Early stage postdocs who have been at MIT for around a year or less are invited to join the PYP cohort. In other words, if you started your appointment between October 2024-October 2025, you are eligible to participate in PYP.

If you are wondering if you can take part in PYP, please email your Postdoc Career Advisor and Professional Development Program Director, Alex Yen.

Participants interested in PYP should register above for each individual PYP session via Handshake (each session builds on one another). A week before the first session, PYP participants who have registered for all 4 sessions will receive a confirmation email that they are part of the cohort.

If you are wondering if you can attend just one or a few of the workshops, please email your Postdoc Career Advisor and Professional Development Program Director, Alex Yen.

The concepts in each PYP session are interrelated and build off of one another, so we strongly encourage you to attend all the workshops in the series.

If you are wondering if you can attend just one or a few of the workshops, please email your Postdoc Career Advisor and Professional Development Program Director, Alex Yen.

Have additional questions about PYP or what other career and professional development resources are available to postdocs? Please email Alex Yen, your CAPD Postdoc Program Director for Career Advising & Professional Development.

Almost 200 employers come to the Fall Career Fair every September, and we want to help you strategically navigate such a large event.

Use our filterable spreadsheet to identify which employers are offering internships (for PhDs) versus full-time opportunities (PhDs and postdocs). You can filter by “major groups” what industry a company is associated with, companies willing to sponsor visas, and populations companies want to hire (undergrads, grad students, or postdocs). Don’t get too specific with the filters. In the categories, you can “filter by field” and try to use the Boolean operator “OR” rather than “AND” to maximize the list of companies.

After this initial list, go through to the websites of the companies that interest you and find full time opportunities/internships listed on their company page. Why should you do this first? Because recruiters might not know every single job listed on their employer’s webpage, and they will often re-direct you to their company website. So do some research beforehand so you can talk to them about a SPECIFIC role you are interested in and show how you are proactive and want to ask more key questions about roles and projects rather than simply “what opportunities do you have at X company?”

In sum: make your list of employers, have the roles you are interested in associated with those employers READY to maximize your time.

After waiting in a few lines (be nice to those first years!), you’ll have the chance to talk to an employer representative. They could be HR, talent acquisition, a senior scientist. Many different representatives come to the FCF. Be polite and to the point! That’s why we suggest limiting your conversation to THREE questions.

Don’t forget to introduce yourself to each other!

It’s okay to say, “Hi I’m Alex Yen, I’m the designated Postdoc Career Advisor at MIT CAPD.” Then, shake hands and feel free to ask (if they don’t introduce themselves), are you <their name> part of talent acquisition or a particular research division?

1. Share your elevator pitch and add your first question at the end

After introductions share your elevator pitch. A general elevator pitch consists of three parts:

• Who you are (I’m a PhD/Postdoc doing research on X)
• What you really enjoy/what makes you stand out (I like solving ABC problems; my particular expertise is XYZ; I like being an interdisciplinary researcher in 1/2/3 intersection)
• How you feel this aligns with the company/how this aligns with a QUESTION you have for the company

Example:
As I mentioned, I’m the designated Postdoc Career Advisor at MIT’s Career Advising and Professional Development office, so I develop career support programs for and do career advising for MIT’s 1500 postdocs (Who you are) . I like say I’m part of a pipeline; I’m the institution side that sends talent to you, the recruiter on the company side (what makes me stand out/what I like to do). I noticed your company has 2 open Machine Learning engineer roles, and the postdocs would definitely be interested in these positions. Could I ask if there is a core project or group of projects these engineers are going to be part of? There wasn’t a mention of this in the job description or company website about the key project aligned with these roles (my first question).

2. Follow up with only two more questions that help you assess YOUR fit.

Asking these questions and hearing the answers requires active listening: paying attention to if the recruiter is really excited to talk to you, or is simply saying general information. If they are unsure of your question, if there are key terms they are using that you need to remember.

For example: say the recruiter states there are multiple projects the ML engineers will be part of, my next question might be:

“That’s really exciting. I noticed the responsibilities and skills for the roles are really similar for the different projects. Is the company recruiting for those who have expertise in similar research as those projects? Or is it open and the company tends to train hires into their roles in projects?” (The main goal of this question: are they looking for a very specific specialist who already knows how to do the job, or are they open to teaching someone?)

For a third question, think about what is crucial for you in a position:

Some things recruiters and company representatives might not know. If they aren’t part of HR (for example, a scientist is representing the company at the fair), they might not be able to tell you whether the company sponsors visas. Ask who YOU are talking to in order to know what questions will be relevant!

Remember: these three questions are helping you find information that you might put in a cover letter or details in your resume!

You’ve learned important information about this company, their open roles, and most of all if you’d like to apply to these jobs (and details to put into your cover letter!).

Thank the employer representative for their time and if you had a very enjoyable exchange, and even if there are no open roles at this moment you can still exchange contact information. Note that these representatives will often have many, many LinkedIn messages in the next few weeks from all the people they meet at FCF. It’s okay to ask if you can follow up on LinkedIn and email.

Do a follow-up in the next few days. It’s completely okay to follow up a month later if you have a few more questions or would love to ask if there is a way to connect with someone in the company to do a 30 minute informational interview. It’s even better if a position appears after a few months and if you do have questions, you can reach out again to see if this representative might know the team lead that you can meet with. Remember to be polite as you represent the advanced degree talent at MIT!

Refer to our Career Handbook, a helpful starter guide to the career exploration phase of your postdoc.

Visit the academia and education page for information on preparing for academic faculty positions.

Visit the career interests page for information and resources on a variety of career fields.

Use our network and conduct informational interviews to brainstorm who is in your network and how to reach out to them and explore career paths.

Bookmark our interviews page to keep in mind helpful interviewing tips.

See our job offer page to learn about how to negotiate and evaluate a job offer

Career Exploration and Planning Tools for PhDs and Postdocs

National Postdoctoral Association
Try out the amazing tool Flamingo by SciPhD for free using your NPA membership! It can help you analyze job descriptions and mock up a resume draft to bring for a career advising appointment!

National Center for Faculty Diversity & Development

LinkedIn Learning

The Postdoc Academy
NIH funded postdoc-specific professional development online modules

Making the Right Moves
PDF by Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund

MIT has multiple resources to help postdocs with career and professional development. Here are the other offices as well as DLCIs (departments, labs, centers, and institutes) on campus that support postdocs.

Office of Postdoctoral Services (OVPR)
Your main, “go to” office for all things related to benefits, policies, and procedures

MIT Postdoctoral Association
Led by postdocs to provide support for their 1500 postdoctoral colleagues. MIT PDA’s website includes a funding page and recognized postdoc groups and additional local postdoc associations at MIT

PIVOT, a comprehensive database of funding opportunities. You can search and filter by various criteria

Institutional Research’s MIT Postdoc Demographics and Career Outcomes (institutional data about postdocs and postdoc outcomes)

The Teaching + Learning Lab (TLL) offers the Kaufmann Teaching Certificate as well as multiple online resources to supporting teaching and pedagogy skills

The Writing and Communication Center (WCC) offers appointments and programs to improve oral and written communication available for the entire MIT community

MIT’s Technology Licensing Office (TLO) helps support members of the MIT community with anything related to the tech transfer process (licensing, business development, and legal matters)

LGBTQ+ 101: “You are Welcome Here” training through the ATLAS Learning Center (go to “course catalog”; search using the Reference Code BSK34080c)

Aperian’s GlobeSmart learning modules focus on cultural awareness and improving communication in a global environment

The Ombuds Office is a confidential, independent resource that you can go to for any advice on constructive conflict management and communication