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VOICEOVER: This is Alumni Aloud, a podcast by Graduate Center students for Graduate Center students. In each episode, we talk with the GC graduate about their career path, the ins and outs of their current position, and the career advice they have for students. This series is sponsored by the Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning & Professional Development.

MISTY CROOKS, HOST: I’m Misty Crooks, a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the Graduate Center and a fellow in the Office of Career Planning and Professional Development. In this episode of Alumni Aloud, I interview Rebecca Rasch, who earned her PhD in sociology at the Graduate Center and is now a Mixed Methods Research Scientist on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research Team at Amazon. Rebecca speaks with us about research in HR and DEI, building inclusion into your process, and how to think about methods for a career in industry. 

CROOKS: Rebecca, thanks so much for joining us today. To start with, can you give us an overview of your organization’s mission and your role there?

REBECCA RASCH, GUEST: Sure, so I’m a research scientist at Amazon. And Amazon is customer obsessed, and my role specifically is in the HR research space. And so for us customers are employees and we work to try and make sure that the employee experience is the best that it could be for all Amazonians across the globe. And the team that I work on has a specific mission of looking into issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the employee experience, and really trying to make sure that the employee experience is the best it can be for all employees.

CROOKS: And what is a typical day or a week there like for you?

RASCH: Each day is different. Today, for example, I’ve been spending time reading through survey responses from employees around the world in response to poll survey questions that we ask about the employee experience. And so drawing on my training from grad school on coding qualitative data is a big part of the work that I do. Other days, I’ll be working on writing code in either R or learning Python, working in Stata sometimes to mine really large data sets. Amazon has close to two million employees at this stage, so collecting, wrangling all of that data is a big part of our job as well.

CROOKS: What was it that got you interested in this particular work that you’re doing? I’m talking about that idea of the experience, but also doing that from the inside with employees.

RASCH: I think becoming a researcher in the HR space was never really on my radar. I kind of got I guess directed into it because of the skills that I have as a sociologist. They really lend themselves well to people centered problems, which is how a lot of organizations talk about HR research as people centered research. And that’s really what sociology is all about. So I think first, right after graduating from the Graduate Center, I joined the federal government with the USDA Forest Service. And I think my original intent had been to do research on community impacts of environmental policy. But when I got there, my skills around surveys and interviewing and focus groups, the managers that I was working with thought that those could be really valuable to help them understand their employee population. So, even though my original intent, I think, was to use my sociological background to understand communities, it ended up being more valuable to the organization to look at employees. And so that’s I think how I ended up in the HR research space. And I found that I really enjoyed it. It was really nice to see the fruits of your research directly because when you’re working with employee data and making recommendations about employees, then you also are able to see how those recommendations are being implemented across the organization, and how they’re affecting and ultimately improving the employee experience for yourself or your colleagues and for the organization overall.

CROOKS: That’s really interesting. What was the process of getting this current role like, in terms of applying and interviewing?

RASCH: It was actually really fast. I was thinking about transitioning away from the federal government. I’d been there for about seven years, and just casually looking for new things on LinkedIn and I came across a posting for this role. And I read the job description, seemed like a great for my background and experience. And then I sent in my resume, I think through the LinkedIn job link, and then a recruiter contacted me maybe a week later. The interviews happened relatively quickly, so I think from the time I applied to the time I got hired was probably a month, maybe a little bit more, but it felt very fast and efficient.

CROOKS: That’s really interesting. I imagined with such a large organization, it would take months and months, you know.

RASCH: Yeah, one of the things about Amazon I’ll say that was very different from the federal workforce is that it’s so much more high tech and so many more of their processes are automated. And so things can just move a lot quicker.

CROOKS: Thinking about this role that you’re in now, what is it about your job that you find rewarding?

RASCH: I will say, I’m relatively new to this role. So it’s been less than six months that I’ve been here, but the things that have been rewarding so far are seeing how the research that our organization produces has an impact on decisions across the organization, and that’s really satisfying. Or when you are doing research and you’re writing academic publications, you see your impact maybe by people who have read your article or cited your article. But you never really have this clean understanding of how what you found is gonna impact a decision or what it’s really going to be used for. And so it’s nice in the research space for a company, you really see where the research is going, how it’s being used. And so it feels a lot more valuable in terms of having an impact.

CROOKS: Hmm. What are some of the challenges that you’re finding with this role?

RASCH: I will say with this role and then also in my prior role doing HR research for the federal government around diversity, equity, and inclusion issues, I think the challenge is really understanding how to present what you’re trying to achieve in a way that is truly inclusive, and not alienating and not sort of engaging in some of the really divisive dialogue that we hear in the political arena. So I don’t think that’s unique to my specific organization, but I think just the diversity, equity, inclusion research, space in general, there’s not a clear path. There’s not a right or wrong. There’s a lot of experimentation, which makes it exciting. But I think there’s also, you know, a lot of challenges around that as well.

There’s a lot of different lived experiences. And so, when you’re contending with that, you know, there’s no right or wrong. There’s just what I’ve experienced versus what you’ve experienced, and they’re very different a lot of the time. And they really shape people’s world views in very different ways.

CROOKS: You know, thinking of your background and the knowledge, skills, and qualities that you bring to the table, what are some of those that helped you land this role?

RASCH: I think having the ability to translate scientific research into plain language has been really important. It’s something that was really highly valued when I was in the federal government, and I feel like it’s also really highly valued here. I think when you’re working in an academic environment, you can use the language of your discipline and everyone kind of knows what you’re talking about. But when you’re working in an environment that’s very interdisciplinary with people who may all have PhDs, but they all have PhDs in different disciplines, you can’t assume that the words that you’re using mean the same thing as everyone else in the room. And so you really have to be very clear about what you’re saying, remove jargon, remove technical language, and just really cut to the point.

CROOKS: Mmhmm.

RASCH: And I think that’s a skill that I’ve honed over the years and just becomes more and more valuable in the more interdisciplinary environments that I find myself working in.

CROOKS: That’s really helpful. Thinking about skills, one of the things a lot of grad students really struggle with is how to frame the skills that we’ve developed for you know spaces outside of traditional academic roles. What are some of the things you learned from your time at the Graduate Center that you think really helped you in the roles that you’ve had, and that you’ve been able to leverage for your career?

RASCH: One of the big things that I learned was about critique and really understanding what the peer review process is, what the goals are, and how to really come out the other side feeling more empowered than when you went in. I think, I think it’s really important to be able to take critical feedback, and not see it as a personal insult, not get defensive, but really take it for what it is as this opportunity to learn and improve your work. And I think that that was something that was really valuable that I learned through the dissertation process was just getting that feedback, and being able to work through it and use it and apply it to make the ultimate product a lot stronger than it would have been without it.

CROOKS: That is very helpful advice because we deal with critical feedback pretty much constantly on a daily basis. Thinking back to your time at the Graduate Center, is there anything that you wish you had done differently? Or anything that you look back and think, oh, if I had taken advantage of that particular institute or that particular course, it would have set me up really well?

RASCH: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think maybe something that I probably should have taken more advantage of was opportunities for learning about best practices and teaching. I think I quickly knew that I didn’t want to go down the typical academic path and become a professor, so I thought, oh, I don’t need to engage with some of these classes around how to teach because I don’t want to be a professor. But I think, looking back, that was a pretty narrow perspective on the utility of teaching skills because in every role that I’ve had, I’ve been teaching in some form or another even though it hasn’t necessarily been to a room of undergrads or grad students. It may have been to a room of senior leaders, or it may have been to a room of interns or may have just been one on one with co-workers. But I think those skills of teaching are so key to basically any role that you’re going to be taking on, so I would encourage people, even if they’re not thinking of going down that traditional path, to really try and soak up as much of that training as they can because I think it’s useful no matter where you end up.

CROOKS: And we hear that from a lot of people actually who didn’t realize at the time how important the teaching aspect of grad school was going to be. And then have said something similar, which is, oh yeah, I’ve been teaching in some form or fashion in everything I’ve done since then. So, that tracks. I want to think a little bit about methods. You’re a mixed methods researcher, and a lot of people in grad school now are looking at different sorts of research work, are thinking about the methodologies that they bring to the table. Can you speak to the kinds of methodologies that you’re using at work, and the kinds of methodological training or learning that you feel like have helped you be successful?

RASCH: Yeah, I think the biggest things that I’ve used over the years, survey research. So really figuring out how to craft questions in a way that is going to get you useful data and ultimately information that can inform your research question. I think everyone can write a survey. But there really is an art and a science to crafting those questions correctly, so I think that’s been really valuable. I think being able to lead interviews and group discussions effectively has been really valuable. I think knowing how to code qualitative data has been really valuable, just basics of using NVivo vivo software and coding. I’ve used that a lot over the years. So I think there’s value in being able to be confronted with a research question and not just being limited by one method or another to answer it. Over the years, I’ve been confronted by managers wanting to know something and their first response is, oh, let’s just talk to some people. So they don’t think of, oh, maybe there’s other ways to collect this information. Or vice versa, it might be, oh, I need this information, let’s send out a survey, and they don’t think, oh, maybe there’s a better way that I can get this. Maybe a group dialogue with stakeholders will actually provide me with a lot more value than just a survey to a subset of people. So I think being able to have a bunch of different tools in your toolbox and pull out the one that’ll give you the best answer to the question at hand has been really valuable. I think the challenge behind that sometimes is just sort of negotiating with your stakeholders on why one method might be better given the situation and so sometimes that requires some advocacy for one method over another.

CROOKS: Is methods training something that you have kept up with? Or have you been able to continue to expand that toolbox in your roles? You know, when you look at the research space in industry, there’s a plethora of talk bubbling up about different kinds of methodologies that people are using, different tools. Are there things that help you to keep up with? What advice would you give around that?

RASCH: Yeah, it’s definitely a struggle. What I’ve been doing over the years is just going through journals,  looking at the most recent articles, and seeing what’s being published and what are people using. Depending on the organization that you’re with, there’s also preferences within that organization for certain types of methods. So depending on where you end up, there might be a preference for doing things a certain way that you either never learned to do or maybe you learned that that wasn’t the best way to do it. So I think being really flexible is important, and being open to learning new ways of doing things, and also being critical of those new ways and challenging them when needed. Just because it’s a new way of doing something, it doesn’t always mean that it’s a better way. So I think also just being really critical of the latest, greatest, shiniest methodology and understanding if it’s the right fit for your given situation. Or the lowest tech solution might actually be the best solution, depending on what you you’re trying to understand.

CROOKS: I really appreciate that sort of that guidance to keep a critical mindset towards the thing that maybe everybody’s excited about right now because these trends can come and go. And we can get good stuff out of them, but also sometimes, there’s this old tried and true method that might work really well. I wanted to circle back around to stakeholders. Communicating with your stakeholders and what kind of relationships you form with your stakeholders is really important. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about how you handle relationships with stakeholders and what that looks like for you.

RASCH: Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of different types of stakeholders. I’ve done consulting for nonprofits and small community foundations as well as larger organizations. The most important thing that I’ve always tried to do is been really clear with stakeholders from the beginning about what the research can and cannot provide, and also really trying to have a clear understanding of how the research will help them advance whatever objective or goal that they have. I think a lot of time stakeholders might have a lot of ideas or be curious about something, but not have a great pathway for how they’re going to use that information and how it’s going to really help them make a decision. So I think really in those early stages as you’re planning the research, you want to be as clear as possible with your stakeholders to really try and map out with them what the research can and can’t provide, and then how they’ll be able to take that forward in whatever direction they want to go. I think you also have to really think of stakeholders in a big tent kind of way. Your stakeholders are not just the people who are asking you for the research, but they’re also the people who might be affected by whatever your research shows. And so it’s really important to get their perspectives early on, get their buy in, and really think holistically about who this research might impact and why. And having all of those stakeholders at the table really early on will ensure not just that the people who are asking for the research are getting what they need. But then also the people who might be impacted by the research are kind of on board with the next step because if they’re excluded from the outset, then you’re probably gonna face a fair amount of friction when you’re trying to implement whatever recommendations that you come up with.

CROOKS: It sounds like you’re saying really, really incorporate deep thinking about inclusion and what that means into how you’re building these relationships, and who you think these relationships are with.

RASCH: Absolutely.

CROOKS: If you were a hiring manager for roles in the HR Research and DEI space, what things would you be looking for in resumes, cover letters, and other application materials?

RASCH: Things that would make a positive impression for me would be experience working directly with employees and managers to implement either training programs or different policies. But really having that experience of seeing where recommendations or where policies might fail or might cause unintended consequences or might create more friction than benefit. And really having that experience, because I think until you’ve seen a policy go wrong, you don’t really understand the dangers of implementing the wrong thing. And so I think that type of experience would be really valuable. I think another kind of experience would just be people who have potentially spent time in cultures different from the one that they were raised in to also have that perspective.

CROOKS: As a last question, we like to ask what overarching piece of advice or guidance would you like to leave us with?

RASCH: Being flexible in your approach is really important. In grad school you learn very specific ways of doing things. And in industry or the government or other spaces outside of the academic setting, those specific ways of doing things are not necessarily what they’re looking for. If you do want to go into the private sector or into industry, you need to be able to be flexible with how you’re performing your work. And if that’s something that is exciting to you, then it sounds like it would be a good fit. But if you are very wedded to very specific ways of working or methods, then an academic setting might be a better fit for you.

CROOKS: That’s interesting. Well, Rebecca, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s been really interesting and insightful.

RASCH: Yeah, it’s been great talking with you. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

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