I’m defending my PhD this summer; I’ve been looking for postdocs for the past few months (while mainly focusing on finishing my damn dissertation), but it seems like the deadlines for a lot of these grants were in the fall, with awards granted a year later. Pardon my French, but what the fuck? Given that it takes a few months to even put together a grant proposal, how was I supposed to know more than a year ahead of time 1. when I would graduate, 2. who I’d want to be working with, 3. what I would want to be doing? Am I doomed to be unemployed when I graduate now?
Comments
You usually apply after you’ve joined the postdoc lab
What field are you in? Because in my field (humanities/interdisciplinary) yeah, that’s how it works, you apply for postdocs/jobs a year in advance and it sucks.
Edit: sorry, just saw the STEM flair.
I started writing apps after I joined my postdoc lab. I did drop by a few months before starting to discuss ideas and go apartment hunting.
Generally speaking you should be trying to secure a postdoc about a year before you’re expected PhD completion. Talking to people, setting things up. All of the best opportunities will get eaten up well in advance.
The timeline to apply for funding is kind of related to that, and depends on the timeline for the applications versus when they start. Most potential supervisors will prefer you to come in with funding available, which means you have to start applying having appropriate time in advance.
Yes, just as the most competitive external phd scholarships are often due a year before program start & months before the grad school application, many postdoc fellowships are due months to a year before anticipated start of the postdoc.
The other route to postdoc funding tends to be applying for existing positions (that the PI wrote a grant for a year ago).
Yes, this is how it goes. You should have been applying for postdoc fellowships 6 ish months ago, and your advisor and other mentors should have told you that. The good news is that there are postdocs which are not explicitly tied to “postdoc fellowships” and they do not have as strict of an annual cycle. Look for PIs hiring postdocs on start up funds / funded projects
As with anything this is field dependent