Through the years, we've seen hundreds and hundreds of posts dedicated to helping people solve their job search difficulties. And I'm happy that many people have reported back that they've seen some help and encouragement along the way. But I was recently speaking with a couple of colleagues here on our Advisory board, and there is one issue that runs deeply through posts about job search troubles. I'm not trying to blame the job seeker here . . . I know how hard it is. But this is a personal issue that you need to look at if you're having trouble.
That issue is
resilience. For some reason, people can have all kinds of crazy stuff thrown at them by their science -- nature just doesn't work like we think it will some times -- and they can stay resilient and move on to the next experiment. Or, they can get rejected by a journal with a tough critique of the paper, and still move on to fix that issue and resubmit, or change journals. All of this is a part of the scientist's life.
If so, than why do scientists not bring this level of resilience to their job search? It's almost as if they get their PhD and
expect that people will be lining up to offer them positions. That's not going to happen. Instead, you face the biggest challenge of all and you need resilience to get past the hurdles that will be thrown in front of you.
Some of the posts with the pain and anguish expressed from repeated job search difficulties are the most difficult ones for me to read. I hope that those scientists can stay with the processes discussed in this Forum, because despite the odds, they will generally lead to success.
Dave
PS - Here's the link for the article referenced above:
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2015_09_16/caredit.a1500225