Almost exactly a month after my final appointment ended as a postdoc in the social sciences, I started my new career in the nonacademic world.
I've been chronicling my search for a nonacademic job on these pages since last summer. I thought it would take longer.
One reason it didn't, as I mentioned in my last column, was that I began looking for a job outside of academe several months before my postdoctoral fellowship ended. I started by telling everyone I knew in the city where my wife and I wanted to live that I was on the job market. Mostly, that meant telling my in-laws.
Once I had decided to give up on an academic career, my wife returned early to the Western city where her family lives and where we intended to return. In those final months of my fellowship, I spent as much time as possible out West with her, about 3,000 miles from the postdoc I was finishing at a research university in the Northeast.
One rainy Saturday afternoon, on the tail end of one of those visits, my wife and I went for a run and happened to see her mother as we were waiting for the traffic light to change. We had time for a wave and a quick smile at my mother-in-law and the woman next to her in the car, and then the light changed.
By the time we got back from our run, there was a voicemail waiting for me from my mother-in-law. It turned out that the passenger in her car, Linda, knew someone at a local research institute -- a kind of quasi-public, research-and-development office -- who did work similar to mine. I called Linda.
Apparently my mother-in-law had actually been listening when I explained my dissertation to her. Linda had a good idea of my research, and after our chat, she forwarded my e-mail address to the director of the research institute. A few weeks later I went in and met him in person.
Our first talk didn't go well. He talked and I listened. My academic research was largely interview-based, so I am a very practiced and good listener. Too much so. We were in his office for an hour and I barely spoke. Later I thanked him via e-mail, but received no reply. Nonetheless, I added him to the list of contacts whom I e-mailed when I published an article or when my research was mentioned in the popular press. (The latter of which happened exactly once.)
Months later, when I finally moved out West, I asked for another meeting and, to my surprise, got a quick affirmative. I came to that second meeting better prepared. I had taken good notes the first time (another artifact of being a practiced interviewer) and I consulted those notes as I outlined the points I wanted to convey about my academic experience.
I came up with a handful of specific examples of work I had done as a doctoral researcher that I thought was relevant to the center's research. I also had prepared a handful of specific questions that would reveal my familiarity with the subject of the institute's research.
Our second meeting went much better than the first -- in part, because of my preparation, and, in part, because there were more people at this meeting who kept the conversation focused on me (or at least not solely on the director, which seemed to be his natural inclination). On several occasions, I politely interrupted the director in order to stress some point about my experience, or my research interests. I listened, but I also communicated.
By the end of the meeting, I knew my prospects there were good, but still unclear. It turned out that the institute had no empty position that was right for me, but had some ability to make something happen. Possibly. My interviewers were as committed as anyone could be, without actually being committed at all. The director was going on vacation for two weeks, and they hoped I would still be available when he returned.
So I did what anyone would do, and what all the job-search books tell you not to do. I put my entire search on hold.
I had two informational meetings with other prospective employers that I had arranged weeks before, but mostly I did other things. I refinished our dining-room table that had been gouged by negligent movers. I turned back to a few dangling publications I had left over from my postdoc. I cleaned up and resubmitted one paper, and consigned the other to the limbo its referees thought it deserved. I looked for a new apartment.
After two weeks I started sending the director e-mail messages once again. A few days passed without an answer, and then his secretary contacted me. We set up one more meeting. This time I was offered a six-month contract, which was recently extended an additional 12 months. The salary is slightly more than what a first-year assistant professor would make, which was, more or less, what I was looking for.
What are the lessons here? A random encounter set off a string of events that led to my getting a job. However, while the particular position would have been very difficult to predict, I would like to think that something was bound to turn up. I would like to think that my dogged persistence in contacting and recontacting an ever-expanding circle of professional contacts, in combination with a Ph.D. from a top university, was bound to lead to a job somewhere.
The truth is, however, that social-science researchers such as myself are in a tricky situation in finding positions, particularly if they have chosen to live in a city which is not a major center for research or government jobs. Our experience doesn't necessarily translate well into a résumé.
The way around those obstacles would seem to involve some combination of personal connections, persistence, and luck, which was, in fact, precisely the case in my situation.
