Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Careers and Recruitment
  • Published:

What faculty hiring committees want

PhD trainees aspiring to become faculty need to know the credentials search committees value most in an applicant.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Committee emphasis on faculty credentials changes with career stage.

References

  1. National Academy of Engineering & Institute of Medicine. The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited (National Academy of Sciences, 2014).

  2. Sauermann, H. & Roach, M. PLoS One 7, e36307 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Garrison, H.H., Justement, L.B. & Gerbi, S.A. FASEB J. 30, 41–44 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Sauermann, H. & Roach, M. Science 352, 663–664 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. National Science Foundation. Doctorate recipients from US universities. https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/ (2015)

  6. Henderson, R.I. & Syed, N. Acad. Med. 91, 1661–1665 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Thomas, N.R., Poole, D.J. & Herbers, J.M. PLoS One 10, e0139767 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Gibbs, K.D., Basson, J., Xierali, I.M. & Broniatowski, D.A. eLife 5, e21393 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bernstein, R. Cell 159, 5–8 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. DiPiro, J.T. Am. J. Pharm. Educ. 75, 97 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Mascarelli, A. Nature 513, 131–133 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. van Dijk, D., Manor, O. & Carey, L.B. Curr. Biol. 24, R516–R517 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Clauset, A., Arbesman, S. & Larremore, D.B. Sci. Adv. 1, e1400005 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. American Society for Cell Biology. San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (2013).

  15. Schekman, R. & Patterson, M. eLife 2, e00855 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Smith, J.L., Handley, I.M., Zale, A.V., Rushing, S. & Potvin, M.A. Bioscience 65, 1084–1087 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Alberts, B. Science 340, 787 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Bertrand, M. & Mullainathan, S. Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. NBER Working Paper Series http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 (2003).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Charles B Wright or Nathan L Vanderford.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figure 1 and Supplementary Tables 1–4 (PDF 82 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wright, C., Vanderford, N. What faculty hiring committees want. Nat Biotechnol 35, 885–887 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3962

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3962

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Translational Research newsletter — top stories in biotechnology, drug discovery and pharma.

Get what matters in translational research, free to your inbox weekly. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Translational Research