Postdocs and graduate students who fantasize about their first research appointments may imagine that they will be preoccupied with completing ambitious research projects. In fact, universities woefully underprepare people actually to work as a research professor - a job that entails much more than research. One senior researcher compared the shift to the transition from being a middle manager to the chief executive of a company.

In fact, young research professors need to learn a multitude of new skills simultaneously. You may need to: hire and manage your first employees; write your first grant; submit your first paper; set up and run your first lab (including equipment); spend and track a far larger amount of money than ever before; set up your first research collaborations; teach your first class and work seriously with students for the first time; and develop good collegial relationships with the people who will determine whether you gain tenure or not.

Unfortunately, people expect you to do all of these essential tasks well from day one. You must quickly overcome your deficiencies while you function in all the roles - sometimes in the same day. You might learn some of these skills from other people and from books. Don't expect much help from your colleagues, however, because they might not be any more capable than you are.

While interviewing some of my clients and former clients for this article, I was told of several classical mistakes that people make when starting up their labs. A fundamental problem: new research professors simply expect too much of themselves and others. They fail to take into account that they must now learn to do demanding, time-consuming tasks while directing others to work at the bench.

To prepare for your first position, identify the skills you need, and begin to work on them in the context of your career goals. If you are on a tenure track, prioritize and plan carefully for three to five years. Your most important task will be to do solid, publishable research that helps your students and postdocs while building your case for tenure. Spending time on your long-term plan will help you in many ways, including forming the basis of your first grant. Ideally, you should try to offload as many tasks as you can that slow down your research progress. For example, you could ask your chair to excuse you from teaching and committee work for the first year.

When planning research and writing grants, don't be overly ambitious. Be conservative, and only write grants that are really doable. If you haven't had lab management experience, you probably can't estimate with accuracy how quickly your staff will work. Don't expect your staff to match your skills, and bear in mind that a great deal of your time will be spent doing nonresearch activities. Apply for funding from as many sources as possible, and remember that some schools count NIH grants, but not other grants, toward tenure.

Your chair should give you enough funds to run your lab for two to three years. However, you should start writing your grants immediately, and be prepared for the likelihood that they will not be funded the first time (most grants aren't). By learning from reviewers' comments, you will learn how to play the game.

As a research professor, you must develop your own self-management skills as well as supervising your staff and outside collaborations. I consider the self-management skills to be extremely important. When working with clients, I've seen how improving these abilities has had a ripple effect on all their work. If you can properly plan and organize your work to minimize distractions and to spend your time wisely, you will have greater control over other management problems. One useful suggestion: set aside a regular time each day to write and plan without interruptions from telephones, staff requests, meetings, or email.

When hiring and managing people for your laboratory, timing and good judgment are essential. One common mistake is to hire too quickly and too early with the hope that having this manpower will accelerate your research progress. In fact, a bad lab member can be far worse than being simply unproductive; she can slow down other people and create tremendous morale problems.

One senior researcher recommends that new professors hire one person at a time. This gives professors the benefit of learning from their mistakes if the person doesn't work out. If the person is productive, knowing her skills will enable you to find the proper complements in other people. A good initial team might include one technician, one to two graduate students, and one to two postdocs.

When hiring your initial staff, remember that bigger is not necessarily better. It is far preferable to find a few extremely productive people through careful screening than to hire a larger group that includes unproductive members. One professor predicted that the success of new faculty members is determined more than anything else by the first three to four people who join the laboratories. Choose wisely!

Young professors should find it far easier to attract good graduate students than good postdocs, since postdocs will try to find the prestigious laboratories that will help them get jobs. Ph.D. students are more likely to take the risk of working with a new professor because they may have a greater role there, and the professor may be doing cutting-edge work. Although doctoral students are likely to be strongly motivated to succeed in your lab, remember that they are hard to remove if they fail.

Young professors often underestimate the power of a good technician. Fill these positions carefully as well, since they sometimes work harder and better than your graduate students and postdocs. You will have to allow time to train people in your lab, so you should take this into account when you create your long- and short-term plans. However, if you choose the right people, you will be able to minimize the time you spend training your staff.

As you supervise your staff, you may need to learn new communication skills. Be very precise about your expectations, and ensure that your lab members understand you. Give them explicit goals and as much feedback as possible, especially at the beginning. Also, be sure that you are motivating them to do well by helping them to do what they do best. Many business management techniques work surprisingly well in laboratories. Find a good bookstore with management books and buy the titles that will improve your management style.

You should choose your collaborators as wisely as you choose your lab personnel. It is easy for new assistant professors to promise too much and to be manipulated by collaborators (often by flattery). Be sure to investigate your collaborators closely, in terms of how well they work with other people as well as the quality of their research. As a young professor, it is especially important that you show independence in your research. Thus, it may not be a good idea to collaborate with your mentors. Also, note that tenure review committees may not count papers written with senior faculty very highly; they might wonder whether the senior faculty did the key work.

In addition to the challenges mentioned above, as a young professor you will have teaching, publishing, and administrative responsibilities. Teaching may prove to be less of a drain than you expect. When teaching, you can save yourself a great deal of time if you stick with what you already know instead of trying to break new ground. Teaching generally counts less than other major factors when faculty come up for tenure.

Publishing, of course, is essential for your success. If you come from a non-English-speaking country, this is likely to be your most difficult task. Finding a good writing coach or authors’ editor should speed your writing process immensely. Also, if you teach your lab members to write the first draft of each paper, you can lighten your burden while giving them valuable experience.

You will also be faced with a number of administrative responsibilities, including participation on departmental committees. Female scientists are especially likely to be tapped for committees, because of pressures toward equalizing female participation in departments. However, you can ask for minimal involvement for the first couple of years. Learn to say no. You will also be approached to serve on NIH study sections and as a reviewer for journals. You must take on some of these responsibilities; just be careful about how much you do.

When you embark on your first academic job, allow yourself to make mistakes, and simply be willing to quickly learn from them. Your department will probably assign you a faculty mentor. You should rely upon him and senior colleagues to advise you when trouble looms. Ultimately, you will learn from your own experience. As Oscar Wilde said in Lady Windermere's Fan, "Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes."