On the Job Market
I’m so thankful to have landed a tenure-track faculty position at an institution I’m truly thrilled about. My journey through this process was a whirlwind. Some parts were thrilling. Others were sickeningly stressful. The entire time you put one foot in front of the other and cosplay a grownup who didn’t just buy a suit on sale at JC Penny three weeks ago. I tried to focus on a single thought that still makes me chuckle today—these people might actually give me an empty lab, a wad of money, and just let me go off and do science. Where I come from, that sounds like a made up job.
Amidst the scramble to compile all of the materials and put a research vision onto paper, one thing I found incredibly helpful were the applications provided to me by many generous friends and colleagues. For example, check out the amazing number of resources on Steve Ramirez’s lab webpage. This has inspired me to be as open as possible about my own path through this process. Below you will find materials and notes related to both my application and interview. These include the Cover Letter, Research Statement (via email request) and Teaching Statement, in addition to Chalk Talk slides (via request), advice for meetings during the interview, and my initial startup budget.
Along the way, I give my best advice. Keep the advice you like, trash what you think is trash, and most importantly get the perspectives of A LOT of people. Everyone has a different journey. Everyone has a different job market experience. The way to be most prepared is to compile advice from as many people as possible and use what works for you. If I learned anything through the application and interview process is there is no one formula for success.
The Application
DALLE-2 Generation: “Scientist creating a new world inside of a beaker.”
The only thing I have to say about this cover letter is that I have zero recollection of writing it. But reading it through a year later and I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out.
I thought long and hard about more openly sharing my research statement. This is a research direction I’m incredibly excited about. I’ve been envisioning my research program for years and I think this direction perfectly combines many aspects of my expertise, lifelong interests, and long-term ambitions. However, tossing these ideas out into the world for anyone to read and build off is nerve-racking to say the least. In general, I’m trying to get over fears of being “scooped” and lean towards openness and transparency, but being a new PI feels like a particularly vulnerable time. Even with a job-in-hand, it will take years to get these projects up and running. So, for the time being I’ll only (happily!) share my research statement via email request.
The research statement is often the cornerstone of an application to an R1 institution. Here are some questions I kept in mind while crafting this statement:
Is the research program compelling to a broad audience?
Are these ideas fundable by multiple institutions?
Is it clear from my training that I have the expertise to pull this off?
Am I leveraging all aspects of my training and background to create a completely unique research program? Another way to think of this: how am I uniquely poised to tackle this exciting research direction?
How does my research program compliment other research within the department and institution without directly competing?
Does my excitement bleed from the pores of this document?
Do I balance ambition without being overly ambitious? (my application is probably pretty close to the over-ambitious side)
A question I wish I had kept in mind more: Is it clear that some of these projects and ideas are very achievable within the first 3 years? Ambitious, high-risk goals are valuable, but if these don’t quite work out as planned how will you leverage your core skillset to keep the boat afloat and sustain the lab through tough times?
Something else I’d like to point out about my approach: I purposefully chose to not simply build off my postdoctoral work. It’s very common to do A, B, and C during your postdoc, making topic D the natural transition to work on during the faculty phase. Instead, my proposal embarks on a new direction that compliments much of my expertise. Therefore, my statement has zero preliminary data and carves out a vision for the next 5-7 years of my lab. Some departments are looking for this type of candidate, others not so much. This is one aspect of whether a candidate is the right “fit” for a department. You need to think hard about your own plan and what type of department you hope to end up!
When it comes to teaching, I was in the same boat that many of you are likely in: close to zero experience in course development. Still, I put a lot of thought into what I hope my classroom looks like, compiling all of the good experiences that stood out to me over my education. There are three things I really tried to do here that I assume most search committees look for in candidates at an R1 institution:
The teaching statement is maybe weighted less than the research, but by no means can it appear an afterthought. Has this person actually put effort into envisioning what their teaching philosophy will be?
Does this candidate know the courses that we offer and can they propose courses they are qualified to teach and why?
Has this candidate identified curriculum our department currently lacks and do they propose courses that fill in these gaps?
Do your homework. Look up their undergrad and graduate courses and picture how you fit in to their curriculum. Ideally, you are coming in to the department with a unique set of training. Leverage that background to propose new courses that would excite a lot of students within the department and build up your specific subfield.
The Interview
Text exchange with Ubadah Sabbagh on Day 2 of interviews just before the chalk talk.
Meetings
During the interview, your day is filled from 8am-8pm with meetings and events. It’s exhausting and you want to give everyone your absolute best. Here is a smattering of my thoughts and advice:
In general I say a good, easy-going conversation is going to be hard to beat. You want people to say wow I really enjoyed that meeting when you leave.
They want people who can THINK. I’ve met postdocs with great publication records in prestigious labs who don’t have an original thought of their own and can’t think beyond the next step of their work. I’m a neuroengineer but if you sit me down for 15 minutes with someone who studies cancer biology by the end of that meeting we could meet in the middle and have a potential collaboration.
Keep them talking. People love talking about themselves and their work. I looked up everyone I was meeting in advance and knew their general field. I could always say “so you work on ___ , right? Tell me more…” and they go into their own world talking about things they’re excited about.
Prepare for certain questions. Here are just a few.
Have a plan for funding like your first R01 and be able to list some early career awards you are competitive for. If it’s an engineering department definitely mention the NSF CAREER as well.
Know what NIH institutes your work is suitable for.
If your research program is a new direction, why? Be able to justify how your training and expertise has prepares you to take on this new challenge.
If you’re continuing postdoc work, is your current PI aware? Have you had specific conversations regarding what work you can take with you?
Are their major equipment purchases necessary for your research program?
Have you looked into what core facilities you will be a heavy user of?
Who in the department do you hope to collaborate with?
What courses will you teach? What courses do you want to develop? Describe your teaching experience.
Have you mentored trainees? Tell me about that. What have you learned.
Come with your own questions. This was something I was not prepared for my first go around. I suppose I just expected to be getting asked a lot of questions about my work and plans. But almost always we would sit in someone’s office and the first thing they say is “So, what do you want to know?” Some starting points are:
Tenure requirements
Support for junior faculty. This one is important. Ask for concrete answers. You don’t want “yes there is support.” But how is that support shown. Are their formal mentors assigned? Grant feedback mechanisms? Reduced service requirements until tenure?
Don’t ask “is the department collaborative.” The answer will almost always be yes. Instead, ask who do they collaborate with in the department.
[for the chair and dean] During their time in leadership, what have they helped to build up within the department? What is their vision for the future that they will help to develop?
Wear good shoes. You will walk sooo much. Also a pro tip is compression socks. Look them up and trust me.
For meals, look up the menu in advance, especially if it’s cuisine you aren’t familiar with. That way you already know what to order and don’t have to worry about balancing conversation while browsing the menu.
A really good, experienced host will lay out the meal plan for you. I loved it when we sat down and the faculty member said “feel free to order drinks. We’re going to choose about 4 appetizers how about you pick two of them. Plan for both an entrée and dessert if you’re up for it.” GLORIOUS when this happens. I don’t have to play a guessing game the whole meal. Unfortunately this is like 25% of people lol. So anyway, try your best.
For the same reasons as the Research Statement, I’ll only share these slides via email request. It’s unclear to me how helpful the slide deck is, but I’m absolutely willing to share for anyone wanting to take a look.
Personally, the chalk talk was not only the most ambiguous part of the interview process, but also by far the most stressful! (Side note: departments should 1000% be letting their internal postdocs observe chalk talks from faculty candidates. I still have never even seen one besides my own!)
The chalk talk, like any other part of this archaic process, has no one path to success. Make it your own. Be yourself. Present what feels most comfortable to you. But here are some tips and advice I have:
As soon as you know you have a chalk talk, ask for specifics! Every department has their own norms and standards.
How long will it be? The difference between 1 or 2 hours is huge!
What type of material should you cover? This is most often the aims of your first R01, but you may get asked for the aims of multiple grants. In addition you may get asked to cover other topics like a brief overview of your postdoc work, your long-term vision, DEI work, and an overview of courses you plan to teach or develop.
Do they even want slides? I have found some places prefer very few slides and more reliance on a white board.
Practice to an audience. This is so obvious, but practicing to yourself will only prepare you so much for a chalk talk. Timing is incredibly difficult to judge. Fielding questions. Staying on track. Hopping between a white board and slides. Managing each of these is critical for success.
I think a strong introduction is to provide an overview of your research program. This is different than describing a grant. What new field are you carving out with your research direction? What technologies will your lab develop and what type of questions will you try and answer? How are you combining your training and expertise into a fascinating research direction that you are uniquely poised to tackle? Get everyone excited and let them see your passions and potential, then transition from this broad overview into your innovative R01 and specific aims.
The audience will be a broad, and everyone in the room needs to walk away able to describe the work you plan to do. You need both high-level overviews of your research program and technical specifics about each Aim.
Know answers to questions along these lines:
What NIH institutes do you plan to submit these grants to?
What preliminary data do you have or plan to have by the end of your postdoc?
XX lab from XX institution works on something very similar, how does this work differ from theirs? How are you innovating?
This Aim seems very dependent on the success of your new technique, what alternative approaches could you use to answer the same question?
What early career awards do you plan to apply for?
(also keep in mind all of the questions listed in the Meetings section above)
Make explicit the technical and intellectual innovations of each Aim. You want to be absolutely clear about what is novel in your proposal.
Don’t have all the answers? No problem. You never will. Leverage the unknowns and twist them into exciting branch points for alternative approaches and new projects. “Hmm that’s a tough question to answer right now, but I can imagine building off that specific experiment and combining it with X, Y, and Z experiments to take an entirely new direction suitable for an R01 proposal.” Demonstrate that you can think on your feet, create new projects from thin air, and lean in to the hard questions, rather than running from them.
Leverage the expertise of the department and institution. Generating huge amounts of interesting data? List collaborators with expertise in data science and machine learning. Using conventional optical techniques? Mention how you can collaborate with photonics experts for innovative optical approaches. Does the institute have a medical school? Bring up names of MDs you can work with and who may write letters of support for your NIH proposals.
Pro Tip: Take a tiny bit of power back and use the chalk talk as an opportunity to gauge the culture of the department. Even tough and critical questions can and should be delivered in a respectful, professional manner. Are the faculty trying to back you into a corner or are they having constructive discussions about your proposal?
At some point after your interview, you may get asked for a startup package budget. Sometimes this happens after you’ve received a verbal offer, but other times it’s yet another data point the department is using to determine if you are the right candidate for this position. This is when things get real!
My biggest advice here is to consult with as many people as possible in similar departments at similar institutions. Some things to consider:
Startup packages can differ between private and public institutions
The general range for a startup can vary dramatically depending on the field. For example, biomedical engineering startups are on average higher that electrical engineering. Biology and biomedical in general tend to be higher than non-bio fields.
Is this a soft or hard money position? Is this a medical school?
Are their core facilities you can use to reduce the number of major equipment purchases?
Many factors such as these can influence the ballpark total of your startup budget. But again, the best help to me was to speak directly with people in similarly-ranked departments. I ended up at Vanderbilt Biomedical Engineering, so it was most helpful for me to chat with people from private institutions in bioengineering/biomedical engineering, departments. It became clear that based on the institution, department, and my personal field my max equipment budget was a ballpark $1.6M, with somewhere in the $1.2-1.3M being most ideal.
My best advice here:
Prioritize what you need to be successful. If there is a major purchase required that is critical to your research program, don’t hesitate to include it.
Be reasonable and justify your equipment needs. I tried to lay out my budget in a way that anyone reading could see how each purchase fit into the huge puzzle that would build my lab. In my spreadsheet, I build the lab piece by piece, organizing purchases into categories such as “Experimental Rig #1,” “Surgery Suite,” “Experimental Rig #2,” with descriptions for the role each of these categories played in the lab. If you lay things our this way, it’s much easier to picture how all of this equipment facilitates your research goals.
This seems obvious, but the equipment requirements should be consistent with the projects outlined in your research statement and chalk talk.
I’m not sure how much it helped, but when applicable I did my homework and looked up institution-specific costs, such as vivarium fees, and data storage prices. Obviously, it’s also best to have quotes for capital equipment, but sometimes there is a time crunch and you have to give ballpark numbers.
Do not include a monetary value for personnel. Instead, provide a brief description of your lab personnel in the first 2 years (e.g. two students, a postdoc, a research tech).
Likewise, if you choose to include summer salary, don’t include a monetary value. Instead say 6 months of summer salary (i.e. the first two years).
Know where you can cut costs if necessary. Maybe include major equipment like a confocal or two-photon microscope, but know that if absolutely necessary you could get by in the first few years with the core facilities. Consider negotiating reduced fees for these core facilities until you land a grant that allows you to buy exactly what you want. But going back to the first point—if something is both expensive and absolutely critical, then don’t compromise!
That’s what I have on this topic. Best of luck out there y’all. Feel free to reach out with questions.
-Daniel
Text exchange to my wife near the end of Day 2 of interviews when my introverted self could not take any more meetings.
