plok2018

Begin by checking out the NBER. In particular, look here for employment directly through the NBER, and look here for employment with professors affiliated with the NBER. Their website is horrible, so I figured I would directly link the postings. Definitely play up your experience with computer science and programming in your applications, those skills are extremely valuable to have when applied economists are looking for RAs. Good Luck! :encouragement:

I'm currently an RA for an NBER affiliate, so hopefully my experience can be of some use. I am only familiar with the postings on the website and not the other large employer of RAs, the Fed, so I'll only talk about the NBER postings. You should absolutely start applying now if you are interested in any of the positions through the NBER. From my experience, as well as talking with other RAs about their experiences, there are two large pushes for hiring RAs who will start the coming summer: mid-November and late Winter/early Spring. But many positions are on a rolling basis and are open now (many of them prestigious!) so if you are not applying now you are removing yourself from consideration for a lot of great positions. In between the larger pushes I mentioned are sporadic postings which you should keep an eye on too. As to your question about first and second rounds, I think that is unique to the larger labs like the Chetty lab (and maybe the Greenstone lab?). But yes, if you are interested in those kinds of positions there are large returns to being in the first applicant pool. Importantly, though, if you feel that you cannot write a good application (mainly the cover letter) in time to meet the first round deadlines then wait for the second round. Maybe my process for applying will be of use as well. I started applying at the beginning of September during my cycle and was hired in mid-November. I wrote the outline of a cover letter that I could send to all of the positions, and cleaned a writing sample (correcting grammar, making graphs look nicer, etc.). I then checked both the "Job Openings at the NBER" and "Research Assistant Positions - Not at the NBER" pages once a week. When I saw an opening in which I was interested, I tailored the cover letter outline to the specific position, and applied. The tailoring process was basically just to read through a paper or two of the author(s) to make sure I would enjoy working for the professor(s) and be able to speak with specificity about one paper I found interesting in the cover letter. But don't feel the need to tailor cover letters, I know people who sent out a generic cover letter to all positions and still were hired. Hopefully the above was helpful. Let me know if you have more questions.