Supervise student research or internship work
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 43 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 43 occupations that perform it.
- Supervise students' research on celestial and astronomical phenomena.
- Supervise undergraduate or graduate teaching, internship, and research work.
- Supervise laboratory sessions and field work and coordinate laboratory operations.
- Supervise laboratory work and field work.
- Supervise students' laboratory and clinical work.
- Supervise students' fieldwork, internship, and research work.
- Supervise students' laboratory and field work.
- Supervise independent or group projects, field placements, laboratory work, or other training.
- Supervise, evaluate, and plan assignments for teacher assistants and volunteers.
- Plan and supervise work-experience programs in businesses, industrial shops, and school laboratories.
- Supervise students or assistants.
- Supervise students' laboratory or field work.
- Supervise the clinical work of practicum students.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Enterprise platforms
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
43 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Agricultural Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Anthropology and Archeology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary
- Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary
- Astronomers
- Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Business Teachers, Postsecondary
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School
- Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
- Communications Teachers, Postsecondary
- Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Teachers, Postsecondary
- Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education
- Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
- English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Environmental Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Forestry and Conservation Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Geography Teachers, Postsecondary
- Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary
- History Teachers, Postsecondary
- Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education
- Law Teachers, Postsecondary
- Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education
- Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
- Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary
- Physics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education
- Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary
- Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Special Education Teachers, Middle School
- Speech-Language Pathologists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Supervise personnel activities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.