Lab/Project Manager
Posted Aug 6, 2026 · We last checked this listing on Oct 6, 2026
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Likely interview questions for this role
Written from this job description, not a generic list. Each one notes what the interviewer is really checking.
About your past
How do you make a participant comfortable when they are being recorded?
What they are checking: Whether they can put nervous participants at ease, because in speech research a tense speaker produces less natural and less useful data.
You would coordinate with undergraduate and graduate research assistants. How do you train someone to run a session consistently?
What they are checking: Training for protocol fidelity, which is what makes multi-assistant data usable.
Tell me about a time a study ran into a problem partway through. What did you do?
What they are checking: Whether they can fix a mid-study problem while keeping procedures consistent and documented, so the data already collected stays valid.
This sits in the Department of Linguistics running a speech perception and production laboratory. What interests you about this research area?
What they are checking: Real interest in the subject, which lab managers need to stay engaged.
What would you do
This laboratory studies how people perceive and produce speech across diverse language backgrounds. How would you recruit participants for a study that needs speakers of a particular language?
What they are checking: Whether they can find creative ways to reach specific language communities, since speech studies often stall when the right participants are hard to find.
A participant does not follow the instructions during a speech task. What do you do with that session?
What they are checking: Whether they know when to note, redo or exclude a session, which protects data quality without discarding usable information too quickly.
You would report to the laboratory's director and provide day-to-day oversight. How do you decide what to bring to them and what to handle yourself?
What they are checking: Whether they can judge what really needs the director's attention, handling routine issues themselves so the lab runs smoothly.
About the work
You would coordinate scheduling and data collection across several ongoing projects. How do you keep studies from competing for the same participants and rooms?
What they are checking: Whether they can manage rooms, schedules and participant pools across projects, so studies do not collide and waste participants or equipment time.
You would support experiment design and implementation. What do you check before a study starts collecting data?
What they are checking: Whether they pilot and check equipment, instructions and data files before launch, because one setup mistake can make weeks of data useless.
How do you organize recordings and data so that another researcher could use them in two years?
What they are checking: Data management, which determines whether a lab's work is reusable.
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