I need to find an RA with a specific background- where do I look?

May 17, 2010 11:33 AM

I can use some help figuring out where to find a research assistant, for a project where some specialized knowledge is needed (Mefi Job post is here, for reference). I need to find people who understand the iPhone jailbreaking scene, and would be willing to spend part of the summer researching it. I can find reliable RAs, I can find sites devoted to hacking iPhones, but am not sure how to combine the two.

I need to find an RA to help me with some research, but the usual undergraduates I can find through my university don't really have the background knowledge I am looking for in order to do the work.

The short of it, as posted on the Jobs site, is that I am a professor at a business school studying the early days of the iPhone, specifically, the launch of the AppStore and the effect that legal application sales had on the community of jail broken apps already released at that point. I am looking for a research assistant to work remotely with me this summer, tracing a list of jail broken applications to see whether they were made available on the AppStore. This will require contacting developers and hunting down details of apps online. I have grant money, and I can pay for a researcher, not a huge amount, but a decent summer wage for a college student (and it could go on the resume, as well)

I need the hive mind's help in figuring out where and how to advertise this position. I need a very specific type of fellow geek with a strong work ethic to do this work, and I don't know how to find them.

posted by blahblahblah to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Wander over to the engineering department. You're looking for some brand of electrical engineer and/or programmer. Their administrative office will know how to communicate an available summer job to students, though you may find that a graduate student is more to your liking than an undergraduate.
posted by valkyryn at 11:38 AM on May 17, 2010

I actually wouldn't tap the engineers for contacting devs and hunting down fact on the web. I'd hit up the journalism school.
posted by bfranklin at 11:42 AM on May 17, 2010

Response by poster: Somehow, I lost the paragraph where I explained that I really want someone who understands the jailbreaking scene, or at least the sort of hackerish coding community in general, so they don't annoy developers and can hunt down high quality information. A knowledge of Cydia, hackent0sh, and related concepts couldn't hurt...
posted by blahblahblah at 11:42 AM on May 17, 2010

I would say the computer science department. Them and the engineers that do computing (in my neck of the woods, that's Electrical and Computer, but some places split those apart I think).
posted by Lemurrhea at 12:09 PM on May 17, 2010

Then seconding the engineering/computer science department. If the people you're looking for aren't there, they'll know where to find them.
posted by valkyryn at 12:54 PM on May 17, 2010