Editor's note: Lindsey Dickman, Escalent was selected as a finalist of the 2022 Researcher of the Year (Supplier) which is a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. To find out more about the awards click here.
Read. Read what your company is publishing, read about your competitors, read industry publications for your vertical, read market research industry publications, read outside of your industry to draw connections, read what respected experts are releasing. We live in the age of information overload, so use that reality to your advantage. Each time you read something you’ll find five other things to read in a never-ending cycle. It will seem unmanageable, but if you keep at it, you’ll be surprised at just how much you can learn in a couple of years.
Expose yourself to as many aspects of research and business as you can. Ask colleagues questions, see if they’ll screen share while they work and seek examples. The more you understand how pieces fit together and what the end goal is for clients and colleagues alike, the more you can figure out how to work smart and be effective.
Build your personal brand, and establish yourself as someone with integrity and follow-through. Write to share your point of view. If you don’t have one yet, write to figure out what it is. Do the right thing, always. This applies to data quality, client service and relationships.
Establish and preserve relationships. Not only can they help you with work satisfaction and success, but MR is a small industry, and you’ll undoubtedly run into early connections again.
I’ll start with what isn’t changing. This is an industry built on humans understanding humans: why, whether, when, how they do the things they do. That will continue to be the aim, and thank goodness for that as it’s what makes MR so appealing. Humans are fascinating, strange, wonderful creatures, and we get to be in the envia...