As a graduate research assistant, your primary duty is to support the professors and researchers you're working for. Keep in mind that it's difficult to support someone you can't stand, so you should choose wisely when it comes to becoming a graduate research assistant.
Sometimes you'll be paid as a graduate research assistant, but the way you're paid may be different, depending on the position. Some assistant positions receive a paycheck, while others receive a stipend or tuition reimbursment. None of those sound like bad options though.
A lot of what you'll do as a graduate research assistant will be centered around gathering data and analyzing that data. Of course, the type of data you collect will depend entirely upon what professors or researchers you're helping and the project they're leading. Since it's a broad career, you'll have plenty of career opportunities as a graduate research assistant.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a graduate research assistant. For example, did you know that they make an average of $15.19 an hour? That's $31,601 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 20% and produce 139,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many graduate research assistants have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed analytical skills, communication skills and detail oriented.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a graduate research assistant, we found that a lot of resumes listed 10.5% of graduate research assistants included research projects, while 8.4% of resumes included data analysis, and 7.1% of resumes included technical reports. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the graduate research assistant job title. But what industry to start with? Most graduate research assistants actually find jobs in the education and hospitality industries.
If you're interested in becoming a graduate research assistant, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 69.6% of graduate research assistants have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 21.2% of graduate research assistants have master's degrees. Even though most graduate research assistants have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a graduate research assistant. When we researched the most common majors for a graduate research assistant, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on graduate research assistant resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a graduate research assistant. In fact, many graduate research assistant jobs require experience in a role such as research assistant. Meanwhile, many graduate research assistants also have previous career experience in roles such as internship or graduate teaching assistant.
