Steph asks:
How do you decide to take on a research student, especially an undergraduate? What qualities do you look for, especially if you only have 1-2 meetings and a CV to make a decision?
I like having research assistants for two main reasons: 1. There are a lot of drudgery things that need being done that an undergrad can learn from (lists of works cited, repetitive programming tasks) that are easier to do if you know you’re getting paid by the hour and 2. I like watching people grow. I often take completely untrained students and turn them into somewhat trained students who can go on to work with more prominent people. I have former undergraduate research assistants who are now themselves professors at top 10 universities, and others who have gotten law degrees from top 3 law schools.
But I’ve also ended up with flaky research assistants and it seems like the ability to pattern match or to show attention to detail has been declining in the population of students I’ve been interviewing. I can no longer assume basic excel skills or even knowing where to find a file they downloaded. For a while it seemed like reading comprehension was also completely shot– like they could not follow written instructions, though that seems to hopefully be on the wane now. A bad RA is more work than they are worth.
It is really hard to pick good RAs, especially if you’re not teaching an obvious feeder class. I often try to have at least two RAs at the same time, under the assumption that one will end up flaking. In fact, this summer one has flaked already– he wanted to work 20hrs/week and start before classes got out, but then didn’t get his I9 in for a month at which point he said his other job (that he said he didn’t have at the interview) wanted him to work 40hrs/week so he wasn’t going to start after all. But… I didn’t ever have to pay for him since he never completed his paperwork, which is better than someone who just makes more work than they’re worth.
So, I can’t really say what makes a *good* research assistant, but I can tell you some things I’ve learned by making bad choices.
You know that story about the rock star requiring a bowl full of green mnms on tour, not because they actually wanted them, but to make sure the venue was reading the fine print? That’s for real– make the application process just a little more complicated than it needs to be. For example, I make them send a letter of interest and a resume directly to my email rather than through the university jobs system, not because I really need that but because I want to make sure they can follow directions. Anybody who can’t do that gets automatically put in the no bin.
Anybody who shows up for the interview late is an automatic no. (Slight exception– if they are obviously flustered and apologetic and have an actual real reason above and beyond traffic was unexpectedly heavy, it might be ok. You have to use your judgement here.) People who are late for an interview aren’t generally reliable for other things.
They need to be able to answer the “Why do you want this job?” question with something other than “I need the money.” It may be honest, but people who are just there for the money don’t tend to do a great job– I rarely have to fire anyone, but I did have to fire one of these. You want someone who says they are genuinely interested in the project or wants to know if research is right for them or has a good career or interest reason to be invested in your work beyond the paycheck. It may be cheap talk, but anybody who hasn’t thought about this question and come up with a good answer is not someone you want to hire.
Getting someone from your classes who is a hard worker– turns in homework, comes to office hours as needed, etc. and has shown attention to detail in your own class is the best bet. Failing that, strong endorsements from a colleague over the same are fantastic. But of course, that’s not always possible.
GPA isn’t a perfect predictor, but I’ve started requiring it in my applications. I didn’t used to. I know I’m missing out on good people and I’ve had people with higher GPAs who aren’t the best RAs, but screening is hard and it is a helpful piece of information.
For me, the ideal RA is someone who is a little bit OCD in the colloquial sense– someone who has a bit of a perfectionist streak and is ok with taking time to get things right. If someone has attention to detail and is responsible, I can train them up in everything else. I also like it when I ask if they’re willing to ask questions the candidate emphasizes that they feel more comfortable doing that. And people with good pattern matching skills are usually great.
Grumpy Nation: How do you search and screen for student RAs (if applicable)? How do you screen new hires more generally?
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
June 3, 2022 at 3:48 am
My spouse is infamous for being a tough interviewer. He does 2 things that not all people do. This is mainly for engineering jobs but works for others too.
1) he asks a question that you should know the answer to but don’t. (And if you do know it, he keeps asking hard questions until you are put on the spot.). An acceptable answer is: I should know this answer, but need to look it up or something to that extent. An automatic disqualification is making stuff up. Double negative points if you then argue about why you are not wrong. This also helps weed out the liars.
2) related to 1, he deliberately makes you uncomfortable to see how you handle conflict and/or a stressful situation. He told one of our friends he was not prepared for the interview when he didn’t know our product brand names. He asked…did you even bother to go to our website? He got the job because he stayed cool but many people implode or shut down at that point and then you have a automatic no.
We assume if they’ve passed the other screens that the candidate is smart enough. Then it’s just about the personality and fit within the corp culture. Out here in the boonies where I live we also ask about interests because if a person isn’t outdoorsy or a lover of nature, they also don’t last long. It wouldn’t get you the job but may be a tie breaker.
I am now starting to require that a person have a job any job, even if it’s McDonalds before I’d hire someone for an entry level post college job. One person never had a job in HS or college but had extensive volunteerism and good grades. Everyone loved the candidate but they were a terrible hire and Didn’t last long. Those crap jobs do teach you skills…like that you should ask questions if you are confused, you should show up on time, how to interact with people, that the new person doesn’t get the best assignment off the bat before proving themselves.
Good question and I’m eager to hear other’s answers.
Ps..I love your following instructions trick with the application process. I have noticed that younger people are losing that as well. For example when you ask someone to call you and they text or email instead. This says many things and I do turn it into a teaching moment when I can.
June 3, 2022 at 4:18 am
I would not work for any place that did #2. Interviews are two ways!
Williams told me part of the reason I didn’t get the job was because I said Spring was my favorite season and my hobbies were reading and cooking. I still disagree with that.
June 3, 2022 at 6:54 am
Yeah, being made intentionally uncomfortable in an interview would be a red flag for me. And I definitely wouldn’t want to do that to a student! Often students can be hesitant and/or nervous when starting a research project, and I don’t want them to be scared of me.
June 3, 2022 at 6:55 am
I also would not work for a place that did #2.
I didn’t get into [prestige] med school because an interviewer didn’t believe that I had done the work I said I had on a research project, and proceeded to grill me about type 1 diabetes (the project was about type 2 diabetes), told me that I didn’t know anything, and sighed heavily repeatedly. He was wrong. Bullet dodged.
I had an interviewer at med school I did get into tell me that my non-basic science research was stupid and pointless. Fortunately this was a question that I’ve handled many times in the past (and will handle again many times in the future). I don’t think this was an intentional weed-out ploy, more like some physician scientists are just a$$holes who think they are smarter than everyone else.
June 3, 2022 at 7:04 am
These are all really good ideas! I’m think a lot of them won’t work at my particular school, just because we’re so small that we don’t, e.g., have a formal job listing & interview process for student research positions. My department is at least trying for formalize the timeline and advertisements for summer projects, to make sure everyone gets a chance. I think “why do you want this position” is a good one that I’ll add to my informal interviews.
I did rely on feedback from other faculty when choosing my students this summer, because I haven’t taught any of the 1st or 2nd year classes for our majors. So far their evaluations have been spot-on, though. This is where a small department and small classes helps, and I’d also met at least some of the students at department events.
Our undergrads aren’t allowed to do rote/organizational work if they’re designated as “scholars” – that’s only allowed at the lower pay “assistant” position, which is perversely harder to get school funding for. It’s a little annoying when I have a lot of that work to be done. We rely fully on undergrads – no grad students.
June 3, 2022 at 7:09 am
I dunno, writing simple programs is rote work for me, but it’s a learning experience for students! Ditto finding papers for literature reviews, etc.
June 3, 2022 at 12:40 pm
This is probably not useful, but– back when I was first a corporate person, the company that hired me mostly hired people straight out of college. I remember at least one of the interview questions had to do with having an issue with someone on a group project: what was the issue/what did I do? I think what they got from it was insight into both work ethic and how the person dealt with difficult situations. Mostly because the typical group-work problem is that the person with the strongest work ethic is frustrated by the rest of the team doing minimal work. And also because how you interact with peers in a no-authority situation says something about how you’re likely to interact with parallel-level co-workers. Or at least, how you see your own interactions.
June 3, 2022 at 2:22 pm
One of our professional faculty who owns a consulting company for hiring retooled our questions for our graduate admissions and added a bunch of these kinds of questions, along with work organization questions.
It was interesting listening to how 22 year olds answered hir questions compared to people with more work experience. I got a lot of GANT charts described to me by the latter.
June 3, 2022 at 5:26 pm
The problem with that question is all HR people ask some version of it so most people are prepared with a scripted answer. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between people telling you the right answers vs the sincere ones that reflect their personalities.
June 3, 2022 at 6:03 pm
A lot of these are good for weeding out people who neither have a good real answer nor a good fake answer. Much like the why do you want this job question.
June 4, 2022 at 3:42 am
You are right. I take it for granted that some people may not prepare at all. Usually for the jobs I’ve been the interviewer on, it’s not an entry level job.
June 3, 2022 at 2:29 pm
I’ve always thought I would be terrible at hiring because there are plenty of people who are good at talking their way into jobs and then not doing them, and I have no reason to believe that I would not fall for this.
I do like the jobs where you can give a quiz. My boyfriend was deciding between two people for a tech writing job; one aced the editing test and one failed horribly, so that made the choice easy. I’ve heard of companies that give applicants an actual mini-project, and I’ve heard of companies that pretend they’re hiring to get applicants to do work for them for free, so that can get out of control.
I’ve also liked what-if questions that were actually relevant to the job. Like when I interviewed for a job working with course flags (like writing flags and ethics flags), they asked what I would tell a student when we had to reject their petition. I said I’d like to explain why we rejected it–what we were looking for that wasn’t there. Then ask for information on other classes that looked like they might qualify, if any. And then tell them any other options I could think of, like courses with the flag they needed that would also fulfill other requirements they still lacked.
As far as making people uncomfortable–that could be relevant for jobs like customer service where the customers probably will make you uncomfortable. But just asking these random crazy-making questions to get at someone’s “real” inner being or whatever, I hate that. I had a friend complaining about interview biased toward extroverts (like a panel interview) for a job perfectly suited for introverts.
My boyfriend says he has success looking for three things: 1) could the person do the job (can they learn it, are they smart enough, dextrous enough, etc.), 2) would they do the job (some people are too special for certain jobs or will only socialize or will have 3-hour lunches), 3) will they fit in with the culture. I don’t know how he magically figures out these things from just a resume and interview, though.
My favorite story was when someone claimed to have worked a certain job during the time period when one of the people reading their resume happened to be working at the exact same place in the same group and so had caught that person lying. But that was a fluke.
June 3, 2022 at 3:27 pm
This year, for the first time, I have included a skills assessment between identifying promising resumes/letters and selecting the interviews. Early days, but I’m liking how it works. It’s short (3 2-part questions that are relevant to basic skills/knowledge for the role), with an easy plus a harder part (e.g., a multiple choice q followed by “in your own words, explain why this is the correct answer”). They can use any resource (internet, etc). It should take ~30 minutes. I also structure it so that once the applicant and I agree when I send it, then they have a 24 hour deadline to return it. This gives me some information about actual relevant skills, but also ability to meet agreed-upon deadlines, neediness (do they reach out with a million questions), actual interest in the job (some drop out at this point), etc. For hiring other roles, I can imagine having copies of a small google sheet that I share and ask them to do some basic task, use a public database to recover a reference or dataset that meets defined criteria, etc. I like to keep it short so that I don’t waste applicants time, but coming up with the salient questions really helped me define what I expect from the role, and identifies candidates with the baseline skills/knowledge I can work with when they don’t have much/any actual experience.
June 3, 2022 at 3:37 pm
I know big name economists who do this. Sadly I don’t have the pool yet!
I have tried to figure out attention to detail kinds of tasks, but I haven’t fielded any yet.
June 3, 2022 at 6:14 pm
Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply I have some huge pool. I had 5 applicants, and sent the questions to 3 of the 5. In another pool (posting for a student who worked with me during the semester and was the target hire) I had 8, and if I were sampling from that pool, I would write different questions. I like a skills assessment as it seems a good way to assess applicants in a different way (complements the interview). Also, once I have the questions I can use them again in future. It would be too much effort if it was a one-off, but these questions get at the core of the role.
June 4, 2022 at 3:57 am
What about, “give me some examples of where you use excel outside of work”. If people are using excel to track finances or other hobbies you can assure yourself they are comfortable in it.
My older kid is one who would sort/organize magic cards for hours just for fun. He gets pleasure out of having things a particular way. He can really get into the weeds on stuff and it is written all over his personality if you know where to look.
I wonder if you can hand them a deck of playing cards and ask how they would sort it? Would it just be by color, by shape? Would they ask you follow up questions? Could be a good screen.