From Postdoc to PI — Ten Simple Rules for Applying (part 2)

Welcome back! The last post discussed rules 1-3: the importance to do a postdoc, a concise CV and a unique research statement. Like the last post this one is inspired by a Career Development Workshop at ISMB 2012 that I contributed to (download the slides).

There is still one thing missing from a standard application pack:

4. Pretend you care! The teaching statement

Together with CV and research statement some places ask you to submit a teaching statement. So write one. But don’t be fooled, it’s pretty low on the priority list (for the hiring committee, even if maybe not for you). Academic employers want three things from you: money, papers, and … long time nothing … teaching. I’m not saying they won’t ask you to teach for many hours a week, but when it comes to you being evaluated its money and papers (in that order) which counts.

From Postdoc to PI — Ten Simple Rules for Applying (part 1)

Starting your own group is one of the most important steps in your scientific career — and one of the hardest.

Being invited to a Career Development Workshop at ISMB 2012 made me write down some of the advice that I had got when I was on the jobmarket a few years ago (and even put some of it on slides).

In a diverse and interdisciplinary field like computational biology it is very quite hard to come up with general rules that fit everyone. This is why I went down the self-indulgent route and revisited the CV and research statement I had prepared 4 years ago. (You’ll find a copy in the slides.) Some things are Ok, some things I would improve now — you will see, I’ll comment on this later. Let’s start with the basics: