Karel Svoboda puts candidates through two interviews to get a clear sense of their interest in his lab. Karolin Luger tries to learn as much about their personality and ability to deal with conflict as their scientific expertise.

That's a good track record. In a 2010 Science Careers survey of about 3,500 former and current postdocs, 61 percent of respondents expected to land a tenure-track position, but only 37 percent actually did.

Bardwell sees more postdocs choosing nontraditional posts. He's had former postdocs who took jobs in industry overseeing large groups of 30 scientists as well as one who became an assistant professor in Saudi Arabia.

"I try to walk in their shoes rather than pretend they have the same aspirations I have," he says. He plans to encourage the colleague in Saudi Arabia to stay in contact since he's likely to be more isolated from the broader scientific community.

Good mentors find ways to train their postdocs to excel at mentoring when they launch their own labs. Luger pairs postdocs with an undergraduate, rotation, or graduate student, and she checks in with the student to see how the relationship is working.

One Luger postdoc learned an invaluable lesson about adjusting mentoring approaches. Paired first with an undergraduate of similar personality, the postdoc delivered criticisms directly with no "gift-wrapping." His next student, however, shriveled under what she considered offensive feedback.

Luger warns her postdocs to allow for a "training period" for the students, who often cannot keep up intellectually with a postdoc at the top of his or her game. She has a favorite exercise for reminding them that trainees are not mini-me's: "Take a page from a paper, and replace every third noun and the occasional verb with the word 'Yakutat.' That's pretty much an undergraduate's experience when they first talk to their new mentors."

Patrick Kanold trained as a postdoc in the Harvard Medical School lab of Carla Shatz, now director of Bio-X at Stanford University in California and member of HHMI's medical advisory board. He says her skilled but understated mentoring prepared him to easily set up his own group at University of Maryland in College Park.

"She gave me room to develop my own thoughts and questions with subtle little pushes. I was being directed, but at the time I didn't notice," he says. "By building my own experimental set-ups and training grad students through guided mentoring, I was being given really important experiences that I carried with me."

Bardwell is often reminded of his experiences shooting unexplored rivers. His contacts tell him that Papua New Guinea's Jimi River awaits a first descent by humans. He'd love to give it a shot, with the right team beside him. The same goes for his lab—a well-chosen team with the right training makes for a gratifying journey.

		PART 2 In the next issue, our series continues with the view from the postdocs themselves. Where do things stand for them today? What came of the bustle of activity to improve the lives of postdocs in the early 2000s? Does their future look bright?

Photos: Svoboda: Andrew Cutraro, Luger: Matt Slaby

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