Life’s paths change from time to time. Some unexpected, apparently harmless forks turn out to have major ramifications. The prime life-change for me was in the councilor’s office at Berkeley in 1980. What should have been simple guidance to define my major turned into something very different. “Mr. Hochberg, you have to take one year of foreign language to get the BSc in Life Sciences at Berkeley…” implying “…regardless of your major and what you want to do in life.” The beautiful irony is by my transferring to the College of Natural Resources expressly to avoid the foreign language requirement, I met my French wife-to-be and eventually moved to France. I’ve been taking the foreign language requirement for more than 30 years now!
But moving to France was not a done deal. It wouldn’t have happened had it not been for a seminar presented at Imperial College in 1989 by an Argentinian researcher. More about that later.
France 84-86
France was far from being a stranger to me in the 1980s. Having fallen in love with a French woman, I visited this incredible place for the first time in the spring of 1984. Fantastic food, incredible wine and cheese, massive history and culture, beautiful countryside, wonderful people. But as far as I could tell, absolutely no science. Well, no science in my field of interest at the time - applied population ecology. Despite not being able to name a single living French academic when I got my MSc in 1985, I was so in love that I applied for and got a one-year Chateaubriand fellowship to do a research project during the ‘85-‘86 academic year at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), near Avignon. France and science were coming together.
My path to INRA and beyond was in effervescence (to put it lightly!) in 1984. Yes I was in love, but I was also pragmatic. I applied for three PhD programs in late ’84 and was accepted to two of them. As I explain more below, I was rejected from my first choice, a notable Ivy League school (hereafter “Ivy”). My second choice, Entomology at UC Davis looked good, but having taken two years of entomology and related courses for my MSc at Berkeley, I was raring to focus on research for the PhD. Coursework waivers depend on universities, colleges, departments and supervisors. I figured that in going from one UC university to another there would be homology (or at least sensibility to make an exception) between entomology departments. Well, no. Upon visiting my to-be supervisor at UC Davis I was informed I would have to take the full entomology coursework complement again![1] A double-whammy since not only was I motivated much more by research than by coursework, but I would essentially waste two precious years in redundant courses. I was informed by my to-be supervisor that it would take a minimum of 5 years and probably a few more to get the PhD. The prospect of graduating at 30+ was unacceptable. I decided to take my third choice and relocate in England at Imperial College at Silwood Park. Theirs was a 3-year research-only PhD program with the perk that I was only a pond-hop from France and continental Europe. Win-win and, as it would turn out to be, fate, since it was at Silwood that I attended the seminar that would – like the councilor’s office at Berkeley – change my life.
Silwood
I was a bright-eyed 26-year-old[2] when I started my doctorate at Imperial College, Silwood Park in 1986. I was grateful to my supervisors and University of London administration, since I had been accepted for the 1985 academic year, but asked for (and had accepted) a one-year waiver so that I could do my research stint at INRA.
Silwood is nestled in the Berkshire countryside, a beautiful and well-to-do area neighboring Ascot and Windsor. We lived in a Victorian house in Windsor, just a stone’s throw from the Castle, and would host friends almost weekly from near and far to our French and American cooking and fabulous French wines.
Life at Silwood was wonderful. Daily interactions with students and faculty, an on-site refectory and squash court and the many acres of woodland that was Silwood Park. I didn’t know what my future held and really only started thinking about it in 1988-89, my 3rd and final year. Deciding together with Jöelle to stay in England for a while longer, I applied for a postdoctoral position in the new Centre for Population Biology (CPB), which, conveniently, was housed in the building next door to where I conducted my PhD. The only other real change in what was a very comfortable life had been that the owner of the flat we rented in Windsor passed away in 1988 and left his millions to anything and everything feline. The solicitors handling his massive estate decided to move tenants into the least-sellable of his 15 or so residences in the area. We happily moved a few miles away to a beautiful flat nestled in the pastures of Old Windsor.
The Centre for Population Biology awarded me a 2-year postdoc and was willing to extend it by a year, but this did mean I had to be somewhat proactive in searching for follow-up academic positions. I did apply for about a dozen jobs in the US over the 2 years of my CPB postdoc, but got no interviews. Positions were relatively few in the late 80s and early 90s, with a hundred or more applicants for each. Things were looking bleak and I was coming to the realization that I would return to the US as a postdoc in order to enter the US academic job market. I did actually enquire about one lectureship position at Cambridge University, but was told by a Silwood faculty member “Don’t bother, they are after so-and-so”. Turns out that so-and-so was offered the position but turned it down. So much for staying in the UK.
Odd Segue
I had an interesting duo of experiences in 1984 and 1990 either which could very well have paved my path to an academic position in the US. The 1984 meeting was planned. The 1990 one too, but what transpired in it was unexpectedly unexpected.
As mentioned above, I applied to three PhD programs, but was only accepted to two… Here’s what happened for my failed, preferred choice before even completing the application form.
Spring 1984. Based on the recommendation by a Berkeley professor, I had been in contact with a faculty member at Ivy for several months about applying to their Ecology and Evolution PhD program. I was in the middle of the MSc at Berkeley and the prospect of a 5+yr PhD did not concern me at the time (as it in fact did a year later, after being accepted to UC Davis Entomology). The Ivy faculty member directed a group in theoretical population biology. I was motivated enough to actually fly out to the North-East US on my way back from my trip to France, in May 1984. I remember getting to airport late at night and the student who had agreed to put me over for a few nights, flaked. I can still see where I was in this tiny airport on the pay phone, tired from the flights and panicked at the prospect of spending the early morning searching for a hotel. I was fortunate however that I had the number of a postdoc in the group. He agreed to put me over at his place. So, I met the next day reasonably fresh for my meeting with the group director for what was one of the most important interviews of my life.
We sat down and he asked:
“Tell me about your research”
“I’m working on temperature-driven models of aphid development”, I said. I described the project and why it was interesting, but I was mid-way through the research and so scientific details were incomplete.
He paused.
“Well, what would you like to do at Ivy?”
“I’m interested in population dynamic models and their application to the control of insect pests”, I replied. I recall describing a theory I had that the biological control of pest populations using two or more natural enemies could massively improve the result. I knew that other faculty members at Ivy would be interested in this (and did meet them during my stay), since the topic and modelling approach was particularly hot at the time.
“Ok”
And then he paused again with a different facial expression.
“Why do you want to attend Ivy?”
I drew a blank for a moment and then replied
“Because it’s one of the best schools in the country. The Ecology and the Entomology departments are two of the best!”.
I might as well have chosen ‘D’ on a multiple-choice question.
He continued without pause.
“So, why do you want to work with me?”
There are a few good answers to this question but mine was not among these:
“Because you do some of the most interesting research on population dynamic theory”.
D.
We adjourned in an awkward air, but I left Ivy the next day feeling that the interview went well enough. I had shown motivation at least in flying out there and my application would be bolstered by good grades, GRE scores and letters of recommendation. I applied for the PhD later that year and received the rejection letter a few months after. I was told that the department didn’t accept any new graduate students that year.
Fast forward to 1990. The biology department at Silwood Park had a weekly seminar series. Most seminars were presented by students and academics based in the UK, but occasionally we would get speakers from abroad. Among all of the seminars during my five years at Silwood, two clearly stood out. One would change my life (see below). The other could have but didn’t. That other was by none other than the Ivy professor who had interviewed me in 1984 for a PhD position. He was now on sabbatical at Oxford. I introduced myself after his seminar and he said that he did not remember that we had met, nor that I had applied to Ivy. Nevertheless, he knew of me, since he had seen some of my published PhD work. I mentioned I was looking to make it back to the US for an academic position or postdoc and he suggested we meet to discuss over lunch at Oxford. I joined him a week later in what I can only describe as one of the proudest moments of my academic career. Our discussion went from science to the job market and then finally to postdoc opportunities. He was genuinely interested in helping me for a postdoc.
“Well, I see that you worked on models of infectious disease and parasite competition, what would you like to do in my group?”
“I’m interested in discovering how parasite transmission structures host-parasite communities”, I said. I described this in detail and saw he was interested. I had several high-profile publications on this topic and related topics, including a solo-author article in Nature.
“That’s a hot topic and similar to my own interests. Why come to Ivy when you can stay and develop your career in England?”.
Interview déjà vu. I controlled my head-spin.
“Because being at a US university would bring me closer to the US job market”, I blurted.
In the instant I figured this might offend him, Ivy league and all that, but I was full-on in fight-or-flight mode. I could clearly see what was coming next.
He nodded understandingly and let it rip: “Well then, why do you want to join my group?”
I base-jumped not knowing if I folded my parachute correctly: “Because you will help get me a job in academia”.
Seriously, that’s what I said. F-k the multiple-choice answers.
He looked at me somewhat astonished and said:
“GREAT ANSWER!!”
Had he offered me a postdoc I would have snapped it up, but as things turned out, he had none. I wondered why he invited me to have lunch in Oxford in the first place. To be fair, he didn’t talk about postdocs in his group when we met at Silwood and he did refer me to a colleague in the Plant pathology department, who offered a postdoc contract. But my host-to-be – who was a new assistant professor – had fewer publications than I did. I thought this would create an awkward situation and that when the time came, he would not be senior enough to help me get an academic position (which, by the way in my view is the primo criterion when choosing a postdoc advisor). I declined the offer.
The seminar
The seminar that did change my life was presented at Silwood Park in 1989 by a researcher based in Lyon, France. I was curious to see what the speaker’s research was all about, possibly as representative of ecological science in France. I don’t remember the specific content of his presentation, only that the speaker, Carlos Bernstein, was Argentinian and worked on parasitic wasps – the same animal I studied for my thesis. Carlos gave a great talk and I surely asked questions during the Q&A, but what really came to mind after the talk was learning more about French research. Just a few minutes into our discussion came the question seemingly out of the blue: “What’s the job situation like in France?” Yes, asked without knowing anything about French science beyond the few minutes of our discussion. And yes, embarrassingly given my 85’-86’ venture at INRA.
Carlos gave me the name Robert Barbault, someone who knew the French research terrain in the field of ecology. Robert was a professor at the Université de Paris, based at the Laboratoire d’Ecologie, Ecole Normale Superière in the center of Paris. I contacted him and got a date to come and visit, give a seminar, meet people and discuss research positions in France. To make a long story short, independent of the university system, which is structured (broadly speaking) like in most any other country, French research is distributed over more than a dozen national institutes. Even in France, few know exactly how many. I can name several: CNRS, INRA, EPHE, INSERM, IRD, CIRAD,… The only two that really concerned me were the CNRS and INRA (now INRAE). I had done a one-year contract with an INRA station and so was pretty familiar with their mantra of applied research. The CNRS was more a mystery. CNRS jobs were pure research positions (like life-time postdocs) with members being based either at a university or at a dedicated CNRS research station. The CNRS is massive with almost 12,000 permanent research staff partitioned into more than 40 sections, from art history to plasma physics. The ecology and evolution section, which numbered about 200 permanent staff throughout France, was section 32 (now section 29 and part of section 30).
I was introduced to science in France and how research institutes functioned, but needed to see things for myself. Straight away I knew that the Laboratoire d’Ecologie at the ENS in Paris was not a place for me. Little research neighboring my interests and, more disconcertingly, most of the published work from the institute was in French language journals or in unfamiliar (to me) English language journals. Moreover, the building and its offices had zero charm. I asked Robert to recommend other institutes more suited to my scientific interests and he very willingly set up meetings.
My many visits over almost two years turned out to be more involved than expected. Basically, I was meeting a diversity of scientists and science, getting a taste of local politics, and gauging interest in the groups I was meeting having a foreign researcher join their institute. Worryingly, I met no English-mother tongue permanent researchers over my many visits. The few foreigners were mostly from French speaking countries – Belgium, Morocco and Switzerland. This didn’t bother me as such, and I did see a keen interest in the people I met to publishing in mainstream English-language journals. I visited more than ten interested research teams at institutes and universities in Paris, Tours, Dijon, Lille, Grenoble, Lyon, Perpignan and Montpellier. Montpellier appeared the place to be for scientific research and for life in general.
Roadblocks
Every place I visited was interested in my joining their institute as a permanent researcher. But interest is not a job. It became evident that there were two interlocked roadblocks: the French institute recruitment system and nepotism. In a nutshell, you can apply for a CNRS research position if you meet certain basic requirements, the principal one being proof of having received a doctorate from a recognized authority. But beyond that, I doubt any of the massive CNRS research staff enter without what is effectively a second requirement, this being sponsorship by a French research institute or university to receive the applicant should that person be offered a CNRS position. Sponsorship (at least in my time) amounts to a verbal agreement between the candidate and the institute, which is indicated by the applicant on the application form itself.
The problem I encountered at all the institutes I visited was obtaining sponsorship. Local department heads invariably had a waiting list of applicants they had already agreed to sponsor. At the time, generally only one candidate was sponsored per institute for the one ‘concours’ each year, which meant waiting a year or more to get sponsored. Not surprisingly, the most attractive host institutes had longer lists.
The second, related problem was nepotism. Nepotism has a variety of negatives, perhaps the most damming being it – metaphorically – it keeps the privileged kids at home to take care of the parents. By offering permanent positions to former PhD students or even postdocs, more senior researchers keep a stream of research projects and research funding in their groups. This happens largely for free, since the beholden and ambitious youth are perfectly happy to do hard work to support their own and the elder’s research[3]. Everyone in French research knows this and that youth get their ultimate payback some day in becoming the big cheese and starting a new cycle.
The most insidious problem of nepotism is once followed by the majority of good labs, it is difficult to reverse without either an edict from high command or gradual evolution out of the norm.
Consider this. Imagine I supervise a PhD student who proves to be a stunning researcher. The student goes to another research institute for a postdoc hoping, if not expecting, to be sponsored for a position back in my research group. However, I’ve decided to go at it alone and break the nepotistic chain and search for the most promising candidate who will bring new ideas to my institute. The problem is that now my former student is without a sponsor and in looking for possible alternatives, finds none because everyone else follows the nepotistic norm! The double whammy is that word gets around that I no longer sponsor former PhD students for permanent positions. What smart prospective PhD student would want to work with me?
In my 30+ years of seeing what becomes of those students benefitting from recruitment with their PhD supervisors, almost invariably, the former-student / now-permanent-researcher discovers political, personal conflicts and idea-inbreeding. Leaving is difficult since a new receptive institute must agree to the move. It can also be challenging for the limboed researcher since there’s the fear of angering both the team chief and institute director. Leaving is rarely a pretty sight.
Nepotistic norms take a long time to break and although French research teams are now more routinely open to outside candidates, auto-recruitments still occur. Negatives aside, there are sensible reasons for auto-recruitment in certain cases[4]. For example, CNRS positions are permanent from the day the candidate accepts the offer (yes, there is a one-year grace period, but in practice the overwhelming majority of recruitments are confirmed). This means that should a new external recruit turn out to be a less-than expected scientist or a persistent trouble-maker, the institute could be stuck with that person for decades. It’s therefore a good idea to know what you are getting into ahead of time – a solid argument for evaluating risks of sponsoring outside candidates vs. people from your group or institute.
The concours
So, I found myself navigating a highly nepotistic system. Each of the institutes/teams I visited was keen to sponsor me for the 1991 ‘concours’ (see explanation below), but none could because of these prior commitments. The soonest would be 1992 and this appeared to depend on whether the sponsored candidate did not get a job in 1991, was not sponsored again, and there were no candidates still on the waiting list. Conversely, if the sponsored candidate did get the job, then it was unlikely that the selection committee would place another candidate in the same institute let alone the same team, two years in a row! Openings were few and there were many institutes competing for these prized positions.
My situation looked bleak indeed. I’d spent more than a year visiting places and making connections that would hopefully lead to sponsorship even if it meant waiting a year or two more. There were no hard promises since everything was verbal – nothing written.
I kept in touch with Robert Barbault during my search and decided to contact him with what amounted to an ultimatum. I felt uneasy contacting Robert, but was disappointed not being warned that this would be a multi-year effort[5]. I felt I’d wasted a considerable amount of time with false hopes - the system seemed unfair, especially to candidates who did not do their doctorates or a postdoc in France[6]. It was early 1991 and I had one extra year granted to my CPB postdoc contract. I was seriously contemplating revisiting the search for postdocs in the US for 1992. I asked Robert if he could do anything for the 1991 spring concours, and if not, whether I could get a sure sponsor for 1992.
We had a frank telephone conversation. I was lucky that Robert wanted to see people with new ideas enter the French research community. He said he would speak with one of the team heads at his institute for the 1991 concours. Turns out there was an earmarked CNRS position in modelling tropical ecology and no local candidate[7]. I was definitely not a tropical ecologist and was concerned that I would have to pay scientific homage to a team in which I could not imagine integrating in any meaningful scientific way.
Robert’s proposal was generous but complicated since, again, this was not the ideal city or institute for my scientific interests. I carefully weighed the pros and cons together with my wife, whose profession was far less geographically restrictive than my own. I decided to attempt the concours, sponsored by the Laboratoire d’Ecologie at the ENS in spring 1991. Despite my uneasiness about the situation should I get recruited, jobs in the US were highly uncertain and I feared being a perennial postdoc. A CNRS position would give job security… if it really didn’t work out, I could ask for a transfer to another CNRS institute… or set sails and search for employment in the US.
Job interviews
By 1991, I’d had four meaningful face-to-face interviews of which only one was successful: for the postdoctoral position the Centre for Population Biology at Silwood Park. Despite the CPB interview being ‘in the bag’ (I had good CV and all three of my PhD committee members were on the selection committee!), I was nervous that something would go wrong. Nothing did and the 30’ interview concluded with the job.
Beyond the two Ivy interviews there was one at UCLA in 1980 that – at the time – seemed insignificant, but had I got the job, the Ivy meetings would never have happened and frankly, I would not be here writing about France. The 1980 interview was with a faculty member in the Ecology department at UCLA to join a summer marine biology project off the coast of California. I was an avid scuba diver and relished in nature discovery – this seemed an opportunity to apply my experience and perhaps redefine my major. As I went into the interview I distinctly recall thinking “If I get this job I’ll stay at UCLA”. I didn’t get it, was dismayed in general, one day walked into the admin building and applied for a transfer to Berkeley.
I’ve never had an academic job interview in the US. What I’d heard is that they’re typically two-day affairs where the candidate meets faculty members, department heads and deans, has a meeting with students and postdocs and is expected to present at least one, and sometimes two, research talks. By all accounts these interviews and the deliberation processes are involved and can take weeks for a decision. From a job searcher’s perspective ultimate success depends on the number of jobs applied to, the level of competition for each job and the qualities of the candidate. One might either find oneself with no or few interviews (the vast majority), or be one of the few that most every faculty wants.
Despite the rigor of this process entry-level at US universities is untenured. Publish or perish becomes the reality for most assistant professors. The tenure process is not easy and for some it feels like trial by fire. But exaggerations aside, a fresh assistant professor has something much more than just a secure contract for several years – they have departmental support. It behooves departments to provide tenure-friendly environments that confirm the choice they put so much effort (and usually space and funding) into making.
***
Entry into the French CNRS is very different. As above, part of the selection process occurs well before the interview itself: this is the decision by a research group to agree to sponsor the candidate. In the end, about 100-150 sponsored (and a small number of hopeless, unsponsored) candidatures are presented yearly to the CNRS ecology and evolution section concours. Whereas when I entered the CNRS whole institutes usually presented a single person, many institutes (and even research teams) nowadays present multiple candidates. Given the diversity of candidates in terms of themes, experience and their sponsoring institutes, the question is how are positions are distributed? With certain exceptions (the earmarked position that I applied for), the majority are not earmarked at all. That is, if there are 5 entry level positions then the top 5 ranked candidates get the jobs. Focus is on the quality of the candidate and less on the host institute, although commissions likely prevent situations where selected candidates go to troubled institutes[8], multiple jobs go to a single institute or to several institutes in a given city.
There is another major difference with the US. Whereas US interviews only go to the top few candidates, in France, by law – up until just a few years ago – all candidates were interviewed. Imagine 120 interviews over 3 days! That’s 40/day and the way this used to work was that the committee would split into two groups, which meant 20 interviews/day per committee and that only half the full committee would see each candidate. There are a number of issues with this policy, one surprising one being that anyone with an accredited doctorate could apply (even without an agreed sponsor), meaning that the majority of interviewed applicants stood absolutely no chance of getting a job. Over-interviewing saps the energy and attention of selection committees and means that qualified candidates don’t get the level of scrutiny needed to make these important employment decisions. I don’t know the underlying politics, but in the mid-2000s the number of interviewees (at least in Section 29) was reduced to the top 30 candidates, which is arguably still a lot.
Even with better focus on viable candidates the interview only lasts 25 minutes! For Section 29, currently, this is 10’ for the presentation and 15’ for Q&A. There is then a short period of 5’ during which the committee deliberates the candidate. After three days of interviews – Monday to Wednesday – the committee spends Thursday and Friday deciding on candidate rankings and publishes the results Friday evening. That’s it!
This list of proposed recruits then goes to further quality-control committees though it is uncommon that changes are made. The commission usually also publishes a ranked list of runners-up so that all candidates can see where they stand (or don’t) in considering future attempts. Being a runner-up does not mean being in line for a job the next year. The rankings can change year to year, especially in years when a new evaluation committee is appointed.
Finally and perhaps most surprising of all, although these jobs do not officially come with tenure, the vast majority get the permanent ‘fonctionnaire’ (civil servant) status after only 12 months. This said, most candidates who get CNRS jobs do not succeed on their first attempt. The concours is only once a year and many give-up after a few attempts and either apply for positions at other French institutes or universities. Still others search for positions in other countries, research-related employment or go leave scientific research entirely.
My Interview
In the spring of 1991, I arrived at the CNRS headquarters in the Paris 16th Arrondissement ready for the interview[9]. I used transparencies, which were the most reliable way to make sure the presentation went according to plan. My talk went well, but frankly compared to today’s interviews it was second-rate. Aside from stronger research and the classier presentations enabled by current platforms, candidates today have a much more rounded training and blisteringly impressive CVs. The top candidates in Section 29 often have one or more first-author papers in journals like Science, Nature and PNAS. This said, massive numbers of top-flight first-author publications does not ensure success, since many other factors come into play, primo among them the quality of the interview.
My training and CV were both excellent and so I was reasonably confident of my chances. At the time, commissions allowed talks in English, but I gave mine in French, which (I think) helped get the committee on my side… or at least indicated I was committed[10]. Then came the questions. Although, with the exception of the 1984 Ivy interview, I’ve always been good at fielding questions, I was used to getting them in English and so was a bit jittery.
All had gone well, that is, until the bombshell at the 13th minute:
“You are American and did your studies in at Anglo-Saxon (NB, something the French just love saying) universities. Why are you looking for a permanent research position in France?”
Déjà vu all over again. I didn’t prepare an answer beforehand, since I did not think anyone would dare – let alone be allowed to – ask what amounts to a personal question at a formal interview.
I was honest:
“Because this would be a great place to develop my research and because my wife is French[11] and I love French food, Bordeaux wines and cheese”. I made what could have been perceived as a parapraxis in the Anglo-Saxon touch of the spoils of the Hundred Year’s War. The committee surely knew better.
Nevertheless, as the words spilled out of my mouth, Oh, f’kin shit! definitely crossed my mind.
I saw unanimously stunned looks on the committee members’ faces. Two very long seconds went by as their expressions changed from shock, to quizzical, to let’s all stand up and applaud this candidate![12]
This surely rivaled my reply to “Why work with me?” in Oxford 1990. The difference was I had a fantastic job for life.
Coda
I am eternally thankful to the two people who paved the way for me to come to France. Carlos Bernstein and Robert Barbault. It was now up to me to develop my career with the CNRS, which I did in scientific programs and the mentoring of students and postdocs, many of whom have academic positions in other institutes.
Having arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1991, little did I know that I was in for more surprises and in particular one that led to my joining the institute where I am today.
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Notes [1] Many of these courses https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/ent/, which are fantastic!, but why take them twice when you could be doing first-hand science instead? [2] To note: the vast majority of UK students embarking on PhD start when they are 22 and complete at 25. Very sobering that I was UK postdoc age when I started my Phd. [3] During one of my visits to a lab in Montpellier, the head, who was interested in my candidature, told me: “if you are recruited in my team then my name will appear as senior author on all of your publications”. I replied: “any significant scientific contribution to my publications will acknowledged by co-authorship”. The lab head (who was to become a Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur) shuddered, looked very embarrassed, and said nothing. [4] It should be said that there is sometimes little alternative to auto-recruitment. This is because science in France is largely organized in teams (“équipes”) each with multiple tenured researchers. This can make it difficult for a job-seeking scientist to start anew at another research institute that lacks the thematic infrastructure to host the candidate. Inversely, a thematically-isolated team will have few if any suitable candidates coming from other research institutes, given impetus to recruit their own students and postdocs. [5] And this assumes being offered a position on the first attempt, which is uncommon. Failure means waiting a whole year, since there’s only one concours annually and the real possibility that the host institute will drop you and sponsor another candidate. [6] This said, the risk for the institute is that the recruited researcher leaves after a few years. Beyond the position being effectively lost, this does not help the reputation of the recruiting institute. Over the years, I’ve seen several foreign recruits either decline a position (in which case, it is usually lost) or leave within a year or two, sometimes because of job offers in their home country. I’m sometimes surprised by the naivety of sponsoring institutes, who do not see that their coddled foreign superstar candidate is either unlikely to stay for long, or if offered the job, will just use it as a bargaining chip for a promotion at their current home institute. [7] As discussed below, the majority of CNRS positions are totally open, both in terms of theme and receiving institute. [8] And for this reason, candidates usually indicate a second choice for their host institute. [9] At the time, entry-level positions were divided into two levels, chargé de recherche 2 (CR2) and chargé de recherche 1 (CR1). The latter corresponded to more research experience, but actually, anyone with a doctorate could apply for either, and some people (such as myself) apply for both. Nowadays, the CNRS has a single chargé de recherche category (CR). [10] In 1991 I was one of a very small number of non-French-mother-tongue candidates. I don’t have the numbers, but foreign candidates are more common nowadays. [11] I’m sure glad my wife was not there to see my spur-of-the-moment placement of the word “love”. [12] Actually, they just approvingly laughed.