Struggling to get my first postdoc after PhD, please any advice at all
I passed my viva back in January and still haven't gotten a job yet. I've been applying for both academic and non-academic, but I can't understand why I'm finding it so difficult to get a postdoc. I understand its incredibly competitive, but this feels so much worse than I thought it would and I'm hoping that I must be doing something wrong.
To begin with I am not able to find many relevant advertised postdocs (my field is in microbial ecology). I have also reached out to about ~15 potential PIs, some showed genuine interest in me but had no funds available to hire me. In terms of publications, I have 2 co-authorships and preparing my first first-author manuscript now, so I understand that could be limiting me.
I recently applied for a postdoc I was sure I would get an interview at least for, they asked for a very unique combination of skills that I have, so it's really knocked my confidence hearing that I didn't even get an interview.
My supervisors are not particularly helpful, when I asked them for advice on this process they pretty much just told me they would let me know if they hear of anything.
Any advice or encouragement or something to help me make sense of this would be really appreciated. Thank you for reading.
