Seeking for the starting point

This is the first of new RWC blog series on employability of young people. With these pieces and as a young researcher, I will try to pass on my insights and experience aiming to give a guideline to all young professionals who are seeking information on how to start their career in the field of market research.

Market research is a very popular subject nowadays as it seems to be a fascinating career pathway due to the variety of the professions and backgrounds you can follow and originate from. But do you know exactly what it means to be a market researcher? What are your responsibilities and tasks? Is it profitable? Can you progress easily and have a successful career? All these questions are issues that all young professionals face in the launch of their careers.

In our day and age, and especially among the younger generations, when questions are being raised, we reach out to the easily accessible source of all knowledge and insight – the Internet. Have you ever googled market research? Open a new tab and just try it! As you can see for yourself, the top results are from sources such as Wikipedia, Marketresearch.com (reports and analysis), entrepreneur.com and others.

Imagine now we are in 1985, when Google and all the other search engines did not exist. You are interested in market research and you want to find more about surveys. What do you do? You ask your teacher, colleagues or any other friend or relative that is more expert in the area to explain what the best practices and their experiences are.

Let’s come back to 2015 now. 30 years later with all the opportunity and connectedness the Internet offers you can have an answer for almost everything you inquire on. However, a problem remains that even today the information you can reach is segmented and on a massive scale from corporate websites, organisations or magazines. It is of course important to have an overview of the industry, but do these websites know you personally? Can they explain properly what you are looking for? Do they know if market research fits you and if you fit market research? The answer is not yet! Maybe we will see this form of fully personalised interaction in the future but for the moment, we need to accept that you can only get general information and if you are looking for more personal answers you should look for more personal interactions.

What do you do then? Ask the expert! Ask your teachers, ask a person that you know within the industry, but a person that knows you as well. This person can even be the older brother of your enemy classmate, but even then, start from your own social circle and then expand exploring. You need to speak to people within the industry and whether you like it or not, this is the only way to find out if market research is for you. Talking to people and expressing your interests is never translated into begging, as many young professionals believe, due to high unemployment in most European countries, for example. On the opposite, asking for information and advice in order to find out what the area offers and how the area can benefit from you is healthy. It’s a two-way relationship between organisations and individuals where both parties give and take knowledge and value. However, this is a relationship that not a lot of young people seem to understand, thus ending up compromising with less satisfactory offers. Most of the young think that they don’t have sufficient knowledge compared to well-experienced professions, underestimating their capabilities to create and add value. This is a perception that has been created due to the way businesses handle their responses to young professionals. Endless hours of job hunting and preparation for a cruel 30mins interview that leads to a rejection, promising job offers that turn out lacking in opportunities, etc.

How to speak to the expert

So the first step is to find the starting point: the connecting link with someone who can introduce you to the area of market research. Once you are there, what is next? The content. What do you ask? How do you know from the discussion if market research is for you?

Once you have the contact, ask for an informal call or meeting, to discuss the field giving you the chance to ask questions and of course to introduce yourself, explaining your interests. Prepare before the actual meeting/call, a list of questions. For a higher quality discussion you can even prepare yourself asking ‘your friend’ Google about emerging trends and the importance of market research in the economy. Try to stick with credible sources and organisations, such as ESOMAR to avoid misleading and invalid information from non-professionals. You can just write down without much detail whatever catches your attention. After a while, questions will start popping up on their own. The more you read the more questions you will have, and the more questions you have the more fruitful the conversation is going to be.

When you go to the meeting, ask for key sectors, specific areas and activities, key players and most importantly what it means it be a researcher. How it feels, what they daily tasks are, how flexible it is and what is the potential in each area. It is very important to get the feel of ‘walking in a researcher’s shoes’ before you actually decide to get on this path. Attempt to ask for a visit at the company’s offices (if this is not part of the first meeting) where most probably your contact will show you around and explain to you more of what each person in the company does. By the end of the visit you will have an idea of whether or not market research is for you. If you have the luxury to have more than one contact, benefit from it and try to meet up with all of them. It will be interesting to see several different sides that will give you a more holistic view of what market research as an industry and profession is really about.

This is the best route to find out at a preliminary stage if market research is for you. This is the process I personally follow for every topic I am interested in and want to dig in more, after many years of following blindly all the information that was marketed to me.

I hope my post provided some food for thought and motivation to make you start doing actionable steps towards a successful career. If you are interested in the topic, please stay tuned for next month’s post. Do you have thoughts, comments or questions? Join the conversation at @RW_Connect.

Helene Protopapas is IE Business School graduate student in Market Research & Consumer Behaviour. Connect with her via @elenaprot