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Practice Questions for the ECR Research Ecologist

Interview Questions for the Early-career Research Ecologist Researcher

Your [Research] Interests & Goals

  1. If you had (e.g.) $1M to spend, how would you do allocate it (you cannot pay yourself!)?
  2. What skills will you bring to this position/lab/institute?
  3. Why are you a good fit?
  4. How can this position/lab/institute help you achieve your goals?
  5. Why do you want this position?
  6. Have you written grants?
  7. What funding sources do you intend to seek whilst here?
  8. What is the future of your field?

Long-term/career/goal oriented

  1. What outstanding research questions to you hope to answer through your career?
  2. How can this position/lab/institute help you achieve your goals?
  3. What are your long-term professional goals?
  4. How will this position help you achieve said goals?

Short-term

  1. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Interpersonal Skills

Mentoring, Supervision

  1. What is your mentoring style?
  2. For whom have you been responsible in the workplace?

Working with others, generally

  1. Do you prefer working alone or on teams and why?
  2. Have you worked in large teams?
  3. How do you address expectations, contributions, authorship, etc. in small/medium/large teams?
  4. Describe a recent conflict with a colleague or employee and how you resolved it.

On collaborative research/team-based projects

  1. How do you address expectations, contributions, authorship, etc. in small/medium/large teams?
  2. Are collaborative efforts important for field X?

Position-specific

  1. How can you uniquely contribute to this team/project?

Field-specific Questions

Quantitative/Computational Ecology

  1. What do you know about method/statistic X?
  2. What is your statistical/maths background?
  3. Have you used mixed effects models?
  4. What is overfitting and how would you check for it?
  5. What is your experience with command line?
  6. Define reproducible research and why it is (or is not) importnat for your field.
  7. Define Open Science and why it is (or is not) important for your field.
  8. Have you worked with colleagues who do not desire their work to be reproducible and/or/ open? If so, how did you handle this situation?

Conservation Ecology

  1. What do you see as the most important issue in conservation today? How would you address it? 1
  2. Who is your conservation hero? 1
  3. Do you see “conservation” and “preservation” differently? 1

Teaching

  1. What is your teaching philosophy?
  2. Describe your teaching experience.
  3. How do you deal with students struggling with 'maths anxiety'?
  4. How do you motivate students?
  5. How do you keep high-performing students motivated?

Questions for your Potential Employer (from you!)

  1. How will authorship is handled in your lab, or am I expected to work during weekends, or similar things. I'm just throwing some ideas your way.
  2. [How] does this team attempt to recruit and retain a divere workforce?
  3. What will a successful year look like? (This is especially important for post-doc positions where your contract may be re-newed after the first year. You may want to even shorten this to six months or whenever your initial review will be.)
  4. What are your expectations for publishing? (Number of pubs, timeline)1
  5. What is your mentoring style?1
  6. What is the work environment/lab like? (Will you be working independently? As part of a team?)1
  7. What does a typical day look like for this position?1
  8. For past employees of the same position that have performed well, what made their performance outstanding?1
  9. What reservations do you have about my fit for this position? 1
  10. What is your timeline for getting back to candidates, and what are the next steps?1

Sources and Footnotes

1: Question borrowed from WillifeSNPits.