In my column last month I looked at some responses to the open-ended questions we included with our annual corporate researcher salary survey. We asked a similar set of questions for the companion research vendor salary survey (check out Emily Goon’s recap at http://tinyurl.com/bllarsb), inquiring about the skill set needed by researchers in the coming years and what they would like to know from their peers at other companies.
On the skills question, while they mentioned many of the same themes as their corporate counterparts – flexibility; experience with and openness to incorporating technology into the research process; ability to transform data into understandable, strategically-relevant insights – they also put a vendor-specific twist on things:
“E-recruiting is becoming more and more crucial – using social media to locate qualified respondents. It will be more and more important to have skills using social media.”
“Mobile and tab compatibility; competitive recruitment pricing and tactics; niche recruitment; international recruitment.”
“More qualitative interviewers who think past a screener to ensure client is getting exact target market. Deeply trained interviewers must know to ask additional questions that clients don’t know to ask. We’ve begun grooming and training ours for more understanding of consumers from an anthropological standpoint.”
“For full-service researchers, we must understand what our clients need in order to make their product development and marketing decisions, and give them the best advice on what research to do, and its implications for their business.”
(Alas, I’m sorry to tell one beleaguered respondent that one skill is probably unattainable no matter how hard they try: “The ability to accept mountains of sloppy, dirty data that’s delivered at the speed of light.”)
Expressed curiosity
We also asked them what questions they would ask their peers, if given the chance, about the current state of the industry. Like those on the corporate side, they expressed curiosity about work-life balance and inquired about some of the particular aspects of their peers’ job duties. Many of the other questions had a vendor-specific feel:
“Are they happy with the changes in qualitative or not? Do they believe the changes in the field have enriched our understanding of people? How can we objectively assess the value of new methodologies beyond self-interested claims of suppliers?”
“What’s the best source for generating new business?”
“What are real quality control techniques used in fieldwork departments?”
“How much do they invest in IT (hardware and software) each year? How much do they invest in marketing each year?”
“In what ways are marketing research companies working to align their project management and data processing teams? (Communication and understanding between the departments can reduce errors and increase accurate timeline predictions.)”
Across the industry
And, as with the skill-set questions, some of the questions are applicable across the industry (sorry about our role in the last one):
“What do their project timelines look like, because ours are ridiculous.”
“How can you present Internet-based questionnaire results with a straight face?”
“What type of research have you found is most useful to your clients, as well as makes your company successful?”
“What about your job do you enjoy the most? What techniques and skills do you rely most on? Which techniques and skills do you wish you used more?”
“Truthfully, between all the relevant LinkedIn groups’ e-mails, Quirk’s itself, other research journals and magazines, plus any blogs, etc., they could benefit from, how do they keep up with all the reading that can be done to remain professionally competent?”