<p>Factors ranging from societal shifts in work arrangements, higher education workforce aging, and burnout have resulted in national-level challenges for staffing research enterprise support roles. In the USA, these staffing challenges are especially present for the roles of research development and policy, research administration (pre- and post-award), and research integrity and compliance support. We present a novel method to meet these ongoing staffing challenges. We use data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to identify adjacent occupations with comparable knowledge and skill requirements to research support roles. Higher education institutions (HEIs) can recruit workers from the adjacent occupations that we identified to transition into research support roles. We document our process and present our lists of adjacent occupations with talent capable of performing each research support role. Statistical analyses of O*NET data indicate that these adjacent occupations have objectively similar <i>knowledge</i>, <i>skills</i>, <i>vocational interests</i>, and <i>work values</i> to all three research support roles. We further share recruitment, training, and retention recommendations based on analytic comparisons of adjacent occupations and research support roles. HEIs can use our recommendations to draw from our adjacent occupations as a new source for workers to perform research support roles. Based on shared knowledge and skills, workers who transition to research integrity and compliance roles may require the least additional training. Alternatively, workers may require greater preparation to transition into research administration roles. Research development and policy support roles may face recruitment challenges due to lower income and fewer job openings compared to adjacent occupations. Our study holds implications HEIs to successfully strengthen the research enterprise workforce.</p>