After almost 9 months of being in the jobmarket I finally was offered a postdoc position today. Since I got the news I am literally dancing aroundmy room! It was a long way after 3 interviews for this post where I went very well prepared and gave my best. Part of me wants to accept the position straight away since it is a really good offer and I am very much interested in the work. However, I am waiting in the next days to hear from another lab whether I am offered the position there too. Do you think it is ok to email the second lab telling them that I already have an offer and asking them when they would be able to come up with a decision? How would you phrase this so it doesn´t sound too pushy? And if they indeed make an offer would it look bad if I still accept the offer of the first lab? I honestly haven´t made a decision between the two yet and I believe it would be better to make up my mind once I know what is on the table. Thanks for any inputs!

Thank you very much for the replies. Uranio after collecting many rejections I realised if I don´t do multiple applications at once I will most likely end up unemployed very soon. Postdoc positions that are a good fit and have funding attached come up very rare.
So I guess applying to as many as possible is the only way to go.
But what happens with fellowship applications? Is it ok to submit a research proposal for funding with one supervisor and at the same time apply for positions with fundng attached elsewhere? Would you inform the first person you are doing so?

Well I have done this in the past for my PhD and although I ended up with two offers it wasn´t a good experience. Mainly because I felt really guilty towards the people I had to turn down in the end although in the beginning i really sounded anthousiastic and so on about their work. So I decided not to do the same for my postdoc applications ending up with 5 rejections so far to positions I applied one after the other. Now seeing the day my contracts ends approaching I feel like applying for as many jobs as I can find. Although I know this should be ok knowing that our specific scientific community is very small it still feels akward doing so. People all know each other and contacting a potential supervisor personally already feels like a commitment to me. Somehow I feel contacting many people personally and expressing interesting sounds kind of dishonest.. or is it just me being stupid? In addition what happens if a person says ok come but you wait for an answer from a person offering a ´better´ position? I´ve been there before and I just told the first person. But still it felt pretty bad. what would you do and how do you handle such a situation? I am afraid in the end ending up unemployed I will regret missing out on chances just because I didn´t try them. What do you think? (sorry for my long post.)

Hi Drpurple,

congratulations! Enjoy your success!

I recently got rejected after interview once again... I count 5 rejections so far. and the advertised postdoc positions for my discipline are so rare. i will throw a big party once i secure a position! Hopefully this day will come.

Thanks awsoci for sharing your experience. I also think that now maybe it´s too late to send a thank you email. No news yet form the interviewers...

thank you all very much for the advice. i thought about it and although it may be a good idea to say thank you for the time etc i don´t want to sound desperate or too pushy. Especially since I have the gut feeling they liked me during the interview and I believe i have chances to get the position. I hope it´s a good decision. As ToL said they should have made their decision by now. Ahh this waiting kills me.

Just to clarify some things. I am now waiting for their decision if they hire me or not. I had one day long interviews. I thought it´s good idea to say a thank you for their time whatever the outcome and also confirm my interest on the position. By adding some personal datails I mean to write about things mentioned during the interview and of course strictly work related. Sorry if my first message was confusing. So would you still send such an email and is it common to do so?

I had an interview last week and I was thinking to follow up with a thank you later to thank the people hosting me in the lab and also to restate my interest in the position. How do you normally structure these letters? Is there anything I should be careful of? I know i should make it a bit personal and add specific things mentioned in the interview but apart from this any other advice?

tYes I am writing unsolicited aplications. But the specific group I am writing to now is doing particularly interesting things for me so I think it is a really good opportunity since the supervisor seems to also be interested in hiring me. I have a lot of cool (or so I hope) ideas that I would like to discuss with him. However, I am a bit reluctant writing things my way without before knowing if he thinks alike. I guess however it is also the way one thinks that matter in this case and we can rediscuss thinks later together. So I may write some general ideas of mine and see what he thinks.

Thanks a lot for your nice advice Mathcomp and Dunham. I will try to bridge past/present interest with future research. I guess it is the best. I still worry a little bit about how to go writing about future plans but I think the idea is not going into too much detail as you mention Mathcomp but still write something interesting and of course in the interest of the lab. But this can be tricky especially if I don´t know what exactly they are working on at the moment. Last publication of them was a collaborative paper and in the webpage there is only a paragraph of information about their research so yeah not so much I could use. And it would be horrible to write something that is not in the supervisors interest and then he starts thinking `hm i am not so interested to go in this direction.´ if i were more into the things i could much easier suggest things and bring new ideas but now i feel a bit like shooting in the dark. But I guess it is worth a try ;-)!

As I mentioned in a previous post I have been sending emails to potential supervisors to find a postdoc position. After sending many of them I got a reply from one PI who seems pretty interested in hiring me. He asked me to write my scientific interests and what I want to work on in my postdoc. So here I need your help. In the scientific interests should I mention my scientific interests up to now mentioning my previous work? Or should I write what I want to do in the future during my postdoc? Or something more general connecting my previous work with what I want to do in the future? Also how should I answer the question what I want to do during my postdoc? I mean I know what the lab is doing in general and it surely fits my interests but how much in detail should I go with this question? Does he ask for a detailed research plan? I am afraid writing something the supervisor isn´t interested in investigating if I go into too much detail. Any ideas? Any experiences on this?

Hey congratulations. I guess it's very hard finding a dream job. I would be happy finding something close to the subject of my phd as i really like my work. But as the time passes i broaden my search. So i will post back to let you know how/ if cold emailing is working :-p

oh and good luck to you for your search treeoflife :-)

yes i already did this search and it does help the way of writing. but it just scares me off to send this email to a guy who i have no previous contact. i think maybe he just deletes it without a second thought. oh well i guess i just have to try and see how it goes. in the worst case i am back to square one.

well i don´t know what else remains to do except for just contacting people. since there is no advertised position in my broader field of research at the moment. and I am searching in many different countries basically in whole europe. if I search for position in the even broader field they ask for techniques i am not familiar with and my chances of success are rather limited because I guess one would pay a postdoc to be already experienced and independent.