Jonathan Webb, a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), gives insights into working at a think tank, the recruitment process and how to make your application stand out.
From intense research to mingling with politicians, working at a think tank is a varied job role that demands a vast array of skills. Jonathan tells us what attracted him to a career at a think tank and urges applicants not to be put off by the competitive application process.
The Art and Science of Powerful Questions | Recruitment Think Tank
Focus on two goals.
You might think of this portion of the interview as your chance to assess the organization and whether you really want to work there, and that’s true. One of your goals is to use these questions to help you determine if this opportunity is right for you, says Markman.
However, the interview isn’t over yet, and you still want to demonstrate that you are the best person for the job, says Lees. So, your other goal is to continue to prove you’re a fit for the specific opportunity. Lees suggests saying something like, “I do have a few questions but before I ask, can I say one thing?” That will give you an opportunity to drive home any key messages about your suitability for the job. In fact, before the interview, you should “decide in advance on two or three messages that you want to get across,” says Lees, and if you haven’t been able to convey those points in response to the questions you’ve been asked so far, you should do so now. Then, you can move on to your questions.
Personalize your questions.
How you phrase your questions is important. Rather than using generic language, you want to ask the questions as if they pertain specifically to you. For example, instead of “What does a typical day look like?” you want to ask “What would a typical day for me in this role look like?” That will allow the hiring manager to begin seeing you in the role. According to Lees, this is a “great psychological trick” because “as soon as they visualize you doing the job, it’s hard to let go of that .”
That’s rather challenging right now. Uptime monitoring means knowing if the listener is accepting writeable connections, if it’s correctly routing read-only requests to other servers, if all read-only replicas are up and running, if load is distributed between replicas the way you want, and how far each replica is running behind. Performance monitoring is even tougher – each replica has its own statistics and execution plans, so queries can run at totally different speeds on identical replicas.
SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Group supports row and page compression for tables and indexes, we can use the data compression feature to help compress the data inside a database, and to help reduce the size of the database. We can use encryption in SQL Server for connections, data, and stored procedures; we can also perform database level encryption: Transparent data encryption (TDE). If you use transparent data encryption (TDE), the service master key for creating and decrypting other keys must be the same on every server instance that hosts an availability replica for the availability group
From the primary replica, ping the secondary, and see how long (in milliseconds) the response takes. Then run load tests on the secondary’s transaction log drive and see how long writes take. That’s the minimum additional time that will be added to each transaction on the primary. To reduce the impact, make sure your network is low-latency and your transaction log drive writes are fast.
There are two options to configure secondary replica for running read workload. The first option ‘Read-intent-only’ is used to provide a directive to AlwaysOn secondary replica to accept connections that have the property ApplicationIntent=ReadOnly set. The word ‘intent’ is important here as there is no application check made to guarantee that there are no DDL/DML operations in the application connecting with ‘ReadOnly’ but an assumption is made that customer will only connect read workloads.
All replicas have to have Enterprise Edition. If you run queries, backups, or DBCCs on a replica, you have to license it. For every server licensed with Software Assurance, you get one standby replica for free – but only as long as it’s truly standby, and you’re not doing queries, backups, or DBCCs on it.
What motivated you to work for a think tank?
One of the frustrations I had in academia is it often felt like the work didnât have a wider social impact. I found that policy work, on the other hand, did. Itâs rewarding to see how my work can have a positive impact on policy â whether thatâs encouraging government to adopt a new homelessness strategy or shaping the debate on climate change in a progressive direction.
FAQ
How do you prepare for a think tank?
- Start fresh to stay fresh. …
- Articulate an inspiring and results-driven mission. …
- Begin with flexible money—but not too much. …
- Give great people plenty of freedom and responsibility. …
- Share leadership. …
- Share ideas early and often. …
- Don’t plan. …
- Partner with people, not organizations.
How do you get hired by a think tank?
What do you do in a think tank?
Is it hard to get a job at a think tank?
