I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at RAND (Santa Monica, CA) in June 2011
Interview
Phone interview, then back-to-back meetings with 6 staff members. The staff were good listeners, asked smart questions and let me know that it was a great place to work. I set some boundaries early on by saying that I needed work-life balance and that was very much supported.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe the process you would undertake for this specific project and they system your would put in place to carry it out.
Waited a long time from first applying to hearing anything. Multiple rounds with many interviewers. There didn’t seem to be any standard protocols used across different interviewees. All virtual with no in-person option offered.
Given all I learned, RAND seems like a great place to work with very smart people doing interesting research to impact policy. My experiences - all of which were extremely positive - are based on an initial phone interview and an in-person interview to one of their offices. Had I gotten an offer, I definitely would have taken it!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked a lot of questions about my current and future research interests, methodological training, and experience with various statistical techniques and software packages.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at RAND in Mar 2017
Interview
I had a preliminary phone interview with a researcher first (about 30 min). I was then invited to a full day of interviews with other researchers, plus a job talk. Overall, the experience was fairly straightforward. It's interesting to meet and talk with other researchers. The interviews themselves were a mix of phone and face to face. Similarly, attendance at the job talk is both phone and face to face.