this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Yep, my buddy is finally on a tenure track at a really nice school and it's the accumulation of like 15 years of stressful work that might have never really paid off.
You have to be good at getting published, attending conferences, creating conferences, building relationships with different universities and that's just to keep up with the competition. I think what seals the deal is not only getting funding for yourself, but showing universities how employing you would actually be a sound investment.
The one "secret" I wish I'd known a lot earlier is that you don't have to do it alone. In fact, the more you collaborate the more successful you'll be: more research ideas, more publications, more committee memberships in workshops/conferences, more participating on teams being put together to apply for research funding, more people to reach out to when you're looking for a job, etc. The most successful scientists I've known had huge networks of collaborators.
It's a little funny that networking is one of the most critical skills you can have in hard science.
The dangerous thing is that you can, in many science fields, get a PhD with minimal collaboration. Just pass the quals and focus on your disseration project, there you go. But you'll be at a tremendous disadvantage during a faculty search, when you're up against all those people who did internships early in their career, kept those research connections, led research projects in the local lab, joined student groups at conferences and helped organize a student workshop, reviewed for conferences, helped out on projects with people you met at conferences, contributed to funding proposals, etc.