Curious other people's recent experiences with hiring, particularly for paid staff (e.g., coordinator) roles - though also undergrad RAs.
At some point over the last five years there was a pivot and the expectations of people interviewing seem increasingly...unrealistic. I've been involved in hiring on a couple large federal grants recently and have been astounded how many people seemed to think the job was mostly going to involve them making posters and writing papers to help their grad school applications. Many seemed actually confused/offended when they found out they'd be expected to work with participants, collect data, help with IRB paperwork, etc. We always provide authorship opportunities, but its generally with the understanding that doing the day-to-day work is what pays the bills and comes first during business hours and paper/poster productivity (esp. if secondary to the focus of the lab and for the sole purpose of grad school applications) happens only during down time or after hours. I've always provided opportunities to be involved with papers and most all of my trainees end up doing so, but at some point between my last hiring binge and this one the expectations around it seemed to have shifted. I'm not sure if this is: (1) People coming into research during the COVID era when much clinical research was essentially "shut down" and not realizing that was an aberrant time; (2) Increasing pressure from graduate school admissions; or (3) Me getting old/ranting about "Young people these days."
I'm curious if folks actually are hiring post-bacs for the explicit purpose of generating posters/papers. To me, it seems silly given the amount of hand-holding usually needed for that level - a post-doc making marginally more at 65k can easily get 4-5x as much writing done as a post-bac making 45k. Barring some weird situation where I've got a known rockstar and only 45k+fringe left in a budget, I can't envision any situation where it makes sense to hire a post-bac into a writing role. I also don't know where on earth that funding would come from absent the occasional secondary data analysis grant. I'm sympathetic to the pressure and impact of credential-inflation on graduate school admission, but this seems a genuine very change in understanding of what research/work involves versus just anxiety around needing to bolster a CV...
Could also have just been me seeing a pattern in the noise from a random string of odd interviews. I did eventually find some folks I'm very happy with and seem to appreciate the opportunity to learn to actually DO science...it just took some time. Thoughts?
At some point over the last five years there was a pivot and the expectations of people interviewing seem increasingly...unrealistic. I've been involved in hiring on a couple large federal grants recently and have been astounded how many people seemed to think the job was mostly going to involve them making posters and writing papers to help their grad school applications. Many seemed actually confused/offended when they found out they'd be expected to work with participants, collect data, help with IRB paperwork, etc. We always provide authorship opportunities, but its generally with the understanding that doing the day-to-day work is what pays the bills and comes first during business hours and paper/poster productivity (esp. if secondary to the focus of the lab and for the sole purpose of grad school applications) happens only during down time or after hours. I've always provided opportunities to be involved with papers and most all of my trainees end up doing so, but at some point between my last hiring binge and this one the expectations around it seemed to have shifted. I'm not sure if this is: (1) People coming into research during the COVID era when much clinical research was essentially "shut down" and not realizing that was an aberrant time; (2) Increasing pressure from graduate school admissions; or (3) Me getting old/ranting about "Young people these days."
I'm curious if folks actually are hiring post-bacs for the explicit purpose of generating posters/papers. To me, it seems silly given the amount of hand-holding usually needed for that level - a post-doc making marginally more at 65k can easily get 4-5x as much writing done as a post-bac making 45k. Barring some weird situation where I've got a known rockstar and only 45k+fringe left in a budget, I can't envision any situation where it makes sense to hire a post-bac into a writing role. I also don't know where on earth that funding would come from absent the occasional secondary data analysis grant. I'm sympathetic to the pressure and impact of credential-inflation on graduate school admission, but this seems a genuine very change in understanding of what research/work involves versus just anxiety around needing to bolster a CV...
Could also have just been me seeing a pattern in the noise from a random string of odd interviews. I did eventually find some folks I'm very happy with and seem to appreciate the opportunity to learn to actually DO science...it just took some time. Thoughts?
