Well it was a great success – last time I mentioned that I was after a research assistant I got about twelve applications in the space of a couple of days. Most of them were very good. Since then three people have done occasional work for us mostly very well. In the case of each person whom I asked to help us out, I didn’t take a lot of care in selecting someone who I could be confident would be available for a long time. I realised trying to make sure people would stick around might be more rational, because one wants to develop relationships that are proving useful. But I just tried people whose application sounded like I would like dealing with them. And all three are now otherwise up to other things. I think what I did made sense because, though they’re no longer available for research assistance, they’re still around, and perhaps we might be useful to each other again. Perhaps there are economies of scope as well as scale.
Be all that as it may, I’m now looking for research assistance again. If you’re interested, please tell me in an email why you’d like to work with Lateral Economics (flattery will be accepted but subjected to careful scrutiny by my wife – who think’s I’m a sucker for it – if you do go the flattery route, marks will be awarded for apparent sincerity) please send me your CV and why you think it would suit you and why you’d suit us. You don’t have to be an economist but good research skills and an interest in policy are necessary and access to academic databases and ability to write well and an enjoyment of the same would also be appreciated. Remuneration is negotiable (and usually nothing flash at least while we figure each other out!).
Please drop me an email at ngruen AT lateraleconomics DOT com and after that add a DOT au. Work is occasional and of course you are never expected to be available and hanging around for us to call – if you cant do something we ask, so long as you havent previously agreed to do it, thats fine. If you sent me an application last time but were not successful, please feel free to try again.
Also, while Troppo was a happy hunting ground for research assistants a later ad I posted for someone to help with media work – media liaison, writing and distributing press releases etc – only attracted only one response from memory. If you like this kind of work please let me know as per the above arrangements – perhaps doing both research assistance and media relations might suit you.