Dr. Jim Gould is the Director for Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard Medical School, where he leads initiatives supporting over 5,000 postdocs each year. With more than a decade of experience developing career and professional development programs, Jim is dedicated to helping early-career researchers navigate transitions, build meaningful careers, and thrive within and beyond academia. He is the co-host of the Propelling Careers podcast and author of Making the Most of the Postdoc: Strategically Advancing Your Early Career, a practical guide for scientists seeking to make the most of their postdoctoral training. Through his work, Jim continues to champion mentorship, community, and open dialogue around postdoc success.
“Don’t do this alone. Use the resources of your community and your network to the fullest ”_Jim Gould
Q1: What led you to transition from bench research to a career in postdoc leadership and higher education administration?
It wasn’t really a single light-bulb moment. It was more a series of experiences over time, starting in undergrad and grad school, and really coming together during my postdoc. I kept realizing that I was better at helping and advising my peers than focusing on my own experiments. People would come to me with questions regarding “how to deal with their PI, how to transition out, and how to fix their CV”, and I found that I actually got energy from helping them.
I was also more interested in running seminar series, judging science fairs, and mentoring students than being the one presenting the science. At the National Institute of Health (NIH), I took full advantage of all the career and training resources through the Office of Intramural Training and Education and the NCI (National Cancer Institute), and I got involved in local education initiatives at Fort Detrick.
Eventually I joined the Fellows and Young Investigators (FYI), chaired the scientific subcommittee, and later the whole organization. Through that, I realized this could actually be a career path. I even developed an internship with the Office of Training and Education, and that’s when I knew - this wasn’t just something I was good at, it was really a calling.
Q2: How can postdocs overcome career uncertainty and self-doubt?
Looking back, it helps that I had been through it. I was lost at times but I refused to become isolated. I built community, and I connected people with each other. That made a big difference.
One of the biggest mistakes I see postdocs make is not using the scientific method in other contexts. You’re the world’s experts in the scientific method, but when facing a career or mentoring problem, you don’t gather enough information, you don’t test it, you get an ‘n’ of one. You don’t get feedback on your materials, you don’t explore, and you don’t build community.
Postdocs also often don’t reflect on their skills, interests, or values. They don’t realize that they have superpowers because of their academic training, comfort with ambiguity, project and resource management, time management, and problem-solving. The scientific method is one of the best ways in human history to answer a question, and you already know how to use it. You just need to apply it beyond the lab.
Q3: How can we make rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility resonate in postdoctoral training?
Every environment you find yourself in has different norms. There’s no continuous training pipeline from undergraduate to faculty. Each stage brings new expectations, new cultures, and new standards so the assumption that you’ve already mastered rigorous and responsible research just because you’ve advanced this far couldn’t be further from the truth.
That’s why we need ongoing training and refreshers at every career stage. Science, technology, and society are constantly evolving, and we need to prepare people for the future state of science, not just what’s been done in the past.
Q4: What’s the one piece of career advice you would give any trainee, in any stage of their career?
Don’t do this alone. Use your resources and community to the fullest.
I used every single resource I had, at the University of Louisville as a grad student, at the NIH and NCI as a postdoc, I took self-assessments, joined committee and used career offices. That’s what made the difference. Wherever you are, use your environment to the fullest. Don’t isolate yourself.
Q5: Is academia doing enough to prepare postdocs for teaching-focused faculty roles?
Training and expectations are uneven across institutions, and even across departments. That’s true for any career outcome: teaching, research, industry. Institutions can do more to be explicit about what postdocs can and can’t do to develop themselves, and to provide partnerships and opportunities to do so.
At Havard Medical School for example, we don’t have undergraduates, so we partner with Simmons University to train postdocs in pedagogy and teaching practice. The deeper issue, though, is the perceived lack of permission to pursue those experiences.
Mentors and institutions need to view training holistically, not just scientific productivity, but preparing a whole person, a whole scientist, and explicitly give permission for professional development as part of training.
Q6: What’s the central message of your book, Making the Most of Your Postdoc and if you had to add another chapter to it today, what would it be?
The core message is connection. The cover itself, an interconnected network, represents that idea.
Making the most of your postdoc means maintaining connection: to science, your community, your peers, your mentors, your environment. Don’t do this alone.
The book gives you tools for managing up, navigating challenges, using your network, and understanding that difficulty is part of the process. Everything new is hard before it gets easier.
If I were to add a new chapter today, it would focus on the international postdoc experience. I didn’t include it originally because I didn’t want to speak beyond my experience, but now I see how essential that perspective is.
Q7: What do you find most rewarding about your work?
Being able to do all of it - directing a postdoc office, working on policy, coaching, teaching and speaking - and seeing how it all connects.
Each piece keeps me up to date on the challenges postdocs face and allows me to use what I learn to make their experience better. That multidimensional aspect, the ability to pursue all these things and make them relevant to each other, is what’s most rewarding.
Q8: I know you co-host the Propelling Careers Podcast with Lauren Celano, Founder and CEO of Propel Careers. Is there a podcast, or book or movie, that you recommend for postdocs who want to understand themselves and their career path better?
Honestly, no single book or movie changed my path. What did change it were self-assessments.
If you don’t know yourself, it’s hard to make good career decisions. I recommend tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, DiSC, and StrengthsFinder. They help you understand how you work, how you interact with others, and how you use your strengths under pressure.
Most issues postdocs face aren’t about the science, they’re about the people they work with. Understanding yourself and how you interact with others prepares you better than anything else.
Q9: What’s your podcast about, and who is it for?
Our podcast, Propelling Careers, is for early-career scientists navigating career transitions and the job market.
We have 78 episodes covering everything from networking, storytelling, and interviewing to understanding industry and startups. We also try to bust myths, not just giving career tips, but revealing the universal truths of the job search.
Even if you’re not an early-career scientist, you’ll still find those universal lessons valuable.
Q10: If you could redesign the postdoc experience from scratch, what would it look like?
If I could redesign it completely, I’d work myself out of a job. The current model only truly serves a small portion of people.
I’d move toward a system that’s more direct-to-workforce, more vocational and specific. For example, administrative postdocs who transition into academic administration, or core facility postdocs who manage technology and collaborations.
That means rethinking the postdoc and the PhD, integrating training that connects directly to workforce pathways rather than assuming everyone will follow the same research track.
Q11: What trends do you see in the future of postdoctoral training?
There’s growing diversity in postdoc models, more workforce-specific programs, more industry and hybrid postdocs.
Industry needs to invest more in training, because most PhDs and postdocs are still in academia before transitioning out. That partnership could create more direct career pipelines.
We’re also seeing a proliferation of postdoc offices, dedicated staff focused on postdoc support, policy, and training. This has made institutions more aware of postdocs’ needs and improved career development.
Graduate programs are also getting better at career readiness, sometimes embedding professional development into the curriculum, which could eventually shorten or even replace the need for some postdocs.
Finally, there’s a realization that we’re not just training academic researchers, we’re training the broader scientific workforce.
Q12: Why is it important to translate postdoc research for a public audience?
Because most science is publicly funded, we owe the public an explanation of what we do and why it matters.
It’s not enough to do science for science’s sake. We should communicate its impact and importance to the broader public, not just to other scientists. Translating postdoc research into accessible summaries is one of the most important ways to connect science to the public good.