Prospective employers tell me my field is obsolete. How can I reinvent myself?

Question

I'm currently a young researcher (PhD + 1 post-doc) in robotics. During my PhD I worked on a well-known topic in my field, having (based on what the permanents around me said) quite good results. Afterwards, I landed a post-doc with one of the world-leading experts in my specific area of expertise, for which I was over the moon, and I'm still having notable results.

Since the end of my post-doc is coming up, I started looking for an assistant professor/permanent researcher position (this is in the EU). When I started speaking with prospective employers (i.e., universities and research institutes, not in the private sector), the response I got was quite hard for me: my area of expertise is obsolete, and applying today as an expert on my main topic simply won't fly.

Now I don't know what to do. The most obvious answer would be to seek another post-doc in a different field, but I have a family, and it's getting increasingly difficult to relocate every few years. With 1 year left on my post-doc, I plan to try to integrate new topics in my research, but I am not familiar with the literature outside of my area of expertise, and I don't know if it can be a feasible plan at all.

So my question is: if you had to change research direction without leaving your current team/position, how would you approach it?

I realize it's a broad question, so please let me know if it is too broad, I will try to focus the scope of the answer further.

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Edit to answer questions in the comments.

Q: Do you agree with them? How come you didn't notice you work on an obsolete topic?

A: In hindsight, I do agree with their assessment. The "boom" of publications was ~20 years ago, and, while there are still teams working on this, they are all people that were there during the boom. In fact, what I was told was "while we do work on it, the topic is so mature that it doesn't make sense to hire someone today to work on it". I guess the reason why I didn't see it coming is that the people around me were enthusiastic of my work, and told me that it would be easy to land a permanent position afterwards.

Answer 1

Suppose you work in an extremely narrow field: Nuclear powered monochromatic robotic underwater nine inch basket weaving. Suppose that you write the seminal paper in that field, effectively killing it off. What do you do?

Well, there are a lot of closely related fields in which you have some expertise, even as suggested by the name of the field itself. Look to those fields. I doubt that robotics is dead at this point, for example.

Just don't focus so closely on "my topic". Everything you write successfully, closes that specific thing down a bit. Think about how the things you know and that contribute to that topic, also contribute to other things. Look there for opportunities.

Your background has, I hope, prepared you to learn and given you experience in methodology that can be applied to other topics.

Answer 2

I understand your struggle, as I’ve been through a similar experience. I started my research journey in nanotechnology, and by the end of my PhD, I was told that my field was considered obsolete. It took significant effort to reinvent myself and transition my expertise to public health. My advice would be to use this time to modernize your research focus. Start by conducting informational interviews with principal investigators in emerging fields to understand how your expertise can align with current trends.

To approach this transition, identify emerging topics by reviewing recent conferences, journals, and workshops, and find overlaps between your expertise and these areas. Use transferable skills from your current work to bridge into new fields, dedicating part of your time to exploratory or interdisciplinary projects that align with both your expertise and trending research. Leverage your current network for collaborations, upskill strategically with online courses, and focus on publishing reviews or perspectives that demonstrate your adaptability. Utilize the remaining time in your post-doc to build a CV that highlights your interdisciplinary potential and frame your expertise as a foundation for contributing to new areas. If you’d like more insights into how I made my transition, feel free to ask!

Answer 3

First it’s good to realise to realise where you are at: All other things being comparable, it will be difficult for you to outcompete somebody with expertise in the target subfield. However, if the entire field of robotics isn’t massively shrinking at the moment, you still have a chance in whatever subfields are currently expanding and thus do not have enough “home-grown” and otherwise qualified applicants to fill all positions. The tricky part is to find those subfields.

One efficient way to do this is to use the job market to let the field find you: Apply to all robotics (or similar) positions, as long as you feel remotely qualified and the effort remains manageable – bonus points if there is overlap with your current expertise. Only if the targeted subfield is currently expanding, will you have realistic chances of acquiring a position. Obviously, you need to be prepared for an increased rate of rejections. Given the lengths of the respective hiring processes, the right time to start applying to jobs is probably now (if I understand your situation correctly).

Now, at this career stage, many positions will expect you to come with some research plan of your own, and this obviously takes time and creativity. But trying to come up with a research plan matching a given position may be a way to find out whether a target subfield suits you and you may also find ideas of what to pursue in the next year. Ideally, application processes only require you to put in a major effort when you make it past the first stage.

During applications, I suggest being open about your qualities and the challenges you will face in a given position. Highlight your experience in general robotics research, possible overlaps, working independently, advising students, teaching, etc., while acknowledging that you’ll enter a new subfield and probably want a mentor for this, etc.

Answer 4

While doing postdoc, there is always a trade-off between versatility vs. expertise. That is, one can go for becoming an expert in a specific sub-field, by sticking to the same area of research or one can (more or less) deliberately take postdocs focused on somewhat different subjects (or even inter-disciplinary fields) thus being open to a wider range of scientific pursuits. Both have obvious advantages and disadvantages - competing with somebody who spent all their life in a single field is hard... but having broad expertise opens more opportunities. The latter may be of special importance for couples where both partners have promising careers and have to compromise between best employment and opportunities and the necessity to be in the same geographic location.

Things get even more drastic when one moves to industry - with rare exceptions the academic specializations are of little interest in industrial setting - what is valuable is the side-skills - rigorous undergraduate training, experience of research work, experience in scientific writing and otherwise presenting results to public, collaborative experience, etc.

Plenty has been said and written about the transferable skills for academics moving to industry (just the first link that popped up in Google), and it is worth focusing on this, even if you intend to remain in academia. In other words, what have you really learned to do, while working on a highly specialized subject? (Rather than trying to become an equally good specialist in another highly specialized subject, which is probably what is meant by reinventing oneself.)