Postdoctoral Scholar Recruitment and Hiring Practices in STEM: A Pilot Study

Despite the importance of the postdoctoral position in the training of scientists for independent research careers, few studies have addressed recruiting and hiring of postdocs. We conducted a pilot study on postdoctoral hiring in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology to serve as a starting point to better understand postdoctoral recruiting and hiring processes. From this survey of both postdocs and faculty, together with the available literature, the picture emerges that the postdoc hiring process is more decentralized than either faculty hiring or graduate admissions. Postdoc positions are often filled through a passive process where the initial expression of interest from a prospective postdoc is through a "cold-call" contact to a prospective advisor. Individual faculty members are often responsible for developing and implementing their own outreach and recruitment plans and deciding who to hire into a postdoc position. The overall opacity of the processes and practices by which postdocs are identified, recruited, and hired make it difficult to pinpoint where interventions could be effective to ensure equitable hiring practices. Implementation of such practices is critical to training a diverse postdoc population and subsequently of the future STEM faculty recruited from this group.