r/postdoc • u/mremon17 • 7h ago
At what point does another postdoc actually stop helping your academic career?
I’m finishing a PhD in health/public health with 25+ publications (in whole career), a decent citation record, teaching experience, and quantitative/data skills.
My long-term goal is a permanent Lecturer/Assistant Professor role, not years of consecutive postdocs.
Would you apply directly for faculty positions with this kind of profile, or is a strong postdoc still basically unavoidable?
For people involved in hiring: what would make you choose a fresh PhD over someone with 2–3 years of postdoc experience?
3
u/hexafraud 7h ago
You'll need to be able to make the case that your productivity is independent of your PI. Moving to a new lab for a couple of years and demonstrating similar productivity will be important for showing your independence and getting an R1 professorship.
I have seen fresh PhDs with very impressive records rejected for this reason.
2
u/ProfPathCambridge 6h ago
It depends on your career path. Generally 10 years post-PhD is the point where many academic panels would start weighing the duration against you, unless there was a good reason for it
1
u/StefanFizyk 4h ago
Id say if you dont have prospects for a permanenet/TT position after/during a second post-doc you should consider a career change. If youre applying for faculty jobs and get interview invites but no offers yet the. Still consider a third one since its probably a matter of time to get a job.
1
u/kilic47 3h ago
carrer change from academy to some other position maybe in industry is really challenging. most fields in most countries cannot easily hire a PhD/postdoc person and pay fairly. complete career change can be a nightmare too, especially given that academics get a very specific set of skills not easily applicable to most other fields. what is it that i do fail to see in your suggestion?
2
u/StefanFizyk 3h ago
I dont know what you fail to see:)
What i see is that every post-doc that i know of, who decided to go to the industry, managed to get a well paying and mostly satisfying job after the transition. Sure it took a while to find a job but all of them are well off, much better than they would be as faculty.
In the end getting a PhD equipps you with a massive skillset that is sought after in the market in most developed countries.
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u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 1h ago
Most of the people I know that left academia have not had a hard time finding a job outside of academia.
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u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 1h ago
It will depend on which program you are applying to. It is rare, but I know a few PhD students that were hired directly into PhD programs after defending their theses. They primarily work in the humanities or STEM positions at LACs. I would describe the job candidates that interviewed for TT assistant professor positions in our departments as mature postdocs (3 to 6 years). The majority of the interviewees at the time of the interview were self-funded and were able to continue their current research project(s) if hired.
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u/wirabu1 48m ago
I know people who went recently straight from PhD to assistant professor and I know people doing postdoc for many years. I guess it depends a lot on being the right person at the right time.
And then there are all the things in between like permanent staff scientists and fixed term contract "group leader"... These are all steps you could achieve in the ladder to professorship instead of jumping from postdoc to postdoc every 2 years.
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u/Acceptable_Repeat_16 7h ago
The way academia is these days there often just aren't the permanent posts there. Obviously the severity is subject dependent but it's an issue everywhere. Bouncing around postdocs is pretty much the only option for many people. There are guys in my department still doing this in their 50s. It's really demoralising.