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Monthly Poll | Onboarding Virtually

Last month we asked you to share significant interview questions that have crossed your collective experiences throughout the research administration career path. Below are a selection of the responses received. How many of these are you already using?

Early Career Interview Questions

• Describe your experience with Excel or other spreadsheet platforms.
• Compare your best and worst supervisors.
• What do you know about research administration?
• Where do you see yourself in ten years? 

Mid-career and Senior/Management Level Questions

• How would you handle {a given situation with a PI/Sponsor/Staff member}?
• How would you manage over-performing staff?
• What areas or issues would you focus on after accepting this position? 

The next article in our series on Research Administration Careers will focus on Onboarding. We want to hear about the aspects of in-person onboarding that have been lost during the pandemic, and how you’re trying to replicate those aspects virtually. We know that our field is split right now between fully in-person, fully remote and varying degrees of hybrid models. And it might still be a few years before we can reflect on what we’ve done during the pandemic and fully understand its implications and impacts. 

When working in a purely remote environment, are we becoming less patient and kind in our communications with our colleagues on campus and across institutions? Are we communicating campus culture to new hires? Are the new hires who work remotely changing the culture of our institutions? How are you intentionally building a sense of team culture with our current staff and bringing new hires into that environment? 

In this month’s poll, tell us what aspect of onboarding new hires virtually have you found to be problematic and what have you done to combat that?

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FLP65F5

Authored by Heather Brown, Grants and Contracts Administrator
Duke Human Vaccine Institute