THE RIGHT PERSON FOR THE JOB
As changes are happening in market research, it seems that the need for specific skill sets would impact what companies look for in the researchers they seek to hire, and similarly job-seeking candidates would be adding skills that address the shifts we’re experiencing in market research. So as I hear research change agents talk about social media as a sampling source, mobile platforms for research, and new technology leveraged for quantitative and qualitative methodologies, I begin to wonder if we’re really seeking and applying the right people for the job.
I turned to long-time friend and trusted market research recruiter Cameron Cramer, owner of Marketing Intelligence Professionals. I was interested in hearing his perspective on how skill requirements have changed in response to these shifts in our industry.
Jonathan Hilland: Cameron, you and I have discussed how the research industry has changed, how we conduct research has changed, and what has driven this change. For this blog, I interview people who are change agents themselves. They are trying to help enact change within the companies they work for or the clients they service. So my question to you is whether companies are now looking to hire people with skills needed to be change agents? And similarly, what do candidates need to do to be appealing to those hiring managers?
Cameron Cramer: You know it’s kind of interesting when you think about what is driving the change and how hiring companies and managers are responding. You can think about it from a number of perspectives. I think the biggest drivers of change have been the speed and the availability of information. How fast you can get a web-based survey done, yes, that’s important, but there’s also just a wealth of information coming in from say, CRM databases; and then you also have web analytics – what’s coming off the web site, what’s driving traffic to the web site, what’s converting, your marketing campaigns – all this data impacts the amount of information that’s available to our constituencies, the marketers and the people who make business decisions. This high availability of vast amounts of information from varying sources requires specific skill sets and no one has them all. In fact, it seems that the response is that you have companies that specialize rather than people – web analytics firms that just do web analytics; CRM / database management companies who focus solely on merging disparate data sets.
JH: So what changes have you noticed in recruiting in terms of looking at project managers, sales people or senior managers that you are trying to place or people you’ve been asked to find? Have you seen any evolution that you can correlate to being driven by some of these changes we’re talking about? Or do you think that it hasn’t caught up with the hiring end of things yet? Do you think that the hiring managers or the company managers see that and recognize it as a short-coming in the skill set of their staff and are driving to smarter, more forward-looking people who have a sense of how to deal with some of these new realities?
CC: I think that people are realizing there’s a lot of data coming from a lot of places and you need different skill sets to manage it all. That’s definitely true. But what has happened is that 2008-2009 was so brutal to market research that there was a contraction, not just on the supplier side but on the corporate side as well.
On the supplier side, there’s definitely a risk mitigation type of philosophy that I’m finding in that people want exactly what they want. They don’t want to take risks in hiring. They don’t want to take on someone unless that person can contribute immediately. They want to hire someone who has the exact skill set that the position requires: hard technical, market research skills; soft interpersonal, client services skills; and industry-specific (technology, CPG, healthcare, etc.) knowledge and experience.
Corporations, on the other hand, are much more inclined to hire someone who can grow into a position, someone they can hire as an analyst and grow into a manager. It depends on the level they come in at, but there’s more training and support available. Suppliers have training in place, but generally speaking they have to hire someone who can make their own way and hit the ground running. My clients have seen a lot of change, a lot of redevelopment, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions. Yes, it’s true that the industry needs to change, but people can only handle so many things at once. If you have open head count and you need specific skill sets, you’re going to get those filled with someone who can contribute immediately.
JH: So, what I’m hearing you say is that one big trend you have observed that has impacted hiring is that the manic economy over the last two years has really caused people to put the clamps down and make sure someone has actually done what you need them to do, rather than being open to looking at the potential that someone has and trying to grow someone from past capabilities and successes into a new role.
CC: Right. And that limits the talent pool that you can pull from and also limits the kind of candidate that you’re going to get. You’re not going to get a candidate that’s multi-dimensional because you want someone who has that one-dimensional skill set. If you want a project manager, you hire yourself a project manager. You don’t really care if he or she has other capabilities; you’ve just got to get that need answered immediately.
The flip side of the economic turmoil is that just as it has impacted companies, it has also impacted individuals. A lot of potential candidates are afraid to move. They want to make sure that companies are sound and secure. So if you have a job that you’re even mildly happy with – even if you’re underpaid, but you’re getting paid – you don’t move.
JH: But even if you just look at someone who has been in the industry for the last 10 to 15 years and how his or her skill set has needed to adapt: to evolve from paper-based survey design to phone to web, and now to specialized web survey design for mobile platforms; and for sampling, to shift from RDD to leveraging panels, and now to social media and mobile sampling; and in qualitative, from face-to-face to online, and now to virtual technologies such as telepresence. Have you seen an impact on the skills or experience required to address this evolution?
CC: Interestingly, no. There are more techniques, analytics and technology, but the basics of market research have not changed and the basic expertise required has not changed. My clients do not ask that they’ve done social media, mobile, etc. They assume that a researcher who is solid in the basics can figure that out. The big corporations I work with are more willing to hire people and create this new hybrid role of digital, qualitative, and quantitative. If the person doesn’t have one of the three legs of the stool, they’re still willing to take them on as long as they can contribute right away in other areas. They’ll bring them up to speed on any missing or less strong skills.
But they have much more leeway than suppliers. It seems like corporations see the trend and are able to answer it. Suppliers are focusing specifically on skills that they need right now.
JH: I guess where we net out and what I’m hearing from you is the industry’s needs are changing, but suppliers have not caught up and aren’t changing their requirements or raising the bar for the skill set or background of the candidates they are considering.
CC: Exactly. But all of this is coming around and I’ve been telling marketing researchers, your run-of-the-mill project managers who are struggling to define themselves to think about how you add value, how you become more valuable to yourself and to your company. A lot of them don’t want to hear it, but eventually it’s all going to come to a head – almost like information technology was back in our day – where it’s going to become a strategic asset and so will the management of it. There’s going to be a CRO, a chief research officer, just like there’s a CMO. I guarantee you it’s going to happen.
My thanks to Cameron Cramer, owner of Marketing Intelligence Professionals, for taking the time to discuss how the market research industry is (or is not) staffing to meet the digital, media, and technological changes we’re facing. This discussion has certainly made me rethink what we should be doing to meet our industry’s changing needs.
NOW YOU TELL ME. How are social media, mobile and other new technologies for gathering market intelligence changing your job and your company’s hiring practices? What are your expectations from suppliers – do you specifically seek suppliers who specialize or have specialists in these new research areas? Are you concerned with Cameron’s view that our industry’s overall skill sets have not caught up with the change we see in market research – or do you agree that basic market research expertise is most critical, and the specialization can be taught?
