Figure 8. Perceptions of the job application process.

Three word clouds summarizing qualitative responses from the job applicant survey respondents to the following questions: A) "What was helpful for your application? " (top; Supplementary file 17), (B) "What was an obstacle for your application? " (middle; Supplementary file 18), and C) "What is your general perception of the entire application process?" (bottom; Supplementary file 31). The size of the word (or short phrase) reflects its frequency in responses (bigger word corresponds to more frequency). Survey respondents were able to provide longer answers to these questions, as shown in Supplementary files 17, 18 and 31. 'CNS-papers' refers to papers in Cell, Nature or Science; 'Pedigree' refers to the applicant’s postdoc lab pedigree or postdoc university pedigree; 'Grant-Writing' refers to the applicant’s grant writing experience with their PhD or postdoctoral mentor; 'Peer-reviewing' refers to the experience of performing peer-reviewing for journals; 'Interdisciplinary-research' refers to comments stating that Interdisciplinary research was underappreciated; 'two-body problem' refers to the challenges that life-partners face when seeking employment in the same vicinity; 'No-Feedback' refers to lack of any feedback from the search committees on the status, quality or outcome of applications.