FINDING A POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN MATHEMATICS. The

FINDING A POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN MATHEMATICS.

LAUREN WILLIAMS

The process of applying for a ﬁrst job shouldn’t be too diﬃcult nor stressful,

provided that you are organized and start well in advance of the deadlines. Most

of you probably have some idea of what is involved; I thought it might be useful,

however, to have a brief written guide to the process. Note that this description

applies primarily to postdoctoral positions in the US; procedures will be somewhat

diﬀerent for teaching positions, and may be very diﬀerent for academic positions in

other countries.

Before applying to jobs, you should have a talk with your advisor. There are

a number of things to be settled: ﬁrst of all, that you are in fact likely to graduate;

what will be in your thesis; where you might want to get a job; where you are going

to apply; who you might ask for letters of recommendation.

1. The application

An application for a postdoctoral position usually consists of the following.

(1) A cover letter

(2) A research statement

(3) A teaching statement

(4) A curriculum vitae

(5) Letters of recommendation

(6) (maybe) An interview and/or job talk.

The ﬁrst four you write and usually submit through Mathjobs,

see www.mathjobs.org/jobs,

typically sometime in November. (Deadlines for postdoctoral positions usually

range from November 1st to January 1st, though some fellowships, for example the

NSF postdoctoral fellowship, have earlier deadlines. The NSF postdoc deadline is

October 16, 2013.) The ﬁfth you request from your letter-writers; they will submit

their letters through Mathjobs.

I’ll describe the ﬁrst ﬁve items in turn.

1.1. The cover letter. This is a very simple item, and not very important. Basi-

cally it goes:

Dear Blank,

I am currently a graduate student in Mathematics at UC Berkeley, and expect

to receive my Ph.D. in May of 2014. I am interested in any postdoctoral positions

you may be oﬀering this year.

My research interests lie primarily in the ﬁeld of Blank. In your department

I would be interested in working with Professor blank(1) and Professor blank(2).

My thesis, Blankety blank, was written under the supervision of Prof. Blank. In

You might make this more speciﬁc.

2 LAUREN WILLIAMS

addition, during the period I have been at Berkeley, I have taught several courses,

including blank and blank.

Enclosed is my Curriculum vitae, and a research statement. In addition, you

should be receiving letters of recommendation on my behalf from Blank(1), Blank(2),

. . . , Blank(n). I would be happy to supply any further materials you require.

Thank you, Blank.

Clearly there are many variations: for example, you may want to omit the sen-

tence about courses taught (its primary purpose is to indicate that you do have

some teaching experience). The basic rule is: don’t lose any sleep over it – cover

letters are not looked at very carefully. One exception is if the hiring committee at

University X is having trouble evaluating your application, in which case it may be

helpful to them that you have listed professors at University X whose research is

close to your own. (Then they can ask Professor blank(1) or blank(2) for another

opinion.)

1.2. The research statement. This is a concise summary of the research you’ve

done so far and what you plan to do in the next few years. The total length is

usually on the order of 5 pages. The basic rule here is to keep it straightforward –

it will probably be read by someone who is not an expert in your particular ﬁeld,

and who has hundreds of applications to get through. It’s thus more important

to indicate clearly how your research accomplishments and goals ﬁt into the broad

scheme of things, than to give all the technical details. Try to format the research

statement so that it can be easily skimmed: for example, you might put the most

important problems and your most important results in bold, e.g.:

Problem 1.1. Classify the set of all happy Blanks.

Theorem 1.2. A Blank is happy if and only if it is nice.

Have some people (your advisor, other mentors) look over your statement before

you send it out.

1.3. The teaching statement. In an application for a postdoctoral position, the

teaching statement is not very important, so don’t waste much time on it. My

opinion is that the teaching statement cannot help your application much or at all,

but it might hurt your application if you write something really weird. (“When it

comes to teaching, I believe it is better to be feared than to be loved.”) No one really

cares what is your teaching philosophy. Just write a few conventional statements

about what makes a good teacher (e.g. encouraging interaction with the students),

and if you have received good teaching evaluations, then this is an opportunity to

brag about them.

1.4. The curriculum vitae. This is standard. The basic information is your

name, address, degrees (with year conferred), citizenship, honors, papers written

(if any). Stick to practical relevant information; mentioning that you were captain

of your high school debating team is probably not called for.

1.5. LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION. This is the most important part

of your application, so choose your letter-writers carefully, and ask them well in

advance of the deadlines. (At least one month; several months is better.) Writing a

good letter of recommendation is time-consuming, and many faculty members will

FINDING A POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN MATHEMATICS. 3

get tons of requests for letters. So if you ask someone for a letter shortly before the

deadline, he or she may not have the time (or inclination!) to write a good one.

When you ask someone for a letter of recommendation, it is helpful to also give

them your job application materials (especially your research statement), and to

let them know what are the deadlines for the jobs you are applying to. In general,

you should try to make it as easy as possible for the person to write the letter.

You should aim to get 4 or 5 letters of recommendation, consisting of 3 or 4

research letters, and 1 teaching letter. Of course your advisor will write the main

letter about your research. In addition, you should ask 2 or 3 more people to write

letters about your research.

Some students think the more letters of recommendation, the better. But if

you ask for 10 letters, chances are that one or more will be lukewarm. A lukewarm

letter can be an excuse for the person reading your application (one among perhaps

hundreds) to throw it out ...

Who should you ask for letters? This is something that you should discuss

with your advisor. Ideally your letter writers would be already know you and

be familiar with your work. But it’s also OK to approach someone else whose

area of expertise is closely related to yours. (In the latter case, it is essential to

provide that person with information about your work, for example your papers

and research statement.) Ideally, your letter writers would also be well-known in

the academic community. (A letter from a faculty member at a research university

will be weighted more heavily than a letter from a postdoc.)

If you have already given research talks at conferences or seminar talks at other

universities, you may know mathematicians from other universities who are experts

in your area of math. If you felt that your work was well-received, you might con-

sider asking one of these people for a letter of recommendation. Most graduating

students will have research letters that all come from faculty at their own univer-

sity – so you will stand out a bit if you have a (good) letter from a well-known

mathematician who is based at another university.

2. Other advice

2.1. Make a webpage. You should have a professional webpage, that includes

links to your research papers (if you have some already), your CV, and information

about your teaching. Some people also post their research statement on their

webpage.

2.2. Give talks about your work. At this point in your career, you should

accept most or all invitations to give a talk about your work. Giving a talk is a

great way to meet potential letter-writers, potential collaborators, and to get new

ideas about future research directions. It is a good idea to give some practice talks

at the beginning (to your wall, to friends, or at student seminars here), so that you

can get feedback.

3. Waiting for and responding to offers

3.1. Waiting for oﬀers. Once you have submitted your applications, there is not

much to do except to wait. (Although you should check from time to time on

the status of your recommendation letters; mathjob should allow you to see which

letters have been submitted already.)

4 LAUREN WILLIAMS

First round oﬀers start being made in mid to late January, and continue on a

rolling basis for several months. This can be a stressful time for people, because

of the erratic nature by which schools make their oﬀers. School A may oﬀer a job

to student X, who doesn’t answer them right away because (s)he is waiting to har

from School B, who hasn’t gotten in touch with X because they have an oﬀer out

to Y, who is stalling in hopes of getting an oﬀer from C, etc. The end result is that

many people are still waiting around well into the spring, as the system sorts itself

out. Obviously this can be a trying time. Keep in touch with your advisor, who

can try to ﬁnd out how things are going; try to stay relaxed.

3.2. Responding to oﬀers. The ﬁnal thing you will have to do is to respond to

an oﬀer or oﬀers of a job. The routine is this: if school A oﬀers you a job, it is

generally considered acceptable to take between one and two weeks to respond. (In

special cases, schools may require that you respond more quickly.) During this time,

you make a list of the schools you prefer to A, and contact each in turn, informing

them that you have an oﬀer and trying to ﬁnd out if there is any likelihood of your

being oﬀered a job there within the time you have before you have to respond to

A. If such a possibility exists, explain your circumstances, and hope that they can

do something in time. Also, during the period of time you are considering an oﬀer,

you may want to raise some questions, such as whether you can take a leave of

absence to accept another short-term position, whether the leave will count against

the number of years in the job, etc. If you have more than one desirable job oﬀer, it

may be possible to accept both (i.e. a year at MSRI or IAS followed by a three-year-

postdoc elsewhere) and buy yourself more time as a postdoc. Once you’ve accepted

a job, however, you should not back out and decline. The math community is small,

and reneging on a job acceptance is a good way to make yourself a persona non

grata.

As a courtesy to all the other stressed-out Year N graduate students, once you

have determined that you will not accept a position at School A, you should imme-

diately write to School A to withdraw your application. (For example, if you have

an oﬀer from School D, which you prefer to Schools A, B, and C, then even if you

have not received oﬀers from Schools A-C, you should contact Schools A-C right

away.) This helps Schools A-C process their applications more quickly and make

oﬀers to other students.

3.3. Miscellaneous. The academic job market can be tough and it can be unpre-

dictable. If you decide you don’t want to stay in academia, or if you don’t get a

position that you are happy with, remember there are lots of other great jobs that

a mathematician is qualiﬁed for ... the NSA, ﬁnance, consulting, industry (Google,

Microsoft, Amazon, etc).