You don’t have to solve everything to get a job
In last week’s blog post, I discussed how—both in research and in life—you don’t have to solve everything at once. There’s a kind of magic to playing the long game, taking a programmatic, small-ball approach, in which in each experiment gives you a little bit more knowledge to move on to the next idea, which then gives you inspiration for the next experiment, and so on. You may not hit upon a major research discovery right out of the gates, but that doesn’t mean you’re not building towards something special. Still, a majority of the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows I see admit to feeling an immense amount of pressure to find something “important” that will get them a lot of press and accolades.
This mindset often arises, not just out of ambition and curiosity, but also out of fear. There can be a kind of panic that sets in. Sometimes trainees think that if they don’t discover something big right away, then they won’t stand out from their peers, and they won’t get a job in the field. As the years in graduate school or the postdoctoral fellowship start to pass without a “monumental discovery,” the panic gets worse and worse.
One student described this mindset to me in considerable detail: they reasoned that if they wanted an academic job, then they had to get 5 papers out in graduate school, at least one of which had to be in a top-tier journal such as Nature. Then they could get a prestigious postdoctoral award that would allow them to work with a well-known scientist at a highly regarded institution, which would then all but guarantee them a job as an assistant professor one day. Now, at the time the student was telling me this plan, they were freaking out a bit because one of their papers was taking quite a long time to write, and it wasn’t obvious it was going to go to a high-impact journal, so they were very concerned that they weren’t going to succeed at becoming a professor because they were already “behind.”
Damn. That’s a lot of pressure. And it’s just not really how any of this works.
Obviously, it is helpful when applying for jobs to have some big research breakthroughs to point to. I won’t try to sugar-coat that. And there’s probably one or two superstars each year whose work gets a lot of the attention, but those one or two people can’t take all the jobs. And, as a faculty member who has served on lots of search committees over the years, and who has watched many more candidate searches play out in various departments, I can tell you this: the person with the “best” CV doesn’t always get the job.
Why is that? There can be many reasons. Sometimes it’s because the front-running candidate turns out to be an asshole who is particularly rude to trainees. Other times, it’s because the candidate looks great on paper, but in the job talk and interview, they somehow fall flat. Still, other times, it’s because the candidate’s future research directions don’t quite align with what the department strategically needs, no matter how ground-breaking their research may be. And yet, still other times, there’s a nagging doubt in the committee’s mind that the candidate might actually be a ‘one-hit wonder’ capitalizing on their own good timing and the excellent work and thinking of their mentors.
So, who does stand out for jobs? A candidate who can clearly articulate their unique place in the field alongside their strategic and programmatic vision for the future. A candidate who knows what they bring to the table, beyond their own research projects, who knows how to support trainees from diverse backgrounds, and to use their skills to uplift the department. These aren’t necessarily the people who have had the kind of major breakthroughs that receive a lot of media attention, but they are the people who understand where they’re going, how they’re going to get there, how their work will impact their communities, and even how their work could ultimately be game-changing for the field. These are the people who will be successful at getting grants, attracting students, and who would be an interesting collaborator.
If you’re on the job market, or maybe even gearing up for your interviews, don’t panic if you haven’t yet solved all the major questions of the universe yet. You have your whole career for that. Focus on what makes you uniquely you, and the long-term promise of your programmatic research program. If you’re navigating the job market and feeling the pressure to “prove” yourself, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to figure it out alone either. I help early-career academics craft clear and compelling visions for job talks and interviews. Reach out if you’d like support.
Next week: Being in reactive mode is exhausting
