Pros and cons of pursuing a postdoc after a PhD
After seemingly endless years of hard work at the lab bench, you finally have the green light from your thesis committee to write and defend your PhD dissertation. You may start wondering, what comes next?
Should you pursue an academic postdoctoral fellowship? Or leave academia and find a job in industry? What you choose to do after your PhD will depend on your interests and career goals.
Academic Postdoc
The academic postdoc experience is crucial if you want to become a faculty member and Principal Investigator leading a research lab. While you should have already mastered the scientific inquiry process, critical thinking and troubleshooting skills during your PhD training, in a postdoctoral position, you will acquire further experience. Postdocs develop and manage research projects, manage collaborations with other labs, write and publish manuscripts, apply for grants, supervise/mentor research technicians, graduate students and even junior postdocs. Postdocs seek opportunities to attend and present their research at conferences and continue building their scientific network.
An alternative to the traditional postdoc position mentored by a Principal Investigator is specialized Fellows program (e.g., Whitehead Fellows Program, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Fellows Program) that recruits exceptional PhD graduates to direct their own research program and fast-track them to independent research careers.
The traditional academic postdoc mentored by a Principal Investigator provides opportunity to apply your scientific training to a different research question and a different scientific environment. In fact, it provides an opportunity to pivot altogether. For example, if you want to build a path to the pharmaceutical industry, you can attain further training in an area of research with a therapeutic focus or one that offers a window into drug discovery.
The main drawback of entering an academic postdoc is lower salary relative to the salary you could earn in industry. You can always transition to industry later and aim for a slightly higher role/salary (e.g., Senior Scientist versus Scientist for a recent PhD without a postdoc), depending on your postdoc training and how many years of postdoc experience you obtain.
The Industry Path
If you ultimately aspire to climb the career ladder within industry, you could easily skip the academic postdoc step. Transitioning to industry right after your PhD, rather than after a postdoc, could be beneficial from a hiring perspective. Many job descriptions value prior industry experience, and your resume will pass through the applicant tracking systems.
Specifically, you will gain experience working collaboratively as a team and in a matrix environment as well as knowledge of the drug discovery pipeline that will be advantageous when landing the next role in industry.
In addition, the connections you make in industry will boost your network visibility when seeking the next role. As already mentioned, industry salaries will be higher than an academic postdoc salary.
Another consideration: Industry Postdoc
Another option to consider is an Industry Postdoc. Some pharmaceutical companies have well-established Industry Postdoc programs for recent PhD graduates. These positions usually have clear endpoints, and the salary is more competitive than an academic postdoc. There is often an emphasis on exploratory research and publishing as part of the training (as long as there is no proprietary information) and less emphasis on applying for grants.
While certain programs do NOT hire trainees into their own companies after the industry postdoc training, you will be able to build your network within industry — which could potentially lead to better job prospects down the road.
If you might want to pursue an academic faculty track after your postdoc, then industry postdoc is not your best option. Look for an academic postdoc position where you can build you network with academic faculty and develop a track record of publications and successfully competing for funding which will be important for securing a faculty position.
To postdoc or not to postdoc?
If you are still unsure about which track to pursue after your PhD, talk to individuals who have pursued the different paths and apply to different opportunities, both in industry and academia, and compare after the interviews. An entirely distinct route is to consider career options away from the bench where the training you obtained during your PhD is an asset. Ultimately, the decision on what to do next after your PhD should be based on your career aspirations and personal values.
Isabel Lam, PhD, is a Program Administrator at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center involved in training and career development of postdoctoral and clinical fellows. She holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.