Postdoc Applications Editing and Proofreading Services

A principal investigator receives forty unsolicited emails a month. Thirty-eight open with a paragraph about the sender's education, attach a CV, and say they are very interested in the lab's research. Those are deleted in the preview pane. The two that get read said something in the first line that proved the sender had read a specific paper and had a thought about it.

We edit the material used to approach research groups — enquiry and cold-contact emails to principal investigators, research statements and project sketches for postdoctoral positions, applications to advertised postdoctoral posts, fellowship-linked position applications, and the follow-up correspondence after an initial reply. Our editors work on emails that get four seconds.

The approach email is the document that decides whether a postdoctoral application exists at all, and its failure is an introduction about the sender. A principal investigator is reading for whether you have engaged with their work. We work through these so the first sentence refers to a specific paper and says something about it, since a general compliment about the lab's research is indistinguishable from the thirty-eight and a comment on the second figure of a named paper is not; so the comment is a question or an observation rather than praise, because praise invites nothing and a question invites a reply; so what the sender would bring is stated as a technique, a dataset or a skill the group does not currently have, given that a group hires to fill a gap rather than to add a person; so the proposed project is sketched in three or four sentences that connect the sender's expertise to the group's current direction, and clearly marked as a starting point rather than a plan; so funding is addressed directly — whether the sender is seeking a funded position, bringing a fellowship, or intending to apply with the group's support — since this determines whether the email is a cost or an opportunity and PIs need to know within seconds; so the availability and any constraint is stated; so the whole email stays under two hundred words with the CV attached rather than described; and so the ask is one specific thing. Emails written this way get replies.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including unpublished work, applications and correspondence with research groups. We are editors rather than academics or principal investigators, and we offer no view on the research, any group or any appointment. What we can do is make the first line worth the reply.