With the winds of change brought by a new season, I’m back to help my readers to get out from dispair. This time a reader ask:
Dear Sassy scientist,
How do I deal with rejection during a job hunt?
Dear Sarah,
I hear you writing from the edge of despair. Let’s be honest: you’ve chosen the scenic route to career purgatory. Nevermind watching your lifelong friends enjoying their permanent contracts, job stability and newly bought houses (kudos to them, I guess). You decided to inflict yourself with the pain of job uncertainty.
Reduced opportunities in a saturated job market with few academic positions, senior researchers taking multiple positions, professors clinging to their positions past their retirement age like first-edition Pokémon cards and scarce government funding in the name of “efficiency”. Yes, it’s all a giant compost heap.
I have given this a thought. It’s grim, let’s face it. From my own experience (and countless catharsis sessions with my fellow friends over some pints), I’ve concluded that postdoc hunting feels like filling one of those sticker albums we had as kids (I won’t reveal my most treasured one; no need to betray my age): each sticker being a reason or circumstance related to the experience of looking for the next postdoc. I’m sure you or our fellow readers hit one of these at some point:
- The one with the poorly tailored application: you were in a rush, you cut corners and decided to describe yourself as a “team player” in your cover letter. This will steal some sighs from the PI reading your application. My advice to you if you’ve been here: do your homework and customize your application to the post you’re applying. It matters.
- The one with the fit mismatch: with jobpools with the size of detrital zircons and our hyper-specialised profiles it’s highly likely you will apply to positions that only vaguely resemble your expertise. Sometimes it’s just not your match, and that’s that.
- The one with the ghosting: You spent days customizing your application, hit submit… and then nothing. Radio silence for months. Surely someone was hired during that geological timescale, but sending a follow-up message wouldn’t hurt anyone. To be fair, sometimes PIs legally cannot follow up unless the chosen one has formally accepted. If the suspense is killing you, a follow up message might do the job.
- The one with the internal candidate: Some positions must be advertised even though they’re already earmarked for a continuing postdoc or a soon-to-graduate PhD. Can you avoid wasting your time? Maybe. A quick cold email to the PI before applying can reveal whether the job is real or, well… merely filling space on a website.
- The one with the vanishing funding. You put the effort into writing and submitting the proposal. However, in times of political uncertainties and governments changing their minds on science policies as three-year-olds, it might be that the grant gets delayed or even cancelled. All to do is regroup (and refrain from voting for that party in the next elections).
This list isn’t exhaustive, but you got the idea.
You came looking for advice, right? And here I am, just rambling about the status quo… I leave you with my two pennies, free of toxic positivity. While rejection hurts, it’s not a sign of your potential or even your identity: keep perspective (“Don’t despair you’ll get it right tomorrow night”). Reflect on what you can control and what’s out of control (about the latter: probably more than you think). Stay connected with the people around you (we need to embrace how to fail) and keep reaching out to potential PIs.
And most importantly don’t let the system bring you down. We need more people like you, not fewer.
Yours truly,
Sassy Scientist
