Some people enjoy studying. These people pursue graduate degrees after college. Some would even go on to get postgraduate degrees. They just never want to stop learning and educating themselves. Often, these people have a vested interest in a particular topic. They dedicate themselves to research and to finding solutions to their problems. What happens after one finally gets their postgraduate degree? Now that they have a doctorate, what do they do? Well, if they still want to learn and do research, they can apply to be postdoctoral associates.
Postdoctoral associate positions are available in universities and research centers. These institutions aim for higher learning and forwarding education. Postdoctoral associates are employed by these institutions to conduct research and to advance their learning. This arrangement will also be beneficial to the institution since they will be part of the research and will be with the postdoctoral associate when they publish.
If you enjoy learning and would like to build a career as an academic, this is a great one. Of course, if you will pursue this, you would have to be both passionate and patient!
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a Postdoctoral Associate. For example, did you know that they make an average of $24.9 an hour? That's $51,787 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 8% and produce 10,600 job opportunities across the U.S.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a Postdoctoral Associate, we found that a lot of resumes listed 10.9% of Postdoctoral Associates included PHD, while 8.5% of resumes included Research Projects, and 7.5% of resumes included Data Analysis. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
If you're interested in becoming a Postdoctoral Associate, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 37.5% of Postdoctoral Associates have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 14.0% of Postdoctoral Associates have master's degrees. Even though most Postdoctoral Associates have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a Postdoctoral Associate. When we researched the most common majors for a Postdoctoral Associate, we found that they most commonly earn Doctoral Degree degrees or Bachelor's Degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on Postdoctoral Associate resumes include Master's Degree degrees or Associate Degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a Postdoctoral Associate. In fact, many Postdoctoral Associate jobs require experience in a role such as Research Assistant. Meanwhile, many Postdoctoral Associates also have previous career experience in roles such as Teaching Assistant or Graduate Research Assistant.