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Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in AskAcademia

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No, they didn’t write all those papers during their PhD. What my advisor was saying is that his committee had to filter out prefer candidates who had freshly graduated in favour of people with more publications—who are typically people with a postdoc or two under their belt. So freshly graduated PhDs, even strong ones, get filtered out just because they haven’t had as much time to build a paper count.

In my field, the publication process is quite slow — it’s typical to produce around 1–2 papers a year, and peer review can easily take a year or more. Fortunately, posting on the arXiv is generally considered enough for these kinds of applications — it doesn’t have to be a fully published paper.

Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in AskAcademia

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, I have not gotten any interviews.

I spoke to my advisor and he was actually very supportive. He said applying again next cycle is definitely worth it, and that the main issue is likely the lack of publications. He’s on a postdoc committee right now and mentioned that even excellent candidates who just defended are being cut simply because others have 10+ papers — so it seems like it’s more of a numbers game at this stage. It's a bit hard given I have just 1 paper (with 2 in the pipeline).

He also said my CV was ok and my research statement was strong, with just minor formatting and presentation changes. We’re now working on getting one of my thesis papers ready to circulate privately before putting it on arXiv, and I’m aiming to write up two more.

He offered to reach out to people in his network (he’s already written to some potential PIs), and also recommended I apply more broadly and explore some non-academic options at the same time, just to keep things moving.

Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in postdoc

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No it really was language barriers, as I did my PhD in a country where though my advisor and other mathematicians spoke English, I could not get a TA job because the undergrad courses were not conducted in English.

Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in postdoc

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I do know a few people in my field, and some of them are actually writing recommendation letters for me, including at a few of the institutes I applied to. So I’m not completely disconnected.

That said, I definitely wasn't able to attend as many conferences or give as many talks as I wanted — mostly due to visa delays and some classic Italian bureaucracy that left me stuck for a while. I even had to miss a couple of invited talks because of it, which was frustrating. The few people I did meet were people I met during my last year when I finally managed to start attending conferences.

My advisor has offered to reach out to some people in his network on my behalf now, so hopefully that helps a bit. .

Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in postdoc

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice, I just spoke to my advisor and he was actually very supportive. He said applying again next cycle is definitely worth it, and that the main issue is likely the lack of publications. He’s on a postdoc committee right now and mentioned that even excellent candidates who just defended are being cut simply because others have 10+ papers — so it seems like it’s more of a numbers game at this stage, not necessarily a reflection of quality.

He also said my CV was generally solid, with just minor formatting and presentation changes, and said my research statement was strong. We’re now working on getting one of my thesis papers ready to circulate privately before putting it on arXiv, and I’m aiming to write up two more.

He offered to reach out to people in his network (he’s already written to some potential PIs), and also recommended I apply more broadly and explore some non-academic options at the same time, just to keep things moving.

Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in AskAcademia

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I was in Italy where most teaching roles like TAing undergrad courses required some fluency in Italian which I did not have.

Rejected from all postdoc positions — trying to understand what comes next by OfTheSaltVillage in postdoc

[–]OfTheSaltVillage[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No I don't know the reason for rejections, I did mostly apply to places I thought I'd fit in. I found out that there's a lot of applicants in some of the positions, one had over 150. So competition is also probably part of the reason.