Julie Gould 00:09
Hello and welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Julie Gould. This is the sixth and final episode of a series about hiring and getting hired in science.
In episode one of this series, Linda Nordling, the freelance science journalist that has been working closely with the Nature Careers team on the hiring and getting hired in science survey we’ve been talking about, told us…
Linda Nordling 00:38
…that academics who responded, most of them said that the quality of the candidates that they were seeing applying for their jobs had gone down in recent years.
So the quality was going down, and the biggest problem that they faced was finding high-calibre candidates.
Julie Gould 00:59
What I wanted to know was, what is a high calibre candidate? This, Linda told me, was another one of those questions that they wish they’d asked people in the survey.
So I decided to do that for them. The result? It depends on your perspective. Of course.
So in this episode, we’ll hear from people about what they think a high calibre candidate is, and some advice on how to be one.
I think the first thing I want to put out here is
”The perfect candidate may not exist.”
That was Lauren Celano from Boston-based careers consultancy Propel Careers.
She’s a recruiter for science companies, and so has had the chance to see both sides of the story, what the hirers are looking for and what is out there.
Lauren Celano 01:39
For me, the perfect candidate is someone that at least hits like 60% to 70% of the technical things being asked for.
But also is someone that’s very team-based and collaborative. A good communicator.
And I’m not talking about like English being your first language, right?
I’m talking about because, I mean, at least half, if not more, of the PhDs and postdocs in the US have international backgrounds, and they’re amazing.
But it’s more about, like, if I ask a question: ”You know, Julie, tell me a little more about your primary cell culture,” I don’t want this, like, 18-minute long description of everything you’ve worked on. And by the end, I’m like: ”Did you do primary cell culture? I’m unclear.”
So it’s kind of the clear communication piece.
Julie Gould 02:23
This, says David Perlmutter, a professor in the College of Media and Communications at Texas Tech University in the USA, is at the root of the issue.
He believes that the problem doesn’t lie with the quality of the skills, (the scientific ones), that candidates have. And if anything, he believes that they’ve improved.
But what he does think the problem is, is that the abilities of job candidates has declined dramatically.
David Perlmutter 02:46
There’s some really good people who are not getting job offers or getting less than what their vet they should be, because they’re just bad candidates.
Julie Gould 02:56
He’s not saying they’re bad people. He’s just saying that people are not good at interviewing for jobs. Those doing the hiring in academia should have an acceptance for different personality types, of course, not everyone is going to be an extrovert ready to present and mingle comfortably.
David Perlmutter 03:11
I am perfectly fine with somebody being a shy introvert, especially in the sciences, but really anywhere.
But on the other hand, you have if you’re going to be teaching a class, you probably have to speak up.
So for example, if you’re a shy introvert, and you’re doing a teaching presentation, talking into your sleeves and mumbling, and people can’t hear you. And you haven’t presented the most interesting material that obviously excites the students and engages your colleagues, is a problem, right?
So we all have to be very good at self-assessment and maybe compensate for some variables that might not present us.
We always advise people: ”Be yourself, but be your best possible self, right?”
Don’t try to be somebody different. But the other hand, it is a job, and there are requirements to the job. So, you know, at a typical r1 university and the sciences, somebody might be teaching a 1-2 teaching load, and having a certain number of post doc students and her certain number of doctoral students running a lab.
You know, somebody has to be assessing, is this a good scientist? But this is, is this somebody who can manage six PhD students in an expensive lab. And not blow it up, by the way?
Julie Gould 04:33
So the question is, why don’t people have the interview skills to be good candidates? There could be an argument that the COVID-19 pandemic and the isolation we were in had something to do with the reduced social skills. Or maybe candidates are just getting bad advice.
David Perlmutter 04:49
To me, there should be no relationship between whether you’re actually good at your job and how you present that you’re good at your job.
We know a lot of people who talk a great game but aren’t very good, right? So it should be that everybody can do a great job interview.
Whether they’re really qualified for the job or not, is, to me, is a separate question.
But interview skills should be universal, and I’m sad to see when, when, when somebody I think, like, you know, ”If that person had just done a couple of things differently, the faculty would probably be voting for them instead of somebody else. But they didn’t.”
Julie Gould 05:26
And we’ll come to the advice bit later. But could the issue also be that too much is expected of the candidates these days? In a world of scarcity where there are fewer tenure track full time positions, David asks…
David Perlmutter 05:38
…what is the natural recourse to ask more of an individual position than you did 20 or 30 years ago?
So I haven’t done the research, so this is pure hypothesis speculation on my part, but I wonder if you looked at the job ad of today, and there might be eight to nine required qualifications and eight to nine preferred qualifications, whereas maybe 30 years ago, they might have been two.
We are looking for these Renaissance people who are able to do lots of things.
Or we’re looking for people who have possibly more achievements that are possible at the rank that we’re hiring, right?
So, so we’re asking too much of them. So of course they’re coming up short because the expectations are, are over optimistic.
Julie Gould 06:33
Well, let’s see, shall we?
I asked the Nature Careers team to find me job descriptions for two equivalent jobs, one from 30 years ago and one from within the last few years.
And I’ve got to say, the differences are very interesting.
The job is a postdoc researcher at Cancer Research UK.
Thirty years ago, in 1995, when Cancer Research UK was called the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, there was a job description printed in an issue of Nature:
”A position is available in the tissue antigen laboratory for a scientific officer or postdoctoral fellow to work on the further development and automation of a molecular typing method for HLA Class one using an ARMS PCR……”
This ad was printed in a copy of Nature and could fit in a small part of the page.
”….and experience of molecular methods is essential an ability to use the new and innovative equipment and to develop and modify methods rather than follow accepted protocols.”
Although you’ve only had the pleasure of hearing a small section of this job ad, it is, in fact, a very short one.
Only 172 words were used in total, including the contact details of where to send the CVs and cover letter to….(fade out)
”17th of August, 1995. Smoking is actively discouraged.”
And the line at the end about smoking, it’s brief and functional. There’s no lengthy vision statement, no explanation of institutional values, no discussion of career development or diversity and inclusion policies, which are very prominent in today’s elaborate and HR-filtered job ads.
Like this one from 2025 for a postdoctoral research fellow:
”Postdoctoral research fellow illuminating the impact of cancer immuno metabolism and metabolic competition in driving immunotherapy response.
“Key responsibilities: conduct independent research to investigate metabolic and immune alterations in cancer with a focus on tumour immune interactions and ici resistance, utilize single cell transcriptomics and flu…”
Other than it having 473 words in total compared to 172 in the 1995 ad, the main difference with respect to skills is that the 2025 job calls for interdisciplinary mastery, while the 1995 one valued more focused technical expertise.
The other interesting difference is that the 1995 job doesn’t explicitly mention things like publishing, presenting or grant writing, whereas the modern postdoc is required to lead publications, present at conferences and engage in collaborative and translational research.
These are just two of the differences I noticed, and granted they could be due to the difference in space allocated to the job advert itself, a small box printed on a page in the 1995 copy of Nature, versus an infinitely large page on a website in 2025.
But even so, are we expecting too much today?
I think with my sample size of one, we could say yes.
But we must also remember that the science and the tools we use evolved rapidly in the last 30 years, and scientific research questions as a result are more complex and often require multidisciplinary approaches.
And finally, there is a heavier emphasis on making scientists more well-rounded people.
So maybe my experiment isn’t all that useful.
But Fatimah Williams, an executive careers coach at professional pathways and an author based in the US, says that these days, yes, the job descriptions do contain a long list of required elements.
But it’s important to remember that this list is a combination of what is needed to fill a role and what is wanted.
Fatimah Williams 10:07
I like to think too about job ads as having a bit of desire in them.
When they’re written up, they’re written up, generally speaking, to fill a need for a role that’s there or some gap that’s on a team.
But then there’s the all the other things they wish for, right?
And so you can see these job ads that just look like a unicorn of a person that they’re looking for.
And so I think they can even be a bit of a stretch.
And so I would not want a jobseeker to position themselves as trying to be, quote, unquote, the ideal candidate.
Julie Gould 10:39
Which, if you remember, is exactly what Lauren Celano said earlier. For her, the perfect candidate would only need to hit 60% to 70% of what was being asked for in a job ad.
So here comes the advice.
What can jobseekers do to make themselves look and sound like the right candidate for the job?
Fatimah shared some things with me that she advises people to do to make them strong candidates for the jobs they apply for.
And the first is to know your market.
Fatimah Williams 11:08
What’s the market of the field that you’re going into, what influences the consumer? Because every role is tied to a market and tied to a consumer.
And that’s even in nonprofit and philanthropy. Someone is consuming of what you’re doing. There’s a constituent on the back end that needs to be served, or a stakeholder that is being served.
So what is, what’s happening in that market? What are the business trends that are happening?
And I don’t mean to say you have to go sort of, you know, Forbes level or Bloomberg level on them, but having a sense of how your field is moving.
What are the threats to that field? What are the trends in that field? Who are the other big players? How are they approaching problem solving or product development or research in this particular area?
It gives you a sense of groundedness that you’re not just applying to a job and you’re not just a job candidate, but you have a sense of where your field is going and where your role fits into that.
So that’s economies and ecosystems.
(Julie Gould: The second is to know yourself.)
Because often, especially as researchers, academic scientists, we are aware of the content of the work, so the subject matter, right? But then the skills that we’re using, having a sense of what we’re actually using to get it done is another piece that we may be out of touch with.
So getting a sense of, how do employers talk about the skills that I’m using, not just, you know, technically speaking, ”I know how to measure whatever,” or ”I know how to use R. I know how to use Python.”
No, but what are you doing? What problems are you solving with those skills? And how do employers think about that in your field?
Julie Gould 12:51
And increased self awareness will also help improve your confidence as you go through the job application process. And ultimately, it’ll help you show the recruiters who you really are.
Fatimah Williams 13:01
Self-awareness is also about interest, right? You don’t just want to kind of show up as I can do anything this role asks me for you. If you want to show up as a person who says, I know what I do, I know what I do well, and hear the things I like about what I do or where I want to go next with it.
So having a sense of person and self inside of the role. Otherwise you’re just kind of presenting yourself as any other biochemist going for this role, or any other cultural anthropologist going for this role. So that’s where we get a chance to see you come through
Julie Gould 13:34
Whatever career stage you’re in, if you’re considering moving jobs, then I hope that this series, alongside the articles on the Nature Careers website about the 2024 hiring and getting hired in science survey have given you an insight into what is going on behind the scenes, how people are hiring in science, and what candidates can do to get noticed.
My biggest takeaway from this series is something that I probably already knew, but that I hadn’t really heard vocalized quite so often before, which is that finding a job is a bit like finding a relationship.
And ultimately, for it to be successful, and in order to see you really come shining through, as Fatimah Williams said, you need to know who you are.
Ilana Wisby, who we heard from in the very first episode of this series, suggested a tool called Ikigai, which is a westernized version of a Japanese concept that translates to a reason for being,
Ilana Wisby 14:28
A personal purpose, effectively, like, what what’s important to me? Like, what do I value? What does the world value? Where can I make money?
And it’s almost like this is meant to be true happiness is right? It comes back to turning up, to doing something you love, and being valued, and feeling valued effectively for it.
So you can invest a lot in that. And even now with like, something like ChatGPT, I kind of feel like there’s no excuse.
It’s like, if you could create the perfect ChatGPT prompt of. ”Act like my coach and walk me through this type of exercise and give me the questions,” and then you can probably do the work supported by an AI quite quite easily.
But yeah, often it’s uncomfortable and it’s not the output, isn’t ”I applied for five job applications today.”
The output, maybe, is ”I now have an understanding of who I am and what I want.”
And that’s often uncomfortable because it often doesn’t align with what, again, society projects. It’s like, Do you know what? It’s okay if you don’t want to go to the City and work from nine till seven and hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
It’s okay if you want to turn up to work and feel inspired and make an impact, and it’s okay if you want to just do a nine to five and actually focus on creating music outside of work, like?
There’s so many non conventional paths now which people really thrive in, but often aren’t open to because they’re kind of constrained by societal expectations. But you can’t rid yourself with such societal expectations until you centre.
Julie Gould 16:16
So whilst I wish you luck on your job searches, I hope you can find some time to do some introspection. And later this year, we’ll dive a bit deeper into some of the tools you can use to do this with the Working Scientist podcast, as we’ll be publishing a series of episodes about career planning.
Careers coaches and experts will tell us what career planning is and how you can find out who you are so that you are ready to hit the job market.
But before that, a super exciting series that we’re running is looking at change makers in science. We’re going to be talking to some researchers profiled in our ongoing series who are making a real difference at work, particularly around diversity, equity and inclusion, at a time when many of these initiatives are under threat.
Thanks for listening. I’m Julie Gould.
