Applying for a postdoc position - advice from Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman

No one should work with you man, no one with self esteem. Seriously people, go find a normal job.

seems committe has awarded most prestigious nobel prize to a wrong person who is arrogant.

I think contacts and references are playing key role. However, do your work as per your capacity rest be patient and wait for your consideration

I didn't even get the professor of having what to transfer.....we know a little bit ....who takes the position

Hallo Professor, my work has been stolen twice in my life. The first one was a patent and now i am without a job in europe while people have some contacts relatives, or boyfriends can get position at the uni. I respect your opnion but the reality is much far away.

I don't agree. The time in the end of phd is quite pressurizing. You can expect prospective postdoc to detailed customized letters to profs whose majority dont even reply

I’m not sure if all these professors can make it through academia nowadays…

Was alfred noble had post doctoral degree

He sounds like a lazy person to me.

I dont care if a Nobel laureate says it or not, a postdoc is a bogus thing to do. A postdoc is a way of getting work done cheaply by the professors.

How many peoples work you will read and generate a thought process before getting a confirmation prof. Schekman? Its easier said then done.

rude, arrogant, and self-important

So one should spend months reading somebody else’s work only to get a response? Huh. You must be kidding. This is rude, and I won't even want to work with a person of such an attitude.

They forget to mention why this nonsensical "postdoc" position exists in the first place. Too many researchers are trained. It is a cheap way for governments to manufacture medium quality research through doctoral training programmes while paying PhD students peanuts and essentially wasting several years of their lives. This also creates a competitive hell in academic research and elsewhere. Plus, it creates diploma inflation where now you need a PhD to perform basically a technician's job in industry.
The whole thing is broken beyond repair. Just think of the grant system, academic publishing, PIs becoming managers on the account of being productive scientists, understaffed laboratories where PhDs and postdocs have to maintain all the equipment, insane expectations and work hours...

All of this for what? Getting paid less than a janitor or a librarian doing a postdoc?Dear PhDs, please transition into an industry position asap so that you earn what you deserve...

So If I understood well...You study the articles from a Lab, you work on a brilliant idea for months and you put all your know how. After that you give everything in ONE email to the PI who decide if you can be treated as human being and receive an answer, or not. Moreover, if the idea is really nice, he can just let apply for the funds to his son’s colleague or whatever is the guy politically closer to him. This is why this is not working at all.

He is right

In general , he is right. The problem is that sometimes apply for a general post-doc position and not for a specific lab. Also, sometimes you have to apply for a lot of places to maximize your chances. You can do what he says to 2-3 position. But not for all of them. If you apply for a Nobel Laureate, your should definitely write a customized letter.

Old ass want to hire postdoc slaves

It seems... all they need is a labor who can do HIS work ... where is the thought for what kind of person you are selecting for science ? In this way all you will gather is people who want to show how many publication they will have and just sit in lab, do science and do not care about what is important for this world or even his life but just pursue your mere self-centered desire...

Honestly I've written a lot of customized cover letters. I spend days on their current projects and came up with a short proposal. I've not got noticed in these labs too. I just think it's the skill that matters. Because I'm transitioning from yeast biology to translational research. But I do have skills that are transferrable. Only if someone would give me an opportunity. I worked really hard. I hope I don't have to quit and move into a desk job because research is what gets me excited.

Harsh but true...

He is exaggerating, a cover letter of one page cannot contain more information than the applicant's history and few things about the lab where he is applying. At least that's what I have been doing.

What an arrogant , egomaniac. You can see his arrogance in his face. You expect to have all the knowledge and extended thoughts written in a email which we no very well that you will "read" it for 10 sec. when you have the time. Is it better to open with a generous kind email and discuss after the technicalities ? But you don't care I get it you are so supersaturated by applications that you can do whatever you want and still students and postdocs will beg you for an almost minimum wages research and illegal working hours -- and of course still every credit of work.

This is what has been happening in academia. Those senile lab managers (like Randy) thought once he's got Nobel Prize, he's untouchable, demanding more from postdocs as if postdocs have to do all the background check on his lab and his research thoroughly.

Let me tell you the secret. Randy got Nobel Prize because of a graduate student, Peter Novick. Since Peter Novick was a mere graduate student when he screened all those vesicles involved in membrane trafficking with his 23 complementation (sec23-1, sec4-8, and so on). Peter is the guy who did all the menial lab works, ground works if you may, that got published in Cells twice. Since then, Peter has opened up a new field of vesicle trafficking in yeast model system and paved the way for many researchers to work on many different proteins. What Randy achieved at the time? Lousy fat ass.

Nobel Committee need to revise their award system and replenish all the younger blood in academia. Randy and those old men are devouring young aspiring scientist blood in the name of "Science". Once they got tenure, those lousy fat ass don't work on Science, they'd be kayaking, canoeing, and what not? decorating their outhouse. That's the reality of the academic science.

He is telling the truth. It may hurt, but it is hard truth even for mediocre labs... they are way too many applications for postdocs and too less positions.

It's not arrogance (he might be arrogant, most big name scientists are, but this is not proof of it), he just probably gets a lot of these emails, and a lot of other emails, and has very little time. Therefore such letters become more like spam mail, and the thinking goes, whether a useful heuristic or not, if they have spent no time on me, why should I waste my time on them. Whether they respond back to you or not, most PIs want candidates to write something relevant to the project or lab and about their fit in the lab, so this is a good tip. And it's certainly not too much to expect from someone with a doctoral degree.

Randy Schekmanm I don't know to wriite letters, to persuade lab leaders to interview me. Paper work tells you nothing. You have to meet people and talk to them. If you gave me data or a graph to analyse, I would analyse them to death.

To Randy Schekman, did you find it easy to communicate your thoughts when you were just starting out as a post doc, as you expect others to? I have come across many academics, who are terrible communicators and who are very selfabsorbed. One, finally after about 17 years of knowing him, and hearing him critisise my errors in comunications, finally admitted that he had also make mistakes in the past. I think you are being rather unfair to junior scientist, unless you can convince me that you are perfect and never make mistakes. I woulnd't believe that anyway, as there is no such person. Many scientist are introverted and struggle to communicate. The physicist, Paul Dirac, hardly spoke. Junior scientists are often shy about expressing their ideas. What got him jobs, were references, according to the Biograpy, by Graham Farmelo. Mr FW Hooton, BSc, MSc Biochemistry, MRSC, Ecology research student

"...I don't even answer those!" - That tells me that you might be brilliant and busy, but you are also rude, arrogant, and self-important, Professor Schekmnan. I wish I didn't see so much of that attitude as I do in academia.

Ideas are very expensive and you need to pay for it!