Skills Feature: Change but Not Decay

Is it possible to talk about the mass of new skills and techniques bombarding the profession without feeling depressed about the traditional skills of the market researcher? Most definitely, says MrWeb co-founder Nick Thomas, continuing our celebration of 100,000 MR job ads.

I said I'd be a quallie today, and I was always told the key thing in a qual presentation is not to woffle so I'm sorry that the following is quite detailed. However it's chopped up neatly into bullets, and naturally there's not a statistic among them.


Methodology: I've read about 96,000 market research job ads in 14 years. Forgive me but I skimmed some of them! I also talk a lot to candidates, recruitment consultants and research employers.

Conclusions: Traditional research skills are not becoming obsolete and we should not fear for the future of the profession. There are however any number of new skills emerging, just as old skills are being revitalised or returning to relevance, and other skills continue to be in demand.

Executive Summary

First, here's why I think traditional skills are safe.

1. A lot of the argument against this is that online fieldwork and DIY research are removing the need for professional researchers. Exactly why should the skills needed to be a good research exec change just because fieldwork is now often done online? Fieldwork was never supposed to be the mainstay of the exec's role. Proposals (where itemised) quoted for fieldwork in one place and 'exec time' in another, and still do as far as I know.

2. The fact that 'companies can now do their own surveys using online DIY tools' does not lead on with any degree of logic to 'therefore they don't need research agencies any more'. The majority of those who use DIY to the exclusion of research agencies / providers will be those who would not have used research agencies anyhow.

3. Not that I'm saying field and tab providers are dead either, or that traditional fieldwork methods are dead or dying out. The evidence of our job ads tells me that there are more and more roles that demand some knowledge of online and other new research methods, but so there should be. Most of these ads also ask for things like 'solid' quant and qual skills, experience of a wide range of survey methods including things like ethnography and desk research as well as conducting depths or groups; or even put their money where their mouth is and specify 'traditional' or 'classic' research training. The long-awaited backlash against online methods has come not in the suggestion that they are not useful or on the rise - they are certainly both - but in the acceptance that they are 'a tool in the toolkit'.

4. The latter is a favourite expression of mine but I'll make no apologies for it. I'll go so far as to say that research based on analysing comments and conversations in social media; neuroscience, eye tracking and other biometric measures; big data and Business Intelligence; custom panels and online communities will all take a slice of the total research pie but they'll all fight each other for share as well as fighting traditional research, and the latter will have quite a strong position.

5. At the core of this belief is my considered opinion that the skill that makes a good market researcher (you'll have noticed I don't talk much about insight) is something independent of technology or methodology - it's a certain mindset and skill that will always be in demand in business, regardless of the tools available. Do you see lawyers worrying that text search will make all their knowledge of the law and of precedent obsolete, or doctors despairing of their professional future due to advances in automated surgery or the rise of 'NHS Online'? There's more demand for both than ever, and the same is true of people who can define and analyse business problems, go and get the right information to address them, and interpret it wisely and insightfully (there, I used the word), based on a sound understanding of the markets concerned.

That's Us, by the way.


Now, here are six trends that I think are evident in the requirement for market research and related skills:

1. recruitment of traditional field specialists has declined significantly, if not quite catastrophically. Growth is in other areas, and in place of people who manage telephone interviewers, for example, employers want project co-ordinators who can turn their hand to panel management, set-up of online surveys, and other items in the toolbox. There are plenty of people still working in field, and there will be for a while yet - but I don't expect vacancies for them ever to return to even half the level of ten years ago.

2. even before big data became a buzzword, and probably as long ago as about 2005, many researchers started to question why they didn't make more use of existing data instead of 'going out and doing another survey'. The number of roles for analysts on MrWeb began to increase then and has risen steadily if not spectacularly ever since. Partly this is because we still have trouble convincing people they fit on the site - 'though some advertisers evidently fill a good proportion of their analyst roles so I'm not in doubt. It's also become steadily more difficult to code jobs as either analyst or survey researcher, due to the increasing cross-over. This is not therefore a new phenomenon and we're not just 'reacting to the rise of big data'. Indeed, the fact that we spotted the logic of this before the hype started in other areas of industry is one of the reasons I think big data is more than a flash in the pan, and will be... well... Big.

3. the old shibboleth that good researchers do not make good salespeople and vice versa is battered but not beaten. Agencies are trying hard to start execs on business development activity younger - the thought of getting SREs to 'sell up', never mind engage in outbound sales activity, would have been frightening to bosses when I started in the industry 20 years ago. Now mention of the former (ie selling up) is commonplace in job ads, and the latter is not that unusual. Although this has moved quite quickly, and is arguably driven faster by the current economic situation ('everyone must pull their weight'), I don't think there will be a backlash. It does not hurt to expose baby researchers (cautiously) to the more commercial side of the business, and a bit more awareness of the realities of commerce might even, perish the thought, make them *better* researchers than the ones who bury themselves in figures. Discuss...

4. this one is really a non-trend, and a heartbreaking one at that. A few years ago, hope stirred in the breast of many a recruitment consultant that clients were finally coming round to the idea of transferable skills - that people who had not got 'four years of good experience in a top 20 agency', or even any MR experience at all, might still be worth interviewing for research positions. A number of our regular advertisers reported this - cautiously, for after decades of trying to persuade their clients to consider 'sideways movers' they had grown cynical - but nevertheless as a definite phenomenon. I gather their caution was well-placed: talk of transferable skills is mostly lip service now, with a few honourable exceptions. Employers have reverted to their rather spoilt attitude, oddly as there are never enough good candidates for MR roles, especially in the middle range from SRE to AD. Job ads still ask for someone who can 'hit the ground running', as if the only other way to hit the ground was with a Splat. We live in hope - and one good thing the plethora of new techniques and technologies affecting us does achieve is to widen the range of talent that is perceived as 'relevant'.

5. woe betide the research junior who's uncomfortable with technology. There are exceptions of course - pockets of determined quallie / creative types who will give excellent careers to those shying away from IT - but they are fewer than there were. There was even a feeling a few years ago, evident in the job ads of larger agencies in particular, that fresh grads with no preconceived ideas about data quality should be drafted in to teach their stuffy old colleagues how we could use the Internet to sweep away our old inhibitions (and with it hopefully our inferiority complex in the face of management consultants), break down information silos and generally explore hitherto unimaginable realms of business insight. Thankfully, this is giving way quickly to a more reasonable approach: if we want to understand the likely behaviour of younger generations of consumers who think completely differently to their elders about key things like shopping, keeping informed and communicating, we need to combine a deep awareness of that new mindset with hard-won understanding of aspects of consumer and business behaviour which do not change but which are not immediately obvious to the novice. A good example which I've seen crop up several times lately is that people don't always do what they say they'll do, choose what they say they prefer, or abandon a brand with which they're furious. Small numbers of people do get *very* furious (sic) on social media, in particular, without providing a very stiff pointer as to which way the market will go.

But, all this said, there is rightly a huge demand for researchers with a good understanding of social media; online search, advertising and optimisation; and perhaps most crucial of all, mobile technology and its potential.

6. I'll finish with one trend which I think is just beginning. With the increasing range of data sources and techniques - the ever-heavier toolkit we must carry - we are starting to see more demand for market and business researchers who are not specifically marketing researchers. That is to say, consultants who will pull in evidence from all corners to support business decisions other than how best to market products and services. Here are some examples:

- big data is already helping companies improve the efficiency of their supply chain and distribution - not by any means a new area of focus for researchers - and I think we will increasingly be called upon to act as consultants in this process. The same is true of internal changes / business process re-engineering where experts including employee researchers can make big contributions.

- innovation and NPD research is widening its remit at the early stage - identifying gaps in the market and helping to generate ideas for new products and services, rather than simply market testing and advising on promotional strategy - as seen in the recruitment activity of large firms like Nielsen's BASES and Ipsos, and the services of medium-sized firms like MMR and BrainJuicer. Co-creation and crowdsourcing are growing techniques here, but so potentially, for example, is desk research.

- requirements for skills in competitor intelligence, benchmarking and pricing research are all cropping up a lot of late - there are many new ways to keep track of what's happening in the market, some of them instantaneous and some longer term. Researchers with an overview can help to understand them, while those with conjoint and trade-off skills can help clients look through the implications and create the best strategies based on them.


We'll add some comments from some of our key advertisers in the next few days - and I'd love to hear the views of readers on the above, good or bad or indifferent - please email me, nickt@mrweb.com .


Nick Thomas

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.