Is research assistant a good career?

Or, if you are more interested in applied research, like working in a hospital lab or for a nonprofit, past experience as a research assistant will make you a stand-out candidate and help you learn the skills needed to be successful in your role as a research assistant.

Research assistants provide support to research teams who are conducting experiments or gathering and analyzing data.

They work in different kinds of organizations, including medical research centers, consulting firms, universities, market research firms, and think tanks. Research assistants typically work under the principal investigator rather than a boss.

As a research assistant, your day-to-day work will depend entirely on what field you're working in and how the lab you're working for has decided to study it. Some areas where research assistants are needed include; medicine, biology, law, economics, psychology, sociology, physics, chemistry, and the humanities.

Overall, however, a research assistant should be someone who is passionate about the research process. In general, the role of a research assistant is to keep the project on track by helping to collect and analyze data, prepare reports and materials, help to write and edit papers, apply for grants, and review the current literature.

This work can become very tedious and detail-focused and therefore is not for everyone.