Start planning your career as a post doctoral fellow at the college level; the areas of research and the subjects that you choose can have a significant impact on your prospects of securing a job. Use your summer jobs to gain relevant experience and as you go through numerous temp positions ensure that you start building your list of contacts.
For post doctoral fellowship you will need a PhD; however it is imperative that you complete your post doctoral stint at a top notch institution or laboratory. Ideally, you should try and get into an institution that offers great support and training. The laboratory should have other researchers whose work has garnered worldwide attention and has been published in good journals.
However, not all of us have an impressive under graduate record, and this can kill your chances of being accepted in an institution of the caliber mentioned above. But it's not the end of the world; with a little bit of grit and determination you should be back on track in no time. Try to get the job of a laboratory technician, it will involve a lot of menial work; however, in two years you should be out with a sparkling letter of recommendation that will take you places.
Another crucial factor will be the professor you choose to work with; an easy way to increase your chances of bagging the job of a post doctoral fellow is to go with a professor whose former postdocs and students have done well in the employment market. Often you can see a vivid pattern; while some laboratories have a great track record of students who have published good pieces of research there are others that may not have such a pristine reputation. Needless to say you should choose the former.
You could choose to go for a young professor, there will be two advantages of working with somebody new; he/she will be as keen as you to get his work published so he will push you like crazy and will practically spend all his waking hours in the laboratory. The problem here will be if the young assistant professor does not receive a tenure in two or three years.
While you are at it, continue to build your list of contacts, getting your name on as many research papers as you can is extremely important even if it is as a second level researcher; this will also give you the time to hone your grant proposal writing skills
Don't leave any opportunity to mingle with the big wigs in your area of research, so attend all the national meetings that you can on the way to your post doctoral fellowship
Finally, most of post doctoral fellowship positions are in areas of research that secure the most amount of funding, so if you are not particularly keen on a specific area of research , you may want t put in some time trying to draw up a list of scientific areas that rake in the maximum amount of money.
