particular dissertation and discipline. Think about all of you and what aligns with you. You may find that a postdoc fits, but that's not the end of it, because it's about identifying specific opportunities, specific postdoc positions in specific labs, and working with specific people on specific grants. Right?

Even if you have postdoc roles on your list, you should also consider the possibility of other types of roles. It's not really about whether you should postdoc or not, but rather which is the next best job for you. There might be a different position that gets you closer to doing the work and to being the person and the professional that you want to be.

BR: This exercise really resonates with me a lot. I would say that for me, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one, but around the graduation from your PhD, it's so hard to find the mental space to do this kind of introspection, isn't it? To do this work and try to figure out what you want, because for many graduates, the only thing you want is for it to be done.

Practical Exercises for Self-Discovery

Is there a more specific way to answer these questions?

JP: There's no one right way of doing this, and the process isn't super scientific, which might be annoying for some readers! However, I was talking to a scientist recently who appreciated that this is more of a holistic approach. When I work with people in my program in workshops, I do a quick version of this exercise where I ask, “What are your values?” You don't have to do this endlessly, you could sit down for 10 minutes and make a list in your brain, but think about what your values are in life as a person, your strengths, and your skills.

There are a couple of different ways to think about skills. Remember that you're not just a person in the lab who does particular research. You should think about the whole of you in all contexts and include your priorities, goals, and all of those different kinds of things. But also, where do you want to live? How much money do you want to make? How much do you want to travel for your job? Do you want to work remotely? All of those nitty, gritty details about the workplace and work style and the kind of colleagues you want.

To put this in practical terms, the first exercise is to introduce yourself but not in the way we're all used to doing in academia. For example, for you, Brenda, your academia-style intro might be, “Hi, I'm Brenda, I have a PhD in immunology and I'm currently a postdoc at such-and-such institute and my particular expertise is... etc.” But then I say that you can’t include your degree or your job title, your discipline, or your scientific subject. You also can't include anything about your specific dissertation or your specific research subfield. What would you say about yourself now? Maybe now it’s “Hi! I'm Brenda. I'm the person in the lab who my colleagues refer to as the woman who's always up for… etc.” What would you say about yourself? Only then should you add back in the specific academic scientific stuff.

The second exercise that I have folks in my program do is to put together what I call a focus statement. It’s 10 or so prompts where you fill in the blanks and it doesn't necessarily tell you the specific types of jobs and employers. But it helps give a shape to the kind of job and career you want so that when you go out into the world and you read job ads and you talk to people, and you listen to career panels, you can start to say, “Oh, does this fit me?”

Real-Life Experiences: Career Choices and Challenges

What do you do when people come to you feeling distressed about their career or postgraduate choices?

NQ: In my own experience, I had started a family during my PhD and our home was Vancouver. I recognized that we'd have to move if I continued on the academic path, which is not something we wanted to do. I also wanted to keep building my family, and so those were two big factors that went into my decision to not pursue a postdoc.

I won't say that the decision to move to industry didn't come with guilt. I had put in a lot of time to research, and a lot of people had put a lot of time into me. I'd also put a lot of money into my career and training, and I would say that the expectation from my thesis committee and my advisor, who is a wonderful person, was for me to continue with the research I had started in his lab. The postdoc opportunity I was looking at was a really nice one and felt like a really good fit from a research perspective, but I was scared to admit that I also thought it was a good fit just because I didn't have anything else lined up. The job with �����ƽ�� came later, so at the time I was stepping off the academic train into nothing, and that was terrifying. That's probably really common and maybe more so for women.

NQ: In my own experience, I had started a family during my PhD and our home was Vancouver. I recognized that we'd have to move if I continued on the academic path, which is not something we wanted to do. I also wanted to keep building my family, and so those were two big factors that went into my decision to not pursue a postdoc.

JP: Thanks for sharing, and I'm sorry that you experienced that. I was nodding the whole time because I lived through my version of it, too. I sometimes say to folks, “I felt awful for not applying for academic jobs because of that guilt. I'm single, I don't have kids, and I could move anywhere. So why should I not apply?” So absolutely, I think it's very common, and this is what connects PhDs across disciplines; that it’s important to get clarity around who you are and what's important to you as you move forward in your career. Because, Nicole, you said it was a great fit but, actually, it wasn't. It was a great research fit and maybe made so much sense for the research path, and you had invested a lot of time into that research. But it wasn't a great fit for who you were then and who you wanted to be going forward. So, just reminding yourself of that and being in a community with other people who are also wrestling with those choices is super helpful.

Using Networking to Your Advantage

What other resources can graduate students use to help them make a choice?

JP: In addition to self-reflection, think of networking as a form of self-care. Doing informational interviews, building your community, and getting to know people outside of that specific research trajectory is a form of self-care because people who made different choices will understand why you didn’t want to take a certain career direction. When people are interested in your career and your strengths, listen to you, answer your questions, and perceive you as a potential colleague of theirs in a different domain, that's really affirming.

It takes work and time to build that community, but it helps to find a place for feelings of guilt and shame and what-ifs. We know that you invested so much money and time, but that’s not who you are, and might not be what you want. You have to think about what it's going to take to make the impact that you truly want to make going forward. It's not because young me or past me sucked, but that past me had different goals, different priorities. It's okay that I now have different ones.

NQ: Absolutely. I certainly did try to build that community and seek other people, and it was hard! It took guts to do it. But that's just one of the reasons why we're having these conversations, because it is hard to find those people sometimes, and it's hard to have those conversations. It's been a while since I was in the academic world, but I still think that it is probably the vibe. The expectation is still there that you are going to continue on the path you started. So I hope the Lab Coats & Life™ Podcast and resources provide a reference for people and some connection. Even if it's virtually and with strangers.

Gaining Independence

How does having the right allies help you to build a network within the academic community?

BR: Coming back to the original conversation about the good sides of a postdoc, for me, it’s the idea that when you start, you're not super sure about your research, and then you get to a point where you feel that you’re an independent researcher. If you have some level of humility, you probably always feel the need to improve and having the opportunity to do that is definitely a plus. I do think having the right allies helps you to build a network within the academic environment, and so the kind of research group that you are in and people like your supervisor are super important. You can find yourself surrounded by people who see your potential and align with your values, which can be very nice.

It’s the transition from feeling like you just finished your PhD and, unless you’re a really exceptional PhD student, following through on that project that was mostly initiated by your supervisor, to doing what you actually want and following through with your own academic interests. Finding people who respond well to you doing that work can be extremely satisfying and a great experience.

Postdoctoral Positions to Grow Your Career

Is it possible to stay in academia without pursuing a postdoctoral position?

BR: The problem with postdoctoral positions is that if you just like to do the research but don't want to necessarily be the head of the lab, it’s difficult because postdocs have an expiration date. For example, if you're a postdoc for 12 years, people may raise some eyebrows because a staff researcher role doesn’t commonly exist in academia.

JP: If you do the self-reflection work I talked about earlier, you might be able to shape the work you’re doing now to be a better fit for you. I just got an email from a client that I had a few years back who was a research associate. Certainly, in a Canadian context, the research associate is like a second-tier postdoc. Maybe there’s a little more money compared to a postdoc position, but there's still an end date. He was really struggling as he’d been a research associate for more than a decade. However, I just got an email from him a few days ago saying that he’s enjoying his new academic-adjacent life in university, not as a researcher. It includes a lot of his favorite things about academia without him having to be a researcher anymore. The reality is that postdocs do go in lots of different directions after they have completed their postdoctoral journey. You don't have to think that you have to be a professor or it was a complete waste of time. It is just not helpful to think like that.

Can you give us some insight into how postdoctoral positions are changing?

NQ: I think the postdoc itself is diversifying a little bit. For example, we're hearing about things like industry postdoctoral positions.

JP: The politics and the policies around this are interesting. There certainly are different types of postdocs. There are industry postdocs, as you said, and postdocs that have different defined roles. There are teaching postdocs, or positions in knowledge mobilization. Or there are equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) postdocs. There are positions where you are not doing science in a lab, even though you have a science background, which in theory are going to help train you for different types of paths. So be open to all of that.

NQ: Yes, I know at �����ƽ��, we have had some postdocs who are doing part-time research or full-time research in industry. I think that it’s expanding and hopefully preparing people for careers beyond academia.

BR: In Europe, especially at the larger pharmaceutical companies, for example, they have training programs that include postdoctoral fellowships for two to three years. Companies like Roche, Novartis, and others have a very developed R&D in-house. They have a lot of expertise for scientists to do research work within the company. But at the same time, they get trained in all aspects of the company and can decide at the end of the training whether they want to continue in R&D or go to another strategic path within the company. I think that's really nice because oftentimes you want people that understand such a company that’s strong in research and development. Those programs are interesting options for recent or soon-to-be graduates.

Where Have All the Postdocs Gone?

NQ: There is an article in Nature called (aka, where have all the postdocs gone?) I have also seen this on social media, academics saying that they don’t have anyone applying for the postdoc positions in their labs. So something is changing. Those postdocs are highly productive researchers.

What is the impact going to be on science?

NQ: I don't know if you have an answer to the question, where have all the postdocs gone? But what does that mean, and what has to change so that we don't end up impacting discovery?

JP: I'm the wrong person to ask that specific question, and it is obviously very complicated as there are lots of different institutions and governments involved. But I personally can help individuals, and what I want to remind people is that science is going to exist with or without you; it doesn't help anybody for you to be miserable or for you to not make enough money to live on a different continent from the people you love if you don't want to do that! You have to take care of yourself and your family first.

BR: In my case, I also moved to improve my personal situation. I always wanted to move across the Atlantic to Europe, so I would even say that science was an excuse. I always loved science. So I figured, why can't one aim serve the other?

JP: That's the kind of selfishness I love.

BR: Sometimes I do wonder if I made the right choice, but I think that for people like me who migrated for their careers, you might as well make the most of it because you've made the sacrifice of being away from family. I think if I'm going to have a mediocre life then I might as well go back to where I come from. But there’s this very common idea that you have to give your all because you already gave up so much; it’s a sunken fallacy situation where people think they suffered so they should continue to suffer. I'm exaggerating a little, but I think that's something that other people in my situation think, especially immigrants like me. It's an extra layer of complexity.

Final Words of Advice

Any final advice for grad students looking for postdoctoral positions or other scientific careers?

JP: Let me repeat something I said, “Be selfish.” It doesn't mean be a bad person. Just put yourself first for once, at least for 10 minutes a day to start. I promise you, if you do that, you can help make the world better in ways that only you can. Science will continue. The research will continue. We don't live in an ideal world. Sacrificing yourself is not going to make our world ideal. But if you can identify your secret sauce to make the people around you better or to make the institutions around you better, that’s helpful. So that’s my final message. Just put yourself first, be selfish, and then go and make our world more awesome. Because our world needs it.

NQ: Science needs it. I think there are many ways to contribute to science, and it doesn't have to be at the bench. It doesn't have to be through that academic career, but it can be if that's what's calling to you.

You can find Dr. Jennifer Polk on X @phdtolife and see what career coaching services she has at .

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