The Necessary Conditions
However, before you can get lucky, you need to meet some necessary conditions. Let's start:
• Work Hard! I know it sounds trivial. People who stay in science are typically those who really live their dream. They don't stop working because it is 6pm. Why? Because it is never work in the first place - it is fun. Going for a hike in the mountains is nice, but usually you still think about your research while doing so. If you like physics, but you stop thinking about it after work, then just be aware that there are many others who think about their research all the time. Someone who works two hours more per day than someone else is not 20% more efficient, but this increases exponentially because this person gets more experience and can solve tasks faster afterwards. If you don't think about your research all the time, then it might not be the right field for you after all; it is not a criticism, it is just stating the fact that there are many scientists out there for whom "work" is not work but pure fun. You will compete against those. I hear a lot lately about work-life balance. I think this term is ill-defined, because people who love their research do not have the notion of "work" during research. I know I sound like I am a horrible boss and request my team to work 24/7. Truth be told: I don't mind how much my group is working, as long as they get their tasks done. All scientists are adult people and can decide for themselves. I think it is common knowledge that a postdoc who is under pressure won't come up with good own ideas. So let them decide for themselves, which brings me directly to my next point.
• Follow own Ideas! If you only do what your supervisor tells you to do and you don't come up with your own research ideas, then you are also not the person who comes up with the next cool thing and you don't get visibility afterwards. Therefore, go to conferences without your laptop and listen to talks to get new ideas. A new idea is mostly just flipping and stretching another idea and applying it to a different problem. If you have a new idea, which you think is great, then discuss it with your supervisor. If the idea is really good, then you will get support. Keep in mind that own ideas are also the key for your own research funding. Don't get demotivated when your funding gets rejected; this happens all the time and just means you need to improve and resubmit. It really helps your career if you get third party funding, as it shows that you can write proposals with cool ideas. (Unfortunately?) it is nowadays quite common that people get a permanent position when they acquire a large third party funding like an ERC grant (I might write another blog entry someday about what I think about funding decisions :) ).
• Publish! For two reasons: First (and obviously), your research output is measured by peer-reviewed journal publications. It is difficult to have as many publications in experimental high energy physics as others have in theory, but you should contribute to some and make crucial contributions. Don't think that estimating the background in five analyses is impressive. It is impressive if you do different things in different analyses and - again - come up with your own ideas! Second, participating in several papers allows you to present those results in conferences and hence you get visibility. All this has implications for the projects that you should work on (or better avoid) as a postdoc: Try to avoid projects that do not yield a publication by the end of the contract (and keep in mind that you will be slower than expected). I know that long-term projects are typically the cooler ones, but it doesn't help you if you worked on stuff that is not published when you are looking for a job. You can do such projects when you are tenured (or tenure-tracked) or have a long term funding such as an ERC grant or a DFG Emmy Noether Group.
• Talk to people and be a nice person! This again sounds trivial, but in the end it is super crucial! By talking to others, you make yourself known. This is the trivial part. What do I mean by being a nice person: You should honestly try to help others for their success. Someone has a problem in their code, which is not yours but you can help by investing time? Yes, then you should definitely invest the time. You should do this, because your parents should have taught you that in kindergarten! And as a side effect, people will notice that you are a nice person and talk about you as a nice person, with whom one can work. Believe me - rumors and gossip also spread in particle physics faster than the protons in the LHC. And nobody wants to have a colleague with whom one can't work.
• Move! I know your local town is nice and you have so many good friends there. But if you have the chance to move, then move and learn about new places, new people, new approaches, new organizations. Staying for your postdoc always at the same university or only in Germany, easily gives you the label that you have no international experience - and our science is international.
• Lecture? I don't know what I should say here. I think it helps if you have some lecture experience, but this will definitely not be the decisive factor. If you give a bad lecture for students during the interview for a faculty position, it will certainly be held extremely against you - and it does not matter if you had lecture experience before. Similarly, if you had no lecture experience before but give an amazing lecture during your interview, then all is fine. Clearly, the combination of both is the best :)
The Sufficient Conditions: The First Element of Luck
Let's now assume that you have all of the necessary conditions together: Great publications, cool ideas, lots of enthusiasm for your research and you start to apply for permanent positions. The first element of luck is the strategic planning of the university that is hiring. Sometimes they need an expert on a specific topic, where you are close but maybe not close enough. Sometimes they need someone with a very specific age profile, which you might have just missed. Sometimes, there is a strong wish to get more international or more diverse, etc... . Don't take any of those aspects personally and if you get rejected, just wait for the next position to be opened. I personally saw several positions opened, which I would have found super interesting, but they might have just come at the wrong time for me. Get over it.
So let's go one step further and you have been lucky and got invited for an interview (and believe me, you need to be good in all those aspects above, otherwise you won't get invited and even then it is not clear that you get invited). Clearly you need to give a good talk and a good lecture and prepare answers about your future. Many people have written about this, so I don't comment here further. Instead I would like to tell you a bit, how the recruiting system in Germany works (more specifically in my home university, but I guess it is pretty much the same everywhere).
The Selection Committee and the Full Process
The selection committee is typically made of eight to twelve people, representing different fields of fundamental physics (theory and experiment), but also outsiders to the field. There is typically at least one external member from another university as well as representatives of the HR in all its aspects as well as student representatives. Moreover, none of the members must have a close relationship to any of the applicants - and close is defined relatively clearly: You are already close, when you published once together - in this case you would need to leave the panel. In fact, this is sometimes really a problem, as the field is small, so it is quite common that the committee needs to change after all applications have been received. All committee members have the same vote in the end, so there is nobody who can "steer" the outcome alone. After the interview, the committee selects a few people for whom they request external referee statements. The external referees are (international) experts in the field, who review the research output of the candidates and rank them against the others. So each referee report comes back with a ranking. The ranking is then summarized by the committee and discussed. It is sometimes obvious that referees made the life easy and just ranked by the number of publications or the H-index, but didn't think about the future potential or how well this person would fit to the rest of the faculty. In this case, one would take this into account when preparing the final list. Besides, it does not have to be a list of exactly three candidates. Sometimes it is a list of one person, of two persons or sometimes one just stops the full hiring process. Once a final list is formed, it will need to be approved first by the faculty council and then later by the university senate. The whole point of this procedure is to be as impartial as possible and not allow for "hiring old friends", but really the best fitting person.
The Sufficient Conditions: The Second Element of Luck
Now you might ask, where is the luck involved? I think the luck part gets in two aspects: First the external referees! Depending on who is picked, the outcome will differ (I know that some of my colleagues disagree). The second is the subtle aspect: There is no doubt that all people who made it to the short-list are excellent (most likely, many of those who didn't make it to the shortlist are also excellent). The differences are then minor and can easily boil down to simple things like: Candidate A is slightly better than B, but two colleagues can cooperate with B in common research grants, so B is the better fit. You can now think of many other potential reasonings. At this level, it is just epsilon effects, which make the difference. Sometimes you are the best apple on the market, but for some reason the committee (or the referees) prefers an orange this time. I can just say the following from my experience: everybody who gets a tenured position in Germany goes through a similar process as described above and is certainly outstanding. Unfortunately, being outstanding alone won't bring you over the line. However, the idea that those positions are given somehow "under the hand" seems to me kind of absurd. The system really tries its best to prevent this.
I hear you already shouting that you know this case A and that other case B, where obviously things have been different and people got their positions unjustified. From my own experience (and I got also rejections), most rumors are nothing more than that: rumors. And yes - clearly sometimes there are cases, where one really wonders how this or that hire happened, but be assured: it was certainly not decided by a single person in a lonely office, but thorough discussions have happened. At least I am convinced that this is true for university positions at professor level; I cannot comment on the recruiting process within our national labs and institutes as I am missing experience.
The Dual Career Option
I guess this is the right place to comment a bit about "dual-career" options. Many couples meet in the scientific environment, so it is clear that two-body problems frequently appear. I think for the following it does not really matter if you are working in the same field or in vastly different fields: the dual-career option is often advertised but rarely realized. I allow myself to speak openly about it, since my partner and I got a dual-career option, so I can give some first-hand experience. Let's start with some simple facts: If you are interviewing for a permanent faculty position and your partner is not tenured, then it is very unlikely that he/she will get a tenure position from the new faculty. Why? Because by law one has to go through the same procedure described above. Your partner has to prove that he/she is sufficiently qualified to be permanent - and this promise cannot be easily given during your negotiations.
What typically can be argued is that your partner gets an equivalent position as he/she had before - however only if there is a position available at the new university (and still he/she has to go through the same application procedure). It seems like an easy thing to create a new position, but it is not. Most of the permanent positions in German universities are associated with a faculty or even with a research group. What incentive does a research group, who has nothing to do with you, have to hire your spouse? My partner (who is clearly more gifted than myself) and I tried to get a dual-career option for several years. Once (while I was already a full professor and my partner was a tenured associate professor), I was interviewing for another job and I asked about a dual-career option (which was the main reason for me to apply for other positions in the first place). The offer I got was a fixed-term position for my partner for five years, which clearly is not what you want. The next years, we got offers like "20% association" or no option at all. Only our last move made the dual-career option possible, because several lucky effects played together (free position, matching profile, competing offers). So - at least from my own experience I can say: when you get a dual-career option, then take it, because they are really rare - you have earned it. There are many many couples for whom this never happens.
My Take-Away Message
What's the take-away message: If you manage to get a tenured position, don't be so arrogant to think that it was just because you are so damn clever. Be aware that others worked equally hard, might have been more clever than you and just have been missing the final element of luck. So stay modest - everybody knows that there is an element of luck involved and I would try to avoid those who claim otherwise: They are typically not nice collaborators.
And for all of you, who leave the field frustrated because the tenure option did not materialize even though you met all necessary conditions, which you can control: Do not take it personally, because most likely it is not personal. I made myself a promise: If I don't get a tenure-track position by the age of 32, I will leave the field. I worked already before in the private sector and I always enjoyed it. I would have had no bad thoughts when leaving, because I already felt that I contributed to a scientific endeavor that is larger than myself during my PhD and my postdoc years. Spending a fraction of my life on something, which I truly enjoyed was a unique opportunity which I never wanted to miss - and it would have been ok for me to do something else. Life is too short to do always the same thing. In fact, none of my friends, who left academia has been frustrated after they left and all of them have still amazing fun.