Research Postdocs - expectations? questions to ask?

[wocrunthis]

Hi everyone!

I applied to both clinical and research postdocs and after several interviews am largely leaning toward going the research route (for lower work stress and family planning reasons). It could just be something about the sites I've applied to but the postdocs at the clinical sites were generally working 50hrs+ and looked tired or stressed about meeting caseload quotas. The folks at the research sites were stressed/felt guilty about spending too much time not working 40hrs lol. I decided I prefer the latter, even with the substantial pay cut.

Outside of prioritizing work-life balance, I'm trying to figure out how to go about ranking research sites, for career reasons. They are all in California and in areas I'm pretty sure I'm happy to live in for a few years. I don't know why but I'm finding this "sense of freedom" to be a bit overwhelming, like all of the sudden I don't know how to make decisions for myself. I think I'm in shock or something that I get to (hopefully) make a decision that's really for all of me, rather than jumping through rings of fire and snatching the best of whatever is within reach, including positions I knew would exploit me, to better position myself for having options in the future.

I've heard a few people say research postdocs gave them some much needed confidence and freedom (taking only two meetings a week, being able to wake up whenever/work remotely, focus on work they want to do... though I'm sure this varies). My questions are- on the career end, what should I be considering and prioritizing? And with that, what should I expect of a research postdoc? What are the signs of exploitation to look out for?

For example, I'm obviously hoping to publish, but is it fair to expect that I'll be writing papers in collaboration with people/my mentor, or should I expect to just be grateful to have access to their data and have them as an editor? Is it okay to expect a mentor to introduce me to their network of collaborators? Use their contacts to help me get a job? Focus on publishing and not have to mentor students outside of any work they're doing with me? I guess I'm also asking, what do postdoc mentors (from T32s and informal positions) expect to get out of it, is it just co-authorship? And what of this is okay to ask in an interview?!?! lol

For context, I'm hoping to land a blended position after postdoc, research with some related clinical work and definitely with opportunities to mentor clinical students once I get to this stage.

Wow that went long, sorry ya'll. Bless you if you made it this far, you are an angel. Advice on any part of my long ass post would be incredibly helpful. Much love.

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[Ollie123]

Put simply, research post-docs are usually brought on to help with running projects, conducting analyses and writing grants/papers. In some cases, they may be brought on with the specific intent of having them transition to faculty there (typical at AMCs where folks may be writing CDAs).

Beyond that it will vary enormously. Some mentors will want to provide heavy guidance on what gets written and be heavily involved. Some mentors will just want to point someone to where the datasets are located and tell them to go nuts. Mentees differ in what they want too as many prefer the latter to the former by the time they make it to that stage. In my experience, most people are <very> comfortable letting post-docs take first authorship on papers and serve as senior author but I've trained almost exclusively in medical settings. That model seems somewhat less common in traditional psychology settings, though I think that is gradually changing.

I can't tell you what to prioritize since it depends where you are at in your career and what you need. If you are already prolific, had an F31 and ran an RCT for your dissertation your priorities should be very different from someone who did a lit review for their dissertation and doesn't even know what an F31 is. Things I would always look for:
1) What have previous trainees gone on to do?
2) What rate are trainees publishing at, with what authorship?
3) Have trainees submitted grant applications as PI while there?
4) How hands-on versus hands-off do they seem to be and how does that fit with your needs?
5) Do they publish with people outside the lab as well? There is a lot to be said for having well-networked mentors and being well-networked yourself when it comes to finding jobs. Its very unlikely anyone will be able to use their contacts to get you a job like you phrased it, but if they know you worked with Dr. X who they know and respect and you published a half-dozen papers with Dr. X last year, chances are pretty darn good you get interviewed. To be clear, I wouldn't necessarily have a decision hinge on this but I think its a plus that is worth considering.

Personally, I just looked for someone whose research interests aligned with mine but allowed me to expand into new methods (mHealth, neuroimaging), who had a history of people into the types of positions I wanted (5/6 former post-docs are AMC faculty, only exception is someone who made the decision to pursue industry) and whose mentees typically received independent NIH funding during post-doc (R or K grants; again 5/6). Worked well for me, but your priorities/needs may be different.

 

[wocrunthis]

This is very helpful, Ollie! Thank you. I'm finding information for rates of publishing and grant submission isn't readily available or is presented for programs as a whole, not specific to mentors. I'm guessing that is okay to ask during interviews w potential mentors, but do people ever ask for names of postdocs? I feel like it'd be so much easier to get a sense of all this if I can just look their pub records myself.

Another question- are there any drawbacks to asking about access to students? I have a couple review papers in mind but dread the thought of having to do all the work myself. I don't want to come off as entitled or lazy though. This one in particular feels tricky to manage because I really do want to learn the ropes of collaborating as a first-author. All of my first-author pubs have been with mentors only (who edit, but don't contribute sections of writing).

Btw, by "help get me a job", I mean more in the realm of asking colleagues if they know of any openings, talk about me to folks at institutions that are hiring, connect me to people for potential pre-interviews, etc.

 

[Ollie123]

100% okay to ask for names of post-docs or even ask to speak with them. Actually it is a massive, gigantic enormous red flag if they don't let you. Many places will likely offer.

It shouldn't be "that" hard to track down post-docs yourself to get their pub records though. Just look at papers the potential PI has published the last few years and google co-authors. If they were first author on the paper, the PI was last author and they are newly minted faculty somewhere....odds are strong they were a trainee of some form. If it's just one paper maybe not, but 3-4 and it's all but guaranteed.

I wouldn't hesitate to ask about access to students. I mean, don't phrase it as "Can I make your students code papers for me because I hate it" but this is a pretty normal thing to ask about.

I am looking to grow my own mentorship ability as I prepare to transition to faculty, do post-docs have the opportunity to work directly with grad students and undergrads?

Will I have the opportunity to pursue independent data collection? What sort of resources are available to do so?

The answer may always be no, but no but no one will bat an eye at the question and many would even appreciate you asking.

Some depends on setting again. Medical setting you will probably have less room to run your own studies (including reviews) than a psych department might offer - at least in my experience. The culture is just different. The counterpoint to that is that they usually have so many incredibly rich datasets you can be insanely productive running secondary analyses. I often joked (with an element of truth) that I could probably get tenure most places just publishing scraps my graduate advisor hadn't gotten around to yet. Dude seriously had whole RCTs from 20 years ago with multimodal outcomes for mining. We published quite a few in high-impact journals.

 

[wocrunthis]

100% okay to ask for names of post-docs or even ask to speak with them. Actually it is a massive, gigantic enormous red flag if they don't let you. Many places will likely offer.

It shouldn't be "that" hard to track down post-docs yourself to get their pub records though. Just look at papers the potential PI has published the last few years and google co-authors. If they were first author on the paper, the PI was last author and they are newly minted faculty somewhere....odds are strong they were a trainee of some form. If it's just one paper maybe not, but 3-4 and it's all but guaranteed.

I wouldn't hesitate to ask about access to students. I mean, don't phrase it as "Can I make your students code papers for me because I hate it" but this is a pretty normal thing to ask about.

I am looking to grow my own mentorship ability as I prepare to transition to faculty, do post-docs have the opportunity to work directly with grad students and undergrads?

Will I have the opportunity to pursue independent data collection? What sort of resources are available to do so?

The answer may always be no, but no but no one will bat an eye at the question and many would even appreciate you asking.

Some depends on setting again. Medical setting you will probably have less room to run your own studies (including reviews) than a psych department might offer - at least in my experience. The culture is just different. The counterpoint to that is that they usually have so many incredibly rich datasets you can be insanely productive running secondary analyses. I often joked (with an element of truth) that I could probably get tenure most places just publishing scraps my graduate advisor hadn't gotten around to yet. Dude seriously had whole RCTs from 20 years ago with multimodal outcomes for mining. We published quite a few in high-impact journals.

That’s amazing. I never considered that about AMCs. It makes a lot of sense tho. Thank you so much for the recs and language. I really appreciate it. You’re so helpful!