A Post-doc in need of guidance

The title of this post is somewhat misleading as it is not I that needs the guidance but one of my friends (who I shall refer to as X), who shall remain anonymous. All I can say is they did their PhD in the U.K and are 2/3 through their first post-doc in the U.S – and hated every second of it. Now, I won’t go into any detail as to why this is the case with my unfortunate buddy, but they are looking to come back to work in the U.K. After some discussion, the NHS Scientist Training Programme comes up. X is thinking of applying but does not know anybody who has gone through the process and what it’s like.

This is where you come in! Have you been through the programme? Would you mind answering some questions X prepared? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, awesome! Please answer in the comments below. If you don’t want to answer but would like to help in some way, shape or form, please feel free to contact me via twitter or the comments.

If you know someone who has been through the programme, please forward this post to them, it would help out a lot!

And now without further ado, the questions:

1) What is the starting salary and what does it increase to and level off at?

2) Does the salary cap depend on the area of specialty?

3) Are you guaranteed a job after you finish the programme or do you have to look for a job with the NSH and apply+go through interviews again?

4) How different is the day-to-day or week-to-week work Vs. post-doc, is it more translational with immediate impact?

5) What do they look for in a candidate, relevant experience or translational skills or both? i.e would a protein biochemist/structural biologist be appropriate?

6) What’s the work/life balance like? Regular hours i.e 8 a day with odd weekend shifts now and then?

Thanks for reading. It’s shameful that this is my first blog post for over 3 months. This will likely change once I’ve written and submitted my thesis so hold tight for now and expect some bloggy goodness come start of April.