Saturday, October 29, 2005

How I got my first postdoc (by request)

Wren asked me to discuss this, so I'll do that now. If relevant, I can write the sequel later. As mentioned previously, I don't plan on turning this into a trilogy.

It should be mentioned first that this stuff works differently in math than in other subjects---first, nearly all math postdocs teach and nearly all math postdocs are hired through a department (or an umbrella group that's between departments), although some research groups have their own postdocs and of course people can get NSF postdocs and other similar things. (In most cases, though, some faculty member does usually have to be willing to serve as some sort of mentor so it's not like you can come out of left field---the difference is that it is extremely rare for the money to come out of their pocket.)

One effect of all this business is that math postdoc hiring seems more seasonal than other fields. I've heard of plenty of physics postdocs, for example, who may start at any point in the year, but math postdocs are almost always synchronized with the school year and the timing of the job advertisements reflect this.

If you are planning on starting a postdoc, say, in fall 06, you should already have contacted your recommenders and prepared your package. Your CV should be easy to read. In math and physics, it's fine to be long (and expected to be comprehensive) but don't put more important stuff at the top because attention spans decrease exponentially. Your research statement should also be polished. They don't usually help you but you if it sucks, they do hurt you, so you have to take it seriously. (I'm going to forgo talking about this more, because I think the culture of such statements varies widely in different fields.) For math, some schools will also want teaching statements. For your publications, under review is not a "publication". That annoys many of the people reading your application, and you don't want to risk that. "Under review" is a separate category. "References furnished upon request" is also considered obnoxious by many people. Either list your references or don't.

Finding where to apply: If your advisor is well-connected, he/she may hook you up. This helps a lot, but I was on my own, so here's what I did. The official magazine publications of your field typically have loads of job listings around the right time. In my case, this means SIAM News, Physics Today, and The Notices of the AMS (and the AMS, in fact, has an extensive online database that is absolutely the best listing for any sort of mathematics). Other societies have similar things both online and in print, so go to the website of your relevant online organization and see what their resources are.

Make life as easy as possible for your recommenders. Give them mailing labels. (I have good latex code for this.) Give them plenty of time before the deadlines. Give them a list of everywhere that you're apply with the deadlines in easy places to find. (I know a bunch of the stuff I mention is generic, but it's better to go through it anyway.)

Now, I did contact a couple professors to apply to them directly. If you are going to see them at a conference, let them know you'll be there and ask if they have time to meet. If that's not possible, name-drop your advisor if your advisor is somebody they'd know. Drop some other connection if possible. (You know, if they went to Caltech, I have used that one very successfully in getting people to answer my e-mail. The idea is to bring up things you have in common so that they know you're not some random schmuck who is applying for a job because you found their name via a google search. Professors get tons of e-mails like that all the time, so the e-mail needs to show that you actually looked at their stuff.)

Attend lots of conferences (throughout your entire graduate school career!): This actually starts much earlier than when you're applying for jobs. This is especially good if you are going to contact an individual. Give not only short talks but also posters. Posters are your big chance to talk to profs one-on-one. At the applied math conferences I attend, many of the big-shots do go to the poster sessions (which are conveniently combined with the dessert sessions). This is the big chance to drop off some reprints, discuss your work, and impress people. (You can also blow it too, of course, but if you're going into academia, you need to meet these people. Match the faces to the names you see in the journal articles.) Arguably, my first postdoc was a direct product [as opposed to direct sum :)] of one of these discussions, though I'll never know for sure. I ran into someone at a conference in Maui in 2000 who thought I was at Georgia Tech because I looked familiar. I knew he was because he was an AMa postdoc at Caltech when I was, so I told him that was why I looked familiar. (This is when it helps that there are only 2 graduates in the department a year and only just now have they finally reached 100 undergrad alums in its whole 50 year history.) We had a chance to talk several times, including at my poster. I expressed my interest in Georgia Tech and at that conference and at a later one, he indicated I should let him know when I was applying so that he would make the relevant faculty members aware of the application. (At this point, I am not privy to the events, but just getting one's portfolio examined seriously is a big step with there are N >> 1 other applications being sent directly to a department.)

For conferences, if there is on you want to attend, don't be afraid to ask your advisor about it. My advisor didn't have any money to send me, but Cornell did---up to one conference per year for up to $600. I found a conference to attend every year, and I also got a couple small funding awards directly from SIAM. I used my prize money for an award I got from SIAM to funding travel to other conferences (and the award included free attendance to a particular conference---it was at that prize winner reception that I met Cleve Moler, by the way), and I even spent some money out of pocket to make sure I could go to conferences I felt were important. (I was less social than I should have been at many of them, but that's a separate issue.)

In terms of number of places, I applied to something like 50 postdoc positions and 20 regular faculty ones. I applied for a regular faculty job in MechE at UIUC (and was interviewed) but everything else was math, physics, or applied math. At certain places (such as Georgia Tech), I applied to multiple groups. In fact, my hiring at GT did involve communication between relevant people in math and physics. (The program through which I was hired in math was for US citizens, so that's why the money came from math. Then the physics side could hire somebody without such a restriction, and I could be in both groups and have all the interactions with both that I wanted. It was a very good arrangement.)

OK, so I don't know if I answered every question Wren had (I doubt I did), but let me know specifically what else I should mention, and I'll try to say something useful. I know that I had to do all this stuff without my advisor (because he was out of touch with the greater research community), and while I can't prove what efforts led to what, you never know who is going to see your name in the hat and have some vague recollection of having seen it before. The more, the better.

I know there are a lot of extraneous details here, but I wanted to stress the conference thing here for people earlier in their graduate school careers.

Also, maybe Justin can add some useful stuff here, as he's also gone through the postdoc job search and can certainly pick up on stuff that I neglected or was just different from what he experienced.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mason--

Thanks! I'm skimming this on my way out the door to a wedding. Will doubtless have a list of questions for you by Monday.

I'll note that my advisor has just chewed me out for "wasting my time" attending a conference next week, so there are clearly some differences. I also find poster sessions excruciating--consider the effect of hearing aids, which amplify *all* sound in a noisy, huge, echoey poster hall...but that which does not kill us...

Mason said...

Presumably, your advisor is disappointed that he/she won't be getting as much cheap labor next week, but was his/her comments with his/her best interests in mind or with yours? I know what I'd answer to that, but I don't know your advisor.

I can't give a solution to the other, but posters sessions are the situation where one gets one's best chances to show potential postdoc advisors your work, so the best I can say is that I'd recommend that you find a way for it to be workable. Maybe you can request a spot in a comparitively less excruciating part of the poster room? The organizers should be sympathetic to such requests.

(The blog did something weird, or I messed up, and this reply accidently ended up on a completely wrong post before.)

Anonymous said...

OK, since Mason invited my postdoc-hunting commentary, here goes... :)

Field to field variations are quite strong, since a lot of what Mason wrote is different from my experience. Rather than believing what either of us would say about a CV, I recommend that job applicants do what I did: take the latex code for someone else's CV (preferably someone successful in their own job search) and replace their info with your own. Added bonus, all the formatting is already done. :D Though the one I use seems to have ancestry predating the most recent version of latex, since I always get a ton of error messages. It comes out OK, though.

Mason is more anal than I am about letter-writing aids for your references, but those are good ideas. From my own experience I'd suggest extending the committee rule to references: get four when you need three, that way you're still OK when (not if) one flakes.

Conferences - probably good things, but that's probably one of those field-to-field variations. I went to precisely two conferences as a grad student, and neither had anything whatsoever to do with my eventual job. The professional association job listings are massively important and useful, though. My view would be apply first, then go to the main conference of the job season (most astro jobs are listed in fall, with Dec./Jan. deadlines, and the biggest US conference of the year is in early Jan.) to actually meet with potential employers.

Another thing about where to apply - the answer is everywhere you can stand. Doesn't matter if it's a position with nothing to do with your thesis or particular interests. As long as it's in your field, it's a better bet than looking outside of academia, and you can't afford to be choosy. I got lucky and ended up in a position vaguely connected to past work and which is extremely interesting to me (despite the fact that I'm writing on Mason's blog rather than working right now). Depending on your political views, an emphasis on European jobs may be appropriate these days - I was days away from mailing a big batch of applications to the UK when I got this job. :) Absolute number clearly varies a lot by field; in 14 months of applying I only sent out maybe 20 applications; Mason's 70 applications, probably in a shorter time period (or was that combining both job searches?) boggles my mind!

Not to be too much of a downer, but in many fields odds are you will eventually come up empty on the job search, so it's good to think about backup plans on how you can get a job in the Real World. I don't have anything particularly useful to say about that, I made some attempts but it's very clear to me that people in the RW don't quite know what to make of PhD academics looking for jobs. Often the relevant professional society will have at least an attempt at helpful resources for such things (the AAS had a workshop on non-academic jobs which I found quite interesting, though I already had this job by then).

One last bit of practical advice: if you can, try and work things with your advisor and department such that you can be very flexible about when you actually graduate. I could have graduated in Spring '04, but since my first job season turned up empty I ended up defending about a week after the end of the official Summer "quarter" such that my degree is dated December 2004 (working as a TA that final quarter o' thesis-revising-and-submitting). Luckily one of the first jobs of that job season worked out for me, so I had no interruption of income.

Mason said...

Justin: I specifically want other people who have gone through this to chime in.

For CVs, it is important to help signal/noise by getting the important stuff as close to the top as possible. People's attention spans decay (at least) exponentially...

Letter-writing aids: This helps reduce the flakiness you mention (and if you apply to a certain number of places, you basically then need to help out your letter writers). In fact, what you mention about getting extra letters is one of the things I forgot to mention. This is a very important thing to do. Nobody is going to be angry if you have 4 letters instead of 3. (And when they ask for three, there is an implicit 'at least' in there anyway.) This holds especially for tenure-track jobs. Don't give them 20 letters, but somebody who asks for 3 and gets 5 or 6 will still be happy. Also, if there are people outside your committee about whom you talk about research a lot, those are also fair game (and potentially very useful).

When you send in your app, also include in your cover letter that you will be attending the relevant major conference. (Some math departments will actually even request this information.)

70 was for one job search, but I have to divide my stuff between multiple departments (and this did include multiple jobs at several schools), I tend to go overboard anyway, and math is weird as far as the postdoc market is concerned because basically all math postdocs (with very few exceptions) have to teach, which is very different from other disciplines.

Thinking about the real-world is relevant, but I'm not much of a fan of it myself.

Justin's point about flexibility of graduation dates and back-up plans is an excellent one. I know many people who had to scrounge one-year things at the last minute. There is so much noise involved in this process that you do want to have something to fall back on temporarily.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Justin. What field are you in? Do I know you IRL?

I'm still digesting this all; more questions will follow, whenever I get a chance. (TAing and trying to write up two papers, one of which needs more experiments; and a *different* experiment planned at BNL soon...)

I can be fairly flexible on graduation date; my advisor has pots of money and can probably switch me to postdoc support...I just need to show evidence of seeking a job.

Anonymous said...

Wren,

I'm in astronomy. I don't think we've met, unless you're posting under a pseudonym... :) I was in Fleming, class of '96.

One last on-topic bit - Mason's reply above implies that one's letters normally come from one's committee. I strongly agree that this need not be the case. Get letters from people who know you and your work (in a positive way, of course). One of my letters came from my first advisor in grad school, now at UCLA (we worked together at Columbia, I got my degree from UCSC after transferring). I'd have liked a letter from another colleague, but he himself is still a postdoc so that didn't really make much sense... :)