Early Labs Posted on January 20, 2009 Dr. Patricia Molina explains what to look for in staff when starting your first lab.

So how do you start a lab and how do you develop a team that you're going to be able to rely on? I don't think that there are two people that go about doing it the same way.

Most of the time at the beginning, all you can afford is a student worker, which is good because it's an extra pair of hands. But it really is critical that whoever you select, whether it's a student worker, whether it's a part-time worker, that that person really understands how critical his or her contribution to the development of your laboratory can be because it can take an enormous amount of your time to train this person to be able to get results.

While if you went with somebody who is a little bit more senior, maybe somebody who's been in that institution for a longer period of time that knows the ins and outs, that knows people, that will help you make connections, that will help you get the reagents that you need on the day that you need them. That might be something that you want to negotiate for when you go and take your first position or when you get your first grant to be able to fund your work.

The alternative option is post-doctoral fellows. They can be wonderful, if you have somebody who's smart, who's dedicated, who's self-motivated. The downside of that is when you take a post-doctoral fellow into your lab, you really want to look out for that person's development. And so if you are only starting out, if you're only at the stage in which you're beginning to set up to prove your independence, to develop your laboratory, that might be a time investment that really is much more of a greater magnitude than you want to take on at the beginning.

When you're starting a lab, you have a lot more time to be in the lab yourself, to do the things, to do the experiments, to basically run your assays. And so from that perspective, it's a good teaching moment, but one of the things that you might want to consider is, "Am I going to teach somebody who in a year is going to be gone?" or "Am I going to teach somebody that I can groom to be my right-hand person that once I start getting students, that person is going to help me show the students how I want things done?"

Looking around at the composition of the laboratories around you is a helpful thing. And then also determining what your needs are for the particular project. It could be that you have all the skills that are necessary to get that project to completion. And then in that case, all you need is really hands to help you get there. But it could be that you are starting in a new area and that you want to expand and what you need is somebody who's going to bring that set of skills into your lab and basically complement those that you already have so that your program can grow.