Where Are They Now: Dr Inger Mewburn

What are your big wins or challenges since we last spoke?

We’ve just released the second version of our product, which you can visit on postac.com.au. Our vision was a job search engine that was designed for researchers looking for work outside academia. Last time we talked we had released a minimum viable product – a searchable job archive universities could use for training purpose. A number of universities supported this first product release, which has enabled us to design and produce this major upgrade with live jobs. Now researchers can search for jobs available now and be taken right to the original job posting to apply.

What advice would you give to yourself 5 years ago?

That PostAc would consume a lot of my time! Luckily ANU has been really supportive of my work on this, especially since it’s not a conventional ‘research output’. They have even promoted me, partly on the strength of this work and the contribution to the higher education sector. If I could go back, I would emphasize how important it is to just keep talking about the work to anyone who will listen! It takes a village as they say.

What do you want to ask your future self?

Did the product road map work out as you planned??!! Sometimes it’s so hard to predict what effects individual actions have on outcomes. Sometimes you spend a lot of time doing something that ends up being pointless. Then there are times you do something super quick – like draw a diagram on a plane flight – that ends up being incredibly useful. Amount of time invested does not always translate directly to value…

What are you proud of right now?

We’re super proud of our new product – but I’m even more proud of the team. We have been working so well together for 5 years now and we are still friends! Thanks Hanna, Will, Lindsay, Chenchen and Chirath 🙂