Research associate interview questions
May 24, 2017 1:29 PM   Subscribe

I have a few interviews for research associate/ assistant/ fellow positions for a variety of medical statistics jobs in the next few months. I am finishing my PhD at present. I haven't done many interviews before and am possibly overthinking it, but what questions should I be prepared for? Much beyond my work so far and general questions in the field? Are the interviews generally laid back or very intense? Any tips/ links/ example qs would be much appreciated!
posted by Lucy_32 to Work & Money (10 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Are these for academic posts or industry ones?
posted by brainmouse at 1:45 PM on May 24, 2017


Not intense, in my experience. You'll be asked to explain the projects you've worked on - research question, formulation of the analysis, the results, and your contribution to the project. You may be asked how you would approach a hypothetical research question. You might be asked technical questions but they will likely be softballs that are intended to expose complete incompetence, but even that's doubtful - having a PhD is a marker of ability. Your ability to communicate about the science, the analysis, and specifically your role is generally what's important. Science is done in big teams these days, so communication is important.

My bias is that R/Python/SAS are tools, and tools are easy to learn. Focus on ability to make sense of the data, communicate about and around the data, understanding of hypothesis testing, estimate, prediction, modeling, etc. Don't talk too much about the tools, proficiency with such things should be a given.

Be sure to ask about other people doing methodological work. You don't want to be the lone stats person in a group full of clinicians, especially early in your career. Your growth, your sanity, and your next job will probably come from other statisticians. Unsophisticated clinician-scientists will want you to do things like drop cases with missing data, assign the highest or lowest value to a non-completer, do aggressive variable selection, fail to adjust for multiple hypotheses, etc, and if it's five MD's vs you, and they sign your paycheck, well, that's not a good spot to be in.

Side note - are you over-qualified? These positions - if I'm understanding correctly - are often filled by masters-level statisticians working with more seasoned PhD-level statisticians. If this is the case, you may want to have an explanation as to why you'd want a particular position. Unless your PhD is more biology than stats, in which case you'll want to underline your technical, and more importantly, methodological accomplishments.



Good luck!
posted by everythings_interrelated at 1:58 PM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Side note - are you over-qualified?

I don't know how much this applies in your field, but in some cases the transition from PhD (more independence, working on cutting-edge research with innovative methods, with goal of publication) to research assistant (working on someone else's field, often with more routine tasks, for more practical outcomes) can be frustrating. In that scenario, the applicant needs to simultaneously convey both the interest and ability to do challenging work and willingness to do the scut work that may be required.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:13 PM on May 24, 2017


Response by poster: They are academic posts rather than industrial. Most of the positions require a PhD.
I'm actually looking forward to doing more applied than theoretical work (!)

Thanks!
posted by Lucy_32 at 2:34 PM on May 24, 2017


Not specific to medical work (my PhD is in physics, YMMV) but in most fields it seems as if there's a strong branch point after getting the doctorate: for me, it's are you on professor-path, or industry, or startups/innovation, or national lab pseudo-academia. The precise path definitions vary by field, but there is usually a sense of us/them between industry and academia (for example), and any interview (and indeed any good cover letter) will include a discussion of why you're on the path that you're on, what are the most appealing parts of this path personally, confirming you didn't just end up on a wrong-path job interview because you for some reason can't continue your preferred path ("No professorships in my town, I guess I'll fall back on R&D and they'll be lucky to have me" = awful R&D employee). So be prepared to talk about who you are as a (statistician?) - what aspects of the work do you like best and least, what draws you not just to the company/position, but to the field as a whole, what are your skills that not every (statistician?) has, what hard or soft skills can you do better than your classmates (eg present ideas, explain to idiots, process quickly, innovate algorithm concepts, code algorithms, make awesome plots, etc). One of my favorite interview questions - because it made me go home and think about what I like and who I am professionally - was "in the long timescale of a large-group project from concept, mockup and testing, through upgrades and final deliverable polished package, what stage of the project do you like to work at?" So think about what type of cog you as an individual would like to be in the larger machine.

And whether they ask you these questions explicitly or not, you will come off as being very grounded and comfortable with yourself if you have put some time into contemplating this type of big-picture context.
posted by aimedwander at 3:12 PM on May 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Hi Lucy-32. I'm an academic physician specializing in emergency medicine and toxicology. I have a lot of research experience (authored two textbook chapters, seventeen academic papers) and have often relied heavily on stat's gurus.

Have too many ideas/suggestions to outline here, so I would encourage you to memail me if you'd like to arrange a time to discuss.
posted by BadgerDoctor at 3:23 PM on May 24, 2017


I had multiple academic post doc interviews. They were laid back and generally focused on my research interests and previous experiences. I'd read in the work of your interviewer and call it good. Very exciting and good luck. Also, ask some questions of your own about expectations and the enviornment.
posted by Kalmya at 3:49 PM on May 24, 2017


Statisticians in these kinds of roles sometimes have to take on a bit of data engineering and database management depending on the size of the team and the kind of data you're working with. Or if you're working with some specialized kind of big data like medical imaging or genomics make sure you are familiar with the data acquisition tools and pipeline and be prepared to speak to any prior experience you have with it even though there will probably be other full time staff who handle the server for the fMRI scanner or what have you. Are you comfortable with SQL, can you manage an Access or MySQL Server db and automate some data entry QA, can you write parallelized preprocessing code for big jobs and run it on your institutions super computer, are you comfortable with version control, etc.? These are not skills that are intellectually key to the work but the faster you can move stuff around and get it in the format you need and make sure it's clean and documented, however that works for your specific case, the more time you save for the hard parts of the analysis. You would win brownie points with most researchers I know for being able to use best practices from the software development world for academic data management and it could differentiate you from other qualified candidates because most academics have no time to learn git, etc.
posted by slow graffiti at 5:50 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not in your field, but have interviewed and been interviewed for these positions. I find that profs sometimes take the presence of a smart new brain as an opportunity to get a fresh perspective on something they are working on, so you may get questions about a specific issue they are working on. If you are changing subfields they may have questions about a paper they read in your subject. If you can have a reasonable conversation with someone in your department that's doing something really different from you, you should be fine.

Know the titles of papers that have come out from that PI in the past 5 years and read a few; I saw a postdoc interview go south as the candidate over-explained a cell type we'd published on with the cell type name right in the title. I asked him a question about what he thought in the context of our findings and summarized them briefly; he doubled down and insisted it was a different cell type.

As mentioned upthread, this is the time that you'll be expected to have a 5-10 year plan. Many PI's want to know your goals to see how they would fit in with the lab.
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:57 PM on May 24, 2017


I'm in a different field (micro/ID) but was on a panel not too long ago for a postdoc position. Top candidates were invited in to give a presentation on their PhD research to the group (about 12 people including students, postdocs etc) followed by an interview with 3 senior group members and one external group member on the interview panel. So it was fairly formal but I wouldn't necessarily say intense. The presentation was a great way to hear about the candidate's background and assess their abilities as a communicator- tbh we were less interested in the actual project content and more in whether or not they could explain it clearly and with enthusiasm. Even if you aren't asked to give a formal presentation you will certainly be expected to give a rundown of your PhD work. We did not ask any questions about the field- it's not a test and typically a postdoc is looking to move into a new area and expand their knowledge and research scope so we wouldn't expect them to be experts in our field. That being said, we would expect candidates to be familiar with our group's work and major publications.
Some questions that were particularly enlightening:
1. Tell us about a recent scientific paper you've read from any field that you liked, and what you liked about it. (tip- don't necessarily choose a paper from the group, as they will know it better than you and it's easy to trip up.)
2. PhD work is typically quite an individual endeavor, whereas much of our work involves large collaborations. Could you give an example of when you have been part of a successful team and how you contributed?
3. Could you give us an example of when you've had a difference of opinion with a supervisor or colleague, and how you handled it? (tip- obviously we are looking for something academic/research here- eg relating to study design or analysis, not interpersonal conflicts.
4. What management style do you work best under?
5. Why did you apply for this position?

Also be ready to have some questions of your own about the research environment, expectations, etc. A lot of the interview process is assessing the overall fit of the candidate to the group (and vice-versa), not just their technical skills and experience, which are usually evident in the CV and cover letter and why you got the interview in the first place. Good luck!
posted by emd3737 at 10:11 PM on May 25, 2017


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