Urban Institute Research Associate Interview Questions
& Process

I applied about a week after seeing the job posting and heard back in about another week. After submitting a writing sample, I was contacted for an interview within two weeks. The interview itself consisted of five 30-minute interviews back-to-back, which was quite a long and intense process. No major red flags came up during the interviews, and they mentioned the decision-making would take a while, so I waited patiently. About two weeks post-interview, I inquired about my application status and was told a decision would be made in the

I was reached out to for a 30 minute phone interview. It was with a panel of 4 researchers, including a center VP, 2 senior researchers, and a research analyst. The questions were not structured but were tailored to my resume. They seemed to ask me questions about experiences that I was lacking in or was not apparent I had based on my resume, such as project management, fundraising, and proposal development. I was told that you would be put to work on multiple projects so you would likely not get to see the projects you are on to completion. Their responses to my questions made it seem like the position was going to be focused a lot on fundraising and proposal development which could be frustrating, and there is a lot of variation in the type of work you do. Because my skills are more specifically research/analysis focused, I think we came to the conclusion that I would not be a good fit with the position.

So I had this interview that had 5 steps. It started with a 45 min writing test where I had to look at a graph and talk about what it meant. Then I met with a panel of 3 junior staff members, followed by a panel of 3 senior staff members. After that, I had lunch with someone, which wasn't evaluated. Then I met with the director, and after that, the HR manager. It took them like a whole month and a bunch of emails to HR to tell me they hired someone else.