No amount of academic experience will help you avoid this. No matter how qualified, trained or “seasoned” you think you are in a given protocol, when you start a new position at a new company you will be forced to learn it again, following their standard operating procedure. On-the-job training is more important than academic experience. Instead, start marketing yourself for your new non-academic career and forget about applying for postdocs. Stop obsessing over titles and publications. If you want to be guaranteed an industry position, you need to arm yourself with the transferable skills that employers are looking for and begin to create a network of industry professionals who can help you get your foot in the door. It won’t help you get an industry job or higher-tier job in industry. Many new PhD graduates and master’s degree graduates are hired into these “postdoc required” roles.Ī postdoc is not required for an industry job. If you think a postdoc is necessary for getting an industry job, think again.Īs a PhD, most industry jobs require “less training” than you have and no postdoc experience.Įven if the job posting says “postdoc experience required,” it is often not required. 3 Reasons To Transition Into Industry Now, Not Later The longer you stay in academia, the more you hurt your chances of getting an industry job. They see postdocs as having negative, preconceived notions of industry and, as a result, do not want to hire them. On the other hand, these companies tend to see postdocs as narrow-minded and set in their ways. They see newly minted PhDs as fast learners and flexible. The truth is that many companies prefer to hire PhDs fresh out of graduate school. These PhDs believe that more years of experience behind the academic lab bench will look good to an industry employer. Too many PhDs are operating under the misconception that you need a postdoc to obtain a research scientist position in industry. If the academic system is not helping you now, what makes you think spending more time in the system will help you? Why would you remain in a system that no longer functions as it should? These postdocs have been labelled “permadocs.” The number of faculty positions, however, are shrinking.Īs a result, thousands and thousands of postdocs are unable to move into more fulfilling careers. The postdoc system is broken and yet the number of postdocs in science has grown substantially.Ī recent report in Nature reported an alarming jump by 150% in the number of postdocs between 20. Why You Need To Stop Applying For Postdocs I don’t regret my postdoctoral training but I do realize that I could have transitioned into industry without it. Yes, some of these industry professionals had postdocs but many had master’s degrees or just bachelor’s degrees.Įventually, I made the decision to start pursuing an industry job immediately, not later, and was hired into a great research scientist position for Estée Lauder Companies.
I reached out to people on LinkedIn and set up informational interviews with employees in various biotech and biopharma companies. When I was nearing the end of my contract, I began to research potential companies I wanted to work for. This was supposed to prepare me for industry? I was treated poorly and received fewer benefits than when I was a graduate student. I continued to get paid low wages and work long hours at the bench. So after my PhD, I began a postdoc, like all the other graduate students I knew. There was no way I was prepared for the job market yet. I knew I would never become a tenure-track professor.Īt the same time, I always thought I needed multiple titles and many years in academia to gain the necessary experience for industry. I loved research but I knew the academic system was broken and that my true calling was to be a research scientist in industry. I had finally made the decision to leave academia.
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