My postdoc-finding story

It has been one year and twenty eight days since we set foot in England. I meant to blog about our experiences but failed at doing so until now, therefore I am going to write in retrospect. One of the reasons I want to share this is so I can come back to it and another is to contrast the world as we knew it to the newly found experiences in a country foreign to both Paul and I.

From early in my career I knew I wanted to stay in academia with the hope that one day I might be able to teach at the university. Although it is not strictly required most institutions would find it desirable for a candidate professor to have postdoctoral experience, therefore after finishing my PhD I decided to find a postdoctoral position somewhere. Gladly Paul also had similar career goals. Because science is relatively flexible and many countries around the world have competitive scientific institutions it was easy for the adventurous-us to decide to find a postdoc outside of the United States.

The process of looking for an academic postdoc is rather straight forward but the odds of finding it (after science funding cuts spread worldwide) are slim. There are three main ways you can get a postdoc. One is by applying to an advertised position. Another is by contacting a group leader (GL) hoping he or she would have space and money to employ you from references. This was the most common way in the past when GLs had extra/enough funding, but it is virtually impossible today.  The third way is to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship. These fellowships provide a salary to the scientist. The scientist is able to bring his/her own money to the laboratory, as expected the fellowships are highly competitive and prestigious.

We both interviewed in Dresden, Germany and decided against its cold winters. Then we focused on finding something in England where the language was not a problem. All the GLs we contacted in England asked from us to apply for fellowships. They become your fellowship sponsor and assure you a space in their laboratories but only if you are awarded the fellowship. We spent a chunk of time from our seven-month break dealing with fellowship applications. Luckily Paul got one, but I didn’t.  Originally my sponsor, who also paid for me to come to interview in England, said he could employ me for six months even if I was not awarded a fellowship to begin with, so I could use that time to apply for more. Unfortunately a month before moving to England the offer was cancelled due to the GLs lack of funding.

I arrived to England postdoc-less, this partly inhibited me from writing the blog for a year. I had started contacting GLs the day my other offer was cancelled; therefore the same week we arrived I had interviews. The process was truly draining for many reasons. Mainly because I was going from meeting to meeting within one or two days of each other and I needed to read up and learn-well what each laboratory was doing. Again, the funding was limited; very few GLs in my field were actively looking for a postdoc. All GLs wanted me to write fellowships with them and I was against that idea after my experience with the first potential employer. Last but not least many of the advertised positions were only advertised to fulfill an -equal rights- employer requisite but had already a person for the job. At times I had to forget the fact that I wanted to work with a simpler model organism, forget the fact I wanted to do heart regeneration and also forget even the fact that I wanted to stay in developmental biology.  It was a very difficult time for me. Nonetheless, I was very active, or you could say aggressive in looking for a postdoc and it paid off.

The first week here in Cambridge I met with a female professor I had contacted before coming. Although she was retiring and was not accepting any more people in her lab she wanted to sit down to recommend a series of laboratories for me to contact. That was really helpful because she gave me an overview of what other scientist were doing and people I might be interested, plus she knew who had funding. One of the people in the list ended up being my current boss.

After applying to a myriad of adverts, exhausted all my options and met with a series of possible employers I got an offer from my current boss. It is true when they say -when it rains it pours- and it goes both ways, good and bad. I say it because the same week I got the offer from my current lab I got listed to three official interviews for labs I had applied out of advertised positions. At this point I was so tired and I had enjoyed my meetings with my current boss so much that I decided to go for his lab. I think this is the first time in my life when I completely made a work-related decision out of a heart hunch. Today I can say it was the right decision for me.

Here is a link to an article about funding cuts in Europe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/nov/23/europe-warned-science-budget-cuts