When you are seeking a job as a Research Assistant, it is essential to first review a top-notch Research Assistant resume sample. You want to make sure your resume stands out from the rest by being informative and compelling to read, without bombarding the recruiter or hiring manager with irrelevant information. Remember that a Research Assistant job can also be advertised as a Research Administrator or a Research Coordinator.

How you create a resume into an interview-winning document, will be easier with our: How to make a Resume Guideline for Research Assistant Roles

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Research Assistant Resume Sample

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Resume Sections

1. Contact Information: Name, Address, Phone Number, Email

2. Profile Summary: This introduction to your resume must make an impact on the reader. Include a broad overview of your background, years of industry experience and the industry sectors of interest. You should be specific and state which job you are applying to (1-3 sentences max).

3. Qualifications Summary: Provide accurate details about the certifications and qualifications you have completed with the institution, qualification name, and dates. Don’t forget to include qualifications you are currently completing too. For some Research Assistant roles, a degree at Bachelors or Associates level is required, but many positions also ask for a Master’s or Ph.D qualification.

4. Relevant Research Experience: Clearly state your employment history from giving details regarding the last ten years of experience up until your current position. Use concise sentences with bullet points to list your most important research support activities. Research Assistants jobs are mostly available in academia, sciences, medical and laboratory settings, but you can also find a job in publishing assisting authors and writers.

5. Other Employment Experience: This will include permanent work history outside of direct research support but still conducting research activities for instance during your undergraduate degree where you do research and investigations to complete various study projects or mini-dissertations and academic assignments.

6. Skills Summary/Key Skills: Incorporates keywords from the job posting and your specific skill set. This adds much-needed credibility to your resume.

7. Education/Licenses/Certifications/Relevant Coursework/Training: Start with your formal degrees and accreditations. List any professional development courses, workshops or programs you completed that better prepared you to work in a supportive role such as report writing, research platforms, information databases, data assimilation software, research management tools and applications.

What to Highlight in a Research Assistant Resume

Regardless of your experience as a Research Assistant, there are a few vital things that recruiters and managers (often highly acclaimed scientists, professors or subject matter experts) need to know about you, to ensure that you are the right fit for their projects.

The first aspect to highlight is the setting in which you work. Most research assistants work in academia for example sciences and humanities faculties at universities or research centers and corporate research institutes. You may also be employed at a laboratory, law office, courthouse or publishing firm.

Secondly, the field in which you have research experience is equally important to potential employers. Research assistants can work in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or professional sectors such as Psychology, Anthropology, History, and even Politics.

Next, comes your main duties, referred to as the ‘’purpose of your job”. Duties may be focused on recruiting volunteers and research study participants, data entry, data collection and manipulation, doing fieldwork (collecting specimens, conducting surveys & interviews), data investigation/analysis, fact-checking and validation or report writing and designing proposals for presentations to boards, fund committees or sponsors.

Research Assistants are often tasked with support and administrative duties such as organizing fundraisers, preparation of project-related reports, manuscripts, and presentations, cleaning lab equipment, managing the diaries of their professors, printing proposals, taking minutes or proofreading manuscripts, almost like an executive assistant at a corporate company, but just within a research environment.

Some Research Assistant duties also include stakeholder relations, blogging, and notification posts on various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, so be sure to mention your previous experience on these sites in a professional capacity.

A further task in a Research Assistant’s role is that of document administration which may entail KPI’s such as compiling proposals, making contact lists, setting up appointments for interviews and distributing survey forms, legal contracts and nondisclosure agreements to relevant parties.

Finally, Research Assistants require strong competencies in tech, tools, and digital applications:

For instance, conducting exploratory and investigative activities would require knowledge of multiple search engine and information curation platforms apart from just Google, like Biohunger, CiteULike, ContentMine, DeepDyve, BibSonomy, Mendeley, ReadCube or Scizzl.
Article visualization tools assist in the navigation of multiple platforms simultaneously which speeds up your research process. Be sure to mention your competencies and the applications you are familiar with such as Colwiz, PaperHive, PubReader, Ovation, Pegasus, and Bookshelf
Coding and programming is crucial to research activities, and scientific software applications that employers would look for on your resume include: R, SQL, Python, Matlab, and SPSS

*Cool Tip for a stellar resume

You can really create an excellent first impression by including your list of publications, presentations given, fellowships completed, conferences attended or blogs written pertaining to your particular area of expertise.

How to list written publications?
Follow this easy structure to showcase your published work:

Author’s Last name, Author’s First and Middle names or Initials
Title of article/chapter + Name of journal/magazine/website etc.
Year of publication
Publishers or Issue number + Volume number + (if applicable) Page numbers
Remember to include the URL if the publication is online

Example
Smith, Emily H. Analysis of direct marketing strategies and functions. Social Marketing Quarterly. 2014; 183: 68-82

How to list presentations/conferences?
For conferences attended or presentations given use the structure below:
Role
Title/topic discussed
Forum/Conference name
Date and Location

Example
Keynote Speaker: Recycling and the use of plastic waste in manufacturing. Climate Change and Global Warming Conference. 2015; Stockholm

Make sure to include the following details

Your GPA score if you have completed a bachelor, associates, master’s or doctorate’s degree (if higher than 3.5)
The work setting you operate in, for instance, Indoors, Environmentally Controlled, Outdoors, Underground
Research Assistants can work full time, part time or on contract. You also need to mention the number of weekly hours you accumulate on average
Some Research Assistant roles require extensive traveling. You need to verify that you are available to travel and also whether you have a valid Drivers License and Passport
If you are competent in another language like Spanish, Mandarin or French, for instance, be sure to highlight these as well

Research Assistant Resume Summary

University Professors or Research Institute Directors are usually the hiring decision makers regarding Research Assistant positions. This is a busy and pressurized field. Therefore your resume will probably only have 6 seconds to make an impression on the manager. Keep your career summary concise and to the point. Add the most relevant information first to capture their attention while they’re quickly scanning your resume.

Start your career summary with your years of experience in the industry and the primary duties you performed. Use the job description as your guide when deciding on which tasks to add. The more your resume relates to the job description of keywords, the better fit you will seem.

Next, add a line that showcases any outstanding qualities that will add value to the company. A hiring manager would be interested to know if you have “strong administrative skills, an eye for detail, excellent people skills with a flair for time management and prioritization.” It’s important to note that these qualities should be proven with examples in the professional experience section to re-enforce your message.

Finally, end your summary with your educational degrees/diplomas and any certified courses or professional memberships you may have that are pertinent to the job Though most research assistant jobs require a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Ph.D. degree in a relevant field, some research assistant positions would be open to candidates with an associate degree and provide on-the-job training.

Example Resume Summaries:

'Experienced research assistant with working knowledge in Deft facilitation of all phases of bench research and an excellent grasp of research conduct, including experiment design and execution, laboratory management, compliance monitoring, and research documentation. Holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biosciences (Summa Cum Laude) with over ten papers published in the last three years'

'Detail-oriented bench researcher with a substantial background in food security risk analysis for developing countries, Currently, completing a Master’s degree in Alternative Food Production Methods and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and French. Often utilized a s translator to describe research statuses and findings to stakeholders and at International Aid conferences.'

'Dynamic undergraduate Research Assistant with two years’ experience in a public sector academic research environment concentrating on recruiting volunteers, participant screening, field surveys, and data entry to help the research team deliver accurate results and meet deadlines. Completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences and Psychology.'

Research Assistant Job Descriptions and Responsibilities

Research Assistants provide operational and administrative support to Professors Research Managers and Scientific Directors. Everyday work duties that should be listed on a Research Assistant resume include updating records, overseeing experiments, handling samples, implementing testing methods, and supervising technicians. Herewith a few examples of Research Assistant tasks and duties to get you started

Examples

An Under-Graduate Research Assistant in a High School or College environment may:

Monitor incoming and outgoing research materials borrowed by students and ensuring these are promptly returned
Assist students in utilizing the database to find relevant information needed for projects
Worked closely with college faculties to have proper research resources available for specific research projects.
Assist students in researching local employers and in making contact with human resources professionals.
Responsible for maintaining the research library
Updating the school’s research database and making it easily accessible to students

A Graduate Research Assistant in a University Environment may:

Work on multidisciplinary research to find associations between topics and themes
Conduct literature searches, assist in creating quantitative analytical processes of data using SAS to test the hypothesis
Recruit and interview survey participants to evaluate their responses and opinions towards the themes of the research project
Transcribe audio interviews
Translate interview records
Code qualitative interview data

A Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in Medical Research Centre may:

Perform postdoctoral bench research in required fields of study
Manage lab operations, facilitate training sessions and supervise lab students
Publish research findings in medical journals
Present research findings at national healthcare conferences.
Investigate data discrepancies assimilated by the lab students and correct errors
Apply for grants and research funding on behalf of the research center

A Research Assistant in a Laboratory Environment may:

Maintain specimens collected by field workers
Analyze characteristics of specimens under a microscope
Document findings and compile reports
Monitor development and changes in specimen traits over a period of three months
Clean and maintain lab equipment
Set up and prepare lab environment for tests and assessments to take place
Maintain lab database by recording all tests performed and categorizing them appropriately
Compile data and reports as foundational research documentation

Highlight Your Accomplishments

You may be tempted to copy and paste the list of duties you performed under your accomplishment section. The drawback to doing this, though, is that you won’t stand out from the other applicants with similar experience

Your goal is to think about what sets you apart, what you are most proud of, or what you achieved in your previous roles. Now communicate these through action-packed statements that grab the reader’s attention.

Examples:

Flat, Simple Duty (WRONG):

Perform data entry and data manipulation

Accomplishment Statement (GOOD:

Conducted in-depth research into 14 unique project topics and added 1000 records per project to the database

Quantifying Your Resume

When writing your resume, if you can answer the questions, “How often?” or “How many?” It would be best if you tried to include that number. For instance:

How many audio interviews do you transcribe weekly?
How many papers have been published in the last year?

Transcript, translate and code ten interview records per week
Had four research paper published in the last 14 months in international law journals which resulted in a $1.5 million grant received by Harvard University’s Law faculty

Research Assistant Education Section

A Research Assistant’s academic tenure is crucial information to the hiring manager or recruiter. In the education section of your resumes, you need to be very detailed as to provide sufficient information to the reader who does the shortlisting for the role. In short, indicate What, Where and When regarding your qualifications, certifications or industry licenses obtained. The name of your qualification, institution, and date of completion is more than sufficient. If you do have an Associates or Bachelor’s Degree feel free to include major subjects or course curriculum topics.

Education may be listed as follows:

Start with the commencement date and completion date for diplomas, associate degrees, and bachelor degrees. For courses, you can just list the date of completion. Next comes the full name of the qualification, then the full name of the institution and then the City or abbreviated State name. List your high school diploma details similarly, but only include this when you have less than five years of working experience.

2016 – 2018 Ph.D. in Marine Biosciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Thesis: “Two Alternative Pathways for T-Cell Activation.”
GPA: 3.9
Accolades: Completed Summa Cum Laude

2017 – Clinical Research Associate (CRA), Society of Clinical Research Associates, Alexandria, VA

2013 – 2014 Master’s of Science Degree in Molecular Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Majors: Molecular Biology, Genetics
GPA: 3.8

2011 – 2013 Bachelor of Science Degree in Marine Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Majors: Anatomy, Physics
Minors: Organic Chemistry, Marine ichthyology
3.9 GPA
Extra-Curricular Activities: Library Assistant, Intern Field Worker
Leadership: President of the Ocean Clean-up Volunteer Program

Research Assistant Resume Skills

Although the research field requires specific technical skills, employers also consider soft skills. These are the personality traits or skills that indicate to your fit as a Research Assistant. Incorporate these into your summary, or profile, and into your accomplishment statements.

Technical Skills Examples

Educational Attainment: A university degree is generally required to become a Research Assistant. Most roles also expect research assistant to complete Master’s Degrees and Ph.D.’s while being employed by the university or research institution.
Technical Aptitude: Administrative Support, Analyze Statistical Data, Data Integration, Empirical Research Methodology, Fact Checking, Field Research, Literature Reviews, Research Platforms, Coding, Programming, Speed Reading
Other Technical Skills: Bookkeeping, Meeting Electronic Mailing Deadlines, Meeting Paper Deadlines, Inventory Management, Transcribing Handwritten Notes, Transcribing Tapes, Industry Directories, Industry Publications, Social Media, Proposal Creation Applications, Cloud-Based Collaboration Platforms, CRM Systems, Report Generation Software, Feedback Mechanisms, Booking Systems

Soft Skill Examples

Active Listening
Reading Comprehension
Problem-Solving
Critical Thinking
Writing
Speaking
Judgment
Decision-Making
Coordination
Social Perceptiveness
Time Management
Analytical
Methodical
Accurate
Troubleshooting
Detail Orientated
Integrity
Initiative
Empathy.
Self-Control
Deadline Driven
Hardworking
Persistence
Meticulous
Process Driven
Dedicated
Realistic
Conscientious
Interpersonal
Organizational
Technical

Qualifications/Certifications associated with Research Assistants

Associates Degree (Various including Humanities, Social Sciences, Psychology	Advanced MS Excel Certification	Clinical Research Associate (CRA)
Bachelor Degrees (STEM Disciplines)	Professional Development Course in Statistical Analysis (SPSS)	Advanced Course in Python Coding
Project Management Diploma	Ph.D. (For example Doctorates in Life Sciences, Medical, Chemistry)	Masters Degree (For example Law, Avionics, Computer Science, Agriculture, Alternative Energy)

Action Verbs for your Research Assistant Resume

Analyzing	Processing	Organizing
Generating	Assisting	Interacting
Coordinating	Supporting	Scheduling
Identifying	Planning	Updating
Presenting	Prioritizing	Assimilating
Recording	Listening	Communicating

Professional Information for Research Assistants

Sectors: Professional, Technical Services, Education Services
Career Type: Research Administration, Information Coordination, Data Analysis, Report Writing, Presentations, Data Collection
Person type: Supporter, Administrator, Coordinator, Field Worker, Interviewer
Education levels: Associate’s Degree, Bachelor’ Degree, Master’s Degree, Doctorate Degree
Salary indication: From $52k to $73k depending on the position scope and industry
Labor market: Estimated 2% – 4% growth between 2016 – 2026
Organizations: Universities, Colleges, Research Institutions, Medical Centres, Law Firms, Publishing Companies, Government, Non-Profit