On-campus Student Job (long-term)

Research/Administrative Assistant

Job Description:

I am Dr. Vas Taras (Associate Professor at the Bryan School of Business and Economics). I specialize in international business, particularly global virtual teams, cross-cultural psychology, and cross-cultural communication.

I am hiring a research/administrative assistant to help me manage my X-Culture project. X-Culture is an international business competition that attracts about 5,000 MBA and undergraduate business students from over 100 universities in 40 countries on all 6 continents every semester. Go to www.X-Culture.org and google “Vas Taras TEDx” to learn more about the project.

The job will involve helping with managing the project, managing email correspondence, coordinating efforts of the many people involved in the project, and other research and project administration functions.

Most important, it’s not a dead-end job. It will allow you to be part of a project that is already changing the world and has a truly global reach. The project brings together tens of thousands of people from over 50 countries. If you’re good, the growth potential is huge and this can turn into a career, not just a little side job.

Pay / Hours:

$1,000 per month for 20 hours of work per week (pre-tax, the actual amount may be somewhat smaller).

Selection:

An ideal candidate is a UNCG undergrad (freshman or sophomore), but first-year Master’s or first-/second-year Ph.D. students are also welcome to apply. Major does not matter as long as you are able to focus for extended periods of time, work with boring texts, write well, and learn fast.

To be considered for the job, email the following information to the email address of the X-Culture Project Coordinator:

(1) Name, (2) Program, year of study and expected graduation date, (3) Future career aspirations (100 words max).

We will then be invited for an interview in which you will be asked three things:

1. Write a short description of the X-Culture project. This is to tests your writing skills and your ability to find and retain information.
2. Explain how conditional formatting works in Excel. This is to test your ability to learn. You probably do not know what conditional formatting is, but as long as you are able to google it and learn on your own from one of dozens of 2-min expiation videos, you will be able to learn the rest of the skills needed for the job. However, if you can’t master this simple task, this job is not for you. .
3. Explain how Mail Merge works. Again, this is a simple test of your ability to learn simple tricks in MS Office. If you already know it – great. If you don’t, let’s see if you can google and learn simple new things. Note, you’ll need MS Outlook, Word and Excel for this one.

Please note, this ad is deliberately made to be long and boring. I need to recruit a person who can work through long and boring documents and repel applicants whose attention span is limited to a headline. So if you’re still reading, you’re already better than 90% of the applicants. And to test whether or not one you are really capable of working with longer and boring documents, here is a tip: put the word “Crowdsourcing” in the subject line of your application email. That’ll tell me you are one of a few applicants who actually read this paragraph. Also note, I did not provide the email address where the application must be sent, but I did say it must be submitted to the coordinator of the X-Culture Project. Very little googling will get you that address – let’s see if you read this far and can do a little independent research. The email below is deliberately wrong. Those who don’t pay attention to details, such as this paragraph, are not be able to apply.
 

I’d like to hire an assistant ASAP, so the sooner you apply, the greater are your chances.