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ECRs (grads + postdocs) are, quite understandably, freaked out about our job prospects and ability to thrive in academia. If you are in a secure, permanent position, here are some things you can do to help the ECRs within your academic circles. A thread:
Invite us to be coauthors on publications. We are experts in our fields too. But also, need a figure made? Invite an ECR. Need a paragraph written? ECR. Formatting help? References checked? Grammar check? You guessed it: invite an ECR to help out.
Invite us to be co-PIs or senior personnel on grants. Let us help write the grant, and mentor us through the process. Big grants are overwhelming, we can't learn the process overnight. Even better, write in funding for our positions (e.g., postdoc support)
Send us job notices and advertisements. Chances are we are already subscribed to listservs and plugged into social media, but there is so much that gets by us. Sending along anything and everything you think we'd be interested in is much appreciated and helpful!
If your university allows it, gives us a heads-up about teaching a class at your university/college for some additional $$. This is also a great way for us to network with your colleagues and sharpen our teaching skills.
Involve us in service activities, such as planning meetings, conferences, or workshops. And seriously, if you don't have an ECR perspective on these initiatives, you are missing out.
Advocate for us. Use your position of power to leverage better working conditions for us, extend our contracts by a semester (seriously this helps immensely), give us raises, etc. etc.
If you are an editor, recognize that we too are experts in our field. Send us manuscripts to review! And if we don't have time or are overwhelmed (likely), we are happy to suggest other ECRs who may not have as much reviewing experience but need/want it.
If you are an editor and receive a review from an ECR that is really outstanding, let them know through a personalized email! It feels so good to be recognized and thanked for a job well done. Or provide us (constructive!) feedback of any review; we appreciate that too.
Involve us in outreach and scicomm initiatives. Learning how to communicate with aspects of the public, policy makers, and other educators is key to later creating impactful Broader Impacts initiatives. And it's fun!
Prioritize our publications and grants. *Especially* if you are tenured, you don't likely need another first-author pub. We need publications and money to be competitive on the job market, so the sooner we can get things published and submitted, the better.
Mentor us. Listen to our concerns (really listen), give us advice, and help us transition from grad to postdoc to pre-tenured prof/professional. It's so rare folks in academia just listen to our concerns, but this is the best starting place to know how you can really help us.
Invite us to be invited speakers in your conference symposiums! We're great speakers, we know our stuff, and we could use the cred in our community and extra lines on our CV.
Invite us to co-convene a symposium with you at a conference. This is another activity that is lower-stress but high-impact in terms of making connections and meeting other folks in our field.
A lot of us are financially unstable, but still need to attend conferences. Reach out to the ECRs in your circle and offer to pay for their conference registration costs and abstract fees. Especially with online conferences, these costs aren't that much but can be a lot for us.
A lot of this advice came from my own experiences with other ECRs, mid- and late-career stage folks around me who are willing to help. If you have additional advice (no matter your career stage), drop it below! Let's keep this going!
