Academic Job Market and Coronavirus

[StatsG0d]

Given the political, economic, and health environment, I was wondering if statistics / biostatistics students and postdocs on the academic job market could share some advice on how to weather the storm. I believe that I will be on the job market May 2021, and it is likely the situation will be very similar as today.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

The job market for postdocs should remain somewhat robust (hiring is still allowed at a lot of schools as long as it’s funded externally, e.g. through grants). But the academic job market for tenure-track positions will be a lot tighter for a few years. For this reason, I would recommend anyone trying the TT job market to give themselves a deadline on how long they are willing to be a postdoc before moving on.

I am actually serving on the hiring committee for my new department this fall (although most have instituted a hiring freeze for this upcoming AY, a few places are still hiring), so I will be able to give more insight into hiring from “the other side” by next spring. However, based on personal experience and what I’ve observed from other job market candidates that I was competing against:

1. For Stat and Biostat, having a strong publication record is the most important thing for getting shortlisted for TT jobs at research universities. Having at least one paper in JASA, JRSS, Annals of Statistics, Annals of Applied Statistics, Biometrika, Biostatistics, and/or Biometrics seems to help a lot. If you are in a niche field like statistical genetics, then publications in the top field journals like AJHG or Nature Genetics will matter more. Thus, if your aim is to obtain a postdoc before trying the TT market, it is very important to choose a postdoc supervisor/lab group that has a strong RECENT track record of publishing in quality journals and a strong RECENT record of obtaining external funding and placing postdocs/PhD students in good academic positions. That way, you will also be able to gouge if they are working on topics that are of current interest to the stat/biostat community.
2. It is also extremely helpful to get letters of recommendation from renowned professors. If someone on the hiring committee knows your PhD/postdoc mentor or one of your letter writers, it can go a long way. That’s also why it is advisable to do a postdoc at a prestigious institution if you can.

Note that this applies mainly to jobs at research universities. It’s a little bit different for jobs at primarily undergrad institutions and Masters-only regional schools. Here, teaching experience will be more highly valued, and your job application needs to demonstrate that you understand their teaching mission.

[cyberwulf]

I think you are going to see another "post-doc pileup" similar to what happened in 2008-2010. Before that time, most PhD grads in stat & biostat seeking academic positions didn't do postdocs; then, for a couple of years, a ton of grads were pushed into postdocs by the lack of faculty positions and when hiring started again they had much better CVs than the fresh grads they were competing against. So, for the past 10 years, it's been pretty tough for PhD grads without a postdoc to land a tenure-track position.

I expect things to trend even further in this direction over the next several years: it may become virtually impossible for new grads to get academic positions without a postdoc, and multiple postdocs may become much more common. We may start looking increasingly like the lab sciences, where it's rare for new Assistant Professors to be hired without 3+ years of postdoc experience. 

However, there is one countervailing factor that may work in (bio)stat's favor. Interest in data science was already high pre-pandemic, and I expect that even more people will become interested in statistical modeling and data analysis due to this experience. As a result, funding for stat/biostat hiring may be one of the first to return to pre-COVID levels simply to respond to increased demand for both data-oriented teaching and research.

Edited May 4, 2020 by cyberwulf