Finishing a PhD doesn't automatically lead to a faculty job — for most people, in most fields, it leads to a postdoc first. Yet the postdoc is one of the least explained stages of an academic career: nobody sits you down and describes what it actually is, how long it lasts, what it pays, or what your odds are of turning it into something permanent. This guide covers all of that as plainly as possible.
What a Postdoc Actually Is
A postdoctoral position ("postdoc") is a temporary, fixed-term research position held after completing a PhD, usually before — or sometimes instead of — a permanent academic or research role. It is not a degree, a qualification, or a formal credential in the way a PhD is. It's employment: you're typically paid a salary (or in some countries, a fellowship stipend) to do research, usually within someone else's lab or research group, for a defined contract length.
Typical duration is roughly 1–3 years per position, though this varies considerably by field, funding source, and country. Some postdocs are renewed for a second or third term with the same or a different supervisor; a small number of researchers do more than one postdoc in sequence before landing a permanent position, particularly in highly competitive fields.
How universal the postdoc stage is varies sharply by field:
| Field Area | How Common/Expected Is a Postdoc? |
|---|---|
| Life sciences, biomedical research | Very common, often close to a default step before a faculty search |
| Physical sciences, engineering | Common, though direct-to-industry paths are also well established |
| Social sciences | Increasingly common but not universal — depends on subfield and country |
| Humanities | Less structurally required; many humanities PhDs go directly onto the faculty job market without a postdoc, though postdoctoral fellowships (especially in the UK and Europe) do exist and are competitive |
| Business/management academia | Relatively uncommon; many PhDs in business fields move directly into faculty roles |
The takeaway: don't assume a postdoc is mandatory in your field just because it's the norm in molecular biology or physics. Ask people a few years ahead of you in your specific subfield what the typical path actually looks like, since generic advice about "the postdoc" often comes from a lab-science default that doesn't transfer cleanly to other disciplines.
Why People Do Postdocs
A postdoc is rarely something you're required to do the way you're required to complete coursework — it's a strategic choice (or, in some fields, a de facto prerequisite) that serves a few distinct purposes:
- Building a publication record. Academic hiring committees weigh research output heavily, and a strong postdoc is often where a researcher produces the papers that make them competitive for faculty jobs — work that's harder to do at the same pace during a PhD, when time is split across coursework, teaching, and the dissertation itself.
- Gaining specific technical skills or a new research direction. A postdoc in a different lab, subfield, or even country lets you add a skill set your PhD didn't cover — a new method, a new model system, a new dataset or technique — which broadens what kind of faculty position or industry role you're eligible for.
- Meeting a structural requirement. In some fields and countries, a postdoc (or two) is close to a formal prerequisite for even being considered for certain faculty searches, regardless of how strong your PhD work was on its own.
- Buying time and flexibility. Some people take a postdoc because the timing of the academic job market doesn't align with when they finish their PhD, or because they want more time to decide between an academic and non-academic path without immediately committing to either.
It's worth being honest with yourself about which of these reasons applies to you. A postdoc taken with a clear purpose — a specific skill, a specific publication goal, a specific next step it's building toward — tends to be a much better experience than one taken by default because "that's what you do next."
How Postdoc Positions Are Found
Finding a postdoc has real overlap with the process of finding a PhD advisor (see our guide on how to choose a PhD advisor) — in both cases, you're often applying to work with a specific person, not just an institution.
| Method | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Direct outreach to a PI/lab | Similar to a PhD cold email — you contact a professor or lab head whose current research interests you, ask if they have (or expect to have) funding for a postdoc, and attach your CV and a short note on fit |
| Job boards and listings | Field-specific boards (e.g., Nature Careers, and discipline-specific society job boards — economics, chemistry, psychology, and others each tend to have their own) regularly list open postdoc positions with defined funding already in place |
| Conference networking | Meeting potential supervisors at conferences, giving a talk or poster that gets noticed, or being introduced by your current advisor are all common and often more effective than a cold application, since they come with some existing context |
| Your current advisor's network | Many postdocs are arranged through a direct recommendation — your PhD advisor knows a colleague who's hiring and vouches for you directly. This is one of the most common paths in practice, so it's worth telling your advisor early that you're looking |
| Fellowship programs | Independently funded postdoctoral fellowships (rather than a position tied to a specific grant) — you bring your own funding to a host lab/department, which can make you a more attractive candidate since you don't cost the lab money |
As with cold-emailing a PhD advisor, specificity matters: reference the PI's actual recent work, explain concretely why it connects to your own research, and be clear about what you're asking (are you asking about current openings, or about their willingness to support a fellowship application naming their lab as host?).
The Compensation Reality
This is a topic postdocs and PhD students discuss constantly, and it's worth being direct about it rather than glossing over it: postdoc salaries are widely regarded as modest relative to the level of expertise involved — someone with a completed doctorate, often several years of specialized research experience, and (in many cases) the ability to independently design and run research projects, typically earns considerably less than they would in an equivalent-seniority industry role.
Exact figures aren't something to treat as fixed here, because postdoc pay varies by country, funding source, field, and institution, and scales are revised periodically. Rather than quoting a specific number that may already be out of date by the time you read this:
- In the US, the NIH's National Research Service Award (NRSA) postdoc stipend scale is the most commonly cited reference point, even for postdocs not funded directly by NIH — many universities and other funders benchmark their own postdoc pay against it. Check the current NIH NRSA stipend table directly (search "NIH NRSA postdoc stipend levels" for the latest figures) rather than relying on a number from an older source, since it's updated periodically and can shift year to year.
- Outside the US, compare against your specific country's and field's typical postdoc pay scales — funding councils, university HR pages, and field-specific societies are usually the most current source, and pay structures (fellowship vs. salaried employment, tax treatment, benefits) can differ substantially by country.
- Cost of living matters as much as the headline number. A postdoc salary that looks reasonable in absolute terms can be tight in a high-cost city, and a lower absolute figure can go further somewhere cheaper — factor in the actual location, not just the stated pay.
If compensation is a serious concern for your circumstances (supporting a family, relocating internationally, existing debt), it's worth asking directly during any postdoc interview process what the actual take-home pay and benefits look like, rather than assuming based on the advertised stipend alone.
The Academic Job Market Reality
This is the part of the postdoc conversation that's easy to avoid and important not to. The honest picture: the transition rate from postdoc to a permanent, tenure-track (or equivalent) faculty position is lower than many PhD students and early postdocs expect. Academic faculty positions are structurally limited in number relative to the number of PhDs and postdocs produced each year in most fields — this is a well-established, widely discussed feature of the academic labor market, not a personal failing when it doesn't work out for a given individual.
What this means in practice:
- Expect real uncertainty, not a guaranteed pipeline. Doing "everything right" — strong publications, good conference visibility, positive references — improves your odds but doesn't make a faculty offer a sure thing, because the bottleneck is largely about the number of open positions relative to applicants, not just individual merit.
- Multiple postdocs are increasingly common in some fields as candidates build a stronger record before (or instead of) a faculty search — this is a market response to the same bottleneck, not evidence that any one postdoc "failed."
- A large share of postdocs move into industry or other non-academic research roles, and this has become an increasingly normal, well-respected outcome rather than a consolation prize. Industry research roles, government labs, science policy, scientific writing/communication, consulting, and data-focused roles across sectors all draw meaningfully on postdoc-level research training. Many postdocs actively plan for this path from early on rather than treating it as a fallback discovered only after an unsuccessful faculty search.
- Field and country matter enormously to your actual odds — some subfields and some countries have meaningfully different faculty-hiring rates than others, so generic "the academic job market is brutal" statements should be checked against your specific field's actual hiring patterns where you can find them (ask senior people in your subfield, check where recent postdocs from strong labs ended up).
The healthiest way to approach a postdoc, given this reality, is to treat it as valuable in its own right — for the research, the skills, the network, the publications — rather than purely as a waiting room before a faculty job that may or may not materialize. Going in with a genuine secondary plan (What does a strong industry transition look like in my field? What skills would make me competitive there too?) tends to reduce both anxiety and the sense of "failure" if the academic path doesn't open up on the timeline you'd hoped for.
Prepare for IELTS with Gabble — if your postdoc search takes you to a lab or institution abroad, many university and immigration processes require an English proficiency score alongside your CV and references. Check the specific requirement early so it isn't a late surprise in an otherwise strong application.