1. Employment Profile: What exactly does a Project Director do? |
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 What field is your job in?
Psychology
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What is your job title?
Project Director
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Please provide a brief description of the firm or organization that you currently work for
(size and general description of what type of organization it is)
I work at Northern Illinois University in the Department of Clinical Psychology, specifically at the Center for Family Violence and Sexual Assault. NIU is a mid-size midwestern university.
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How long have you been employed in this position?
One month - the position extends for fourteen months.
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How many hours do you work a week on average?
25 hours per week.
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Please provide a BRIEF description of your duties and responsibilities. (job description)
I work for a clinical psychology professor managing an NIMH grant that she is currently using to conduct research about sexual revictimization. I monitor scheduling of other researchers, data collected, as well as communicating with all participants at 5 separate follow-up time-points. I also manage the software used to collect the data, as well as biological samples. There are currently 400 participants, and the grant aims to recruit 600 additional participants.
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What was your gross income last year? Please include any bonuses or incentives received.
15,000
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What is your expected gross income for this year? Please include any bonuses or incentives you expect to receive.
15000
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Please
list any benefits you have (Please include number of weeks vacation,
sick leave and type of health insurance, retirement plan 401k)
Reduced rates for university-funded health insurance, flexible hours.
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Do you feel you are under/well/over compensated at your current position?
Severely underpaid. My work is part of a graduate assistantship, and we are paid pretty low wages.
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2. Work environment! |
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Does
your job entail you working with others on a daily basis? Is this
something you like/dislike about your job? Explain
Yes, I work with others regularly - both other researchers and participants in the study. For the most part, I like being able to interact with others.
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Do you work collaboratively with supervisors/managers?
Yes
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Do you work collaboratively with your co-workers?
Yes
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Describe
your work location (e.g., office, home, theatre, in the field) and what
you like/dislike about working in it
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Please rank in order of importance from 1-8 (1- most important 8- least important) Assign each number once.
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7 Income
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3 Work Environment - co-workers
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2 Work Environment - supervisors
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4 Benefits
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6 Hours
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5 Level of responsibility
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1 The actual "work" you do at your job
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8 Job Title
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3. How should someone new to the workforce get a J-O-B like yours? |
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If someone wanted to go about getting a job similar to yours, what would you recommend for him or her to do?
Have previous research experience in the field of psychology, especially something within project management. Ideally, an undergraduate could volunteer or receive class credits for doing some of the grunt work, and then as their academic career progresses, their experience will be very useful for securing a job such as mine. Keeping good grades and good relationships with professors is also key. Though an assistantship is separate from academics in terms of content and expectations of performance, the same people evaluate you for grades as for your job performance. It's a "real job" even though it happens at school.
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What
skills do you think a person should have if they want to pursue a
position like yours? Please be specific and explain why (e.g., social
skills, organization skills, technical skills)
Social skills for certain, as there is a great deal of communication with study participants and other researchers on the grant. The ability to manage lots of details and be able to report them back to the supervisor in a summarized way that makes sense. Organization skills are key as well, with managing so many separate study subjects. Computer skills required including statistics software packages, windows office packages (including excel and access), limited knowledge of computer programming. Ease with using the internet.
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Do you feel that you need a certain level of education or training to be successful in your job?
Yes. Even though I am managing many simple tasks, knowledge of the research content and the ability to do complex statistics is a must.
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What advice would you give to someone who was about to start work in your position/ line of work?
Be prepared to work many hours, and with an unpredictable schedule. Data often needs to be collected at all hours, because participants are available on evenings and weekends. When you hit a snag with data, you can't just drop and leave it, you have to figure out before you finish for the day. There are some slow days, and some crazy days. It's meaningful work but you have to be in it for the long-term... it takes a great deal of time to collect and meaningfully analyze longitudinal data.
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