Career Planning for Bioscientists in a Changing Job Market

Most scientists were trained to believe in a straightforward career path: degree, postdoc, permanent position. Work hard, produce good science, and the next step materializes.

Except it often doesn’t. Contracts end without renewal, funding priorities shift, or the position you were working toward gets eliminated or goes to someone with different connections. You may meet expected milestones and still find that the role is no longer available.

The reality is that a PhD alone no longer guarantees stability, and organizations no longer manage your trajectory. You do. And that means actively managing your career plan.

Limitations of the Academic Career Model

The assumption that technical expertise alone guarantees stability faces two challenges: technological disruption and the nature of the modern labor market.

1. Technology-Driven Labor Shifts in Scientific Careers

While current discussions focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation, the threat of technology displacing labor is not new. Technological improvements have been viewed as threats to labor since the Industrial Revolution and the Luddite movement.

Just as power looms altered the textile workforce, AI is changing today’s labor market.

Research finds that while AI creates new roles, it also creates displacement risk, particularly for routine tasks in varied sectors. Understanding that this disturbance is cyclical rather than novel allows you to view adaptation as a standard professional requirement rather than a unique crisis.

2. Boundaryless Career Patterns in the Current Labor Market

The labor market has also moved toward “boundaryless careers” which are distinguished by frequent transitions, project-based work, and the gig economy. In this environment, depending entirely on an organization for career direction is no longer viable.

You face a market where employment is often temporary and dependent on your continuous demonstration of value.

Replacing Linear Career Progression with Adaptive Career Planning

The “career staircase” model suggests a predictable, stepwise progression where hard work at one level guarantees access to the next. The “career mountain,” in contrast, implies uneven terrain. There’s no single path to the summit. Your journey will involve lateral moves, detours, and adjusting to evolving conditions like funding cuts or new technologies.

This framing positions career pauses and retraining as expected transitions rather than failures.

What this means in practice: that year you spent retraining in bioinformatics isn’t a detour, it’s part of your route up the mountain.

Three Career Resilience Strategies for Scientists

To conquer this terrain, you can employ three specific strategies: establishing expertise, enriching others, and expanding networks.

1. Making Your Technical Expertise Visible

You need to actively demonstrate your expertise to ensure visibility in a dense marketplace. But what does this actually look like day-to-day?

Start with your professional profiles. Optimize your LinkedIn profile with specific keywords relevant to your field. Instead of listing yourself as “Postdoc,” try “Immunologist specializing in T cell exhaustion in solid tumors.” Keywords like “flow cytometry,” “CRISPR,” or “clinical trial design” ensure recruiters can discover you when they search.

Make this concrete:

• This week: Update your LinkedIn headline to reflect your actual expertise, not just your job title
• This month: Rewrite your “About” section to include 3-5 searchable keywords from your field
• Low-energy version: Just add three technical skills to your profile’s “Skills” section

Beyond keywords, demonstrate your expertise by translating complex scientific concepts to broader audiences. Employers value your skill to synthesize and communicate information.

Here’s how to start small:

• Once a month: Summarize one recent paper in your field in 3-4 sentences on LinkedIn
• After conferences: Post three summary points about what you learned
• When you read something interesting: Share it with a one-sentence explanation of why it matters

If you’re thinking “I don’t have time for social media,” consider this: a single post takes 10 minutes and reaches hundreds of people. A single coffee chat reaches one. Both matter, but consistent visibility increases recognition over time.

When you impart insights on industry directions or explain processes like clinical trials, you establish yourself as a subject matter expert and help fight misinformation.

2. Using Professional Generosity to Build Reputation

Career resilience strengthens when you adopt the mindset of a “favor economy millionaire.” This approach involves sharing useful insights, resources, or providing help without immediately expecting anything in return.

This is not about becoming everyone’s unpaid labor source. It’s about strategic generosity.

What this actually looks like:

• Share your grant template with a colleague writing their first application
• Introduce two people who are working on adjacent problems and should know each other
• Send someone a useful paper with a note: “Thought of you when I read this”
• Answer a genuine question on a forum in your expertise area
• Review someone’s conference abstract (when you have capacity)

A postdoc I know spent 20 minutes helping a graduate student troubleshoot their Western blot protocol. Six months later, that student’s advisor became her hiring manager.

This is because sharing tacit knowledge contributes to positive personal branding and organizational performance. When you help others, you build a reputation for dependability and resourcefulness.

The boundary: You decide what you have capacity for. “I can’t take this on right now, but here’s a resource that might help” is a perfectly valid form of enrichment.

3. Sustaining Professional Networks Through Routine Contact

Treat networking as a routine practice you perform consistently rather than a desperate measure you take only when job hunting. Just as daily hygiene maintains your health, consistent networking maintains your professional viability.

What this actually means for busy scientists who hate the word “networking” is small, repeatable actions.

For example:

• Once per month: Message someone whose paper you cited in your own work
• After departmental seminars: Follow up with one question by email to the speaker
• Keep a running list: Note people doing adjacent work when you encounter them
• When someone helps you: Send a genuine thank-you within 24 hours

Alumni Networks

Tapping into alumni networks is a high-yield strategy. Alumni are often willing to provide intelligence on different career paths or roles. If your university has a directory, search for people in roles that interest you. A brief message: “I noticed you transitioned from X to Y. Would you be up for a 15-minute call?” has a surprisingly high response rate.

Informational Interviews

Brief conversations with industry specialists allow you to gather information about a company or role before applying. These don’t need to be formal. A 20-minute video call where you ask three specific questions counts.

Recruiters

Connecting with recruiters and hiring managers on professional platforms can lead to direct inquiries about open positions. When you connect, attach a note: “I specialize in [specific area]—happy to connect.”

Personal Branding in a Scientific Context

Many scientists resist “personal branding,” regarding it as superficial or self-aggrandizing.

But consider this: scientists have historically practiced personal branding through accepted academic behaviors. When you present a poster at a conference, you are already molding how others understand your expertise. When you publish a paper, you’re signaling your research identity. When a colleague says, “Oh, you should talk to Dr. Smith, she’s the CRISPR person,” that’s branding.

You’ve been doing this all along. You just called it something else.

Defining Personal Branding Using Signaling Theory

Personal branding is a strategic process of creating and preserving a positive impression to signal a specific promise to a target audience. It’s based on signaling theory, where you communicate distinctive traits to differentiate yourself in an imperfect market.

This distinction matters because in a market where information is asymmetric (i.e., where employers can’t instantly assess your full capabilities) you need to clearly signal what you offer.

Identifying Your Points of Professional Differentiation

Effective branding requires identifying your points of differentiation: unique combinations of skills, values, and attributes.

For you as a scientist, this might mean highlighting a specific set of technical research skills alongside your ability to communicate those findings to non-specialist stakeholders. Or it might be your experience in bridging wet-lab and computational approaches. Or your track record of troubleshooting difficult protocols that others abandon.

A practical exercise: List three things you’re known for in your lab. Those are your differentiation points. Now ask: are they visible to people outside your lab?

Career Development as Ongoing Practice

Establishing a resilient career is an ongoing process of maintenance and re-evaluation. It requires regular introspection to determine which aspects of your experience are simultaneously enjoyable and viable in the current market.

When you view your degree as a core tool rather than a guarantee, and when you actively engage in routine professional networking, you can construct a stable career despite external factors.

The goal isn’t to predict the future, but to build the flexibility required to manage it.

A Minimal Monthly Career Maintenance Plan

Career maintenance starter plan:

1. Update one profile section (LinkedIn headline or About section with specific expertise)
2. Message one person (someone whose work you genuinely admire or cite)
3. Share one insight (a paper summary, conference takeaway, or technical tip)
4. Reflect once this quarter (Are my visible skills aligned with the roles I want?)

Small, repeated actions build momentum over time. You don’t need to overhaul your entire career strategy this week. You just need to start one small habit that signals your competence and maintains your professional network.

To learn more about taking charge of your career as a scientist, get a copy of Dr. Nonterah’s newest book, Navigating the P.I.V.O.T.

References

Gorbatov, S., Khapova, S.N. and Lysova, E.I. (2019) ‘Personal branding: A systematic review and future research agenda’, Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2238. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02238/full

McAlpine, L. and Castelló, M. (2015) ‘What do PhD graduates in non-academic careers actually do?’, Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, 8(1), pp. 1–25. Available at: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/downloadpdf/view/journals/latiss/17/1/latiss170105.pdf

Subaveerapandiyan, A. and Shimray, S.R. (2024) ‘The evolution of job displacement in the age of AI and automation: A bibliometric review (1984–2024)’, Open Information Science, 8, 20240010. https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2024-0010. Available at: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/opis-2024-0010/html