Research Careers Blog

How do you keep your research department happy in a challenging economy?

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Karen Morgan

Editor’s note: Karen Morgan is president of Morgan Search, a Santa Monica, Calif., recruitment firm specializing in the marketing research industry.

Working in the realm of recruiting and placing marketing researchers, we have a front-row view of what is happening in many research departments across the country. In many instances, people are feeling undervalued, underpaid and overworked.

Some companies genuinely cannot afford to hire due to budgetary constraints. However, others are certainly taking advantage of the current economic climate and are running departments with fewer people when they could in fact afford to hire additional talent.

So how are some companies managing to maintain morale in their departments, in spite of the cutbacks?

Clear and open communication. Creating a genuine feeling that “we’re all in this together” is critical. People need to understand what is happening with the business – the challenges, the goals and the vision for the business moving forward. And there needs to be light at the end of the tunnel – it can’t be all doom and gloom. You need to inspire people and show them there is opportunity in spite of the challenges. People need to see senior executives are also making sacrifices for the business along with everyone else. This means they’re also working harder than ever, not receiving bonuses when employees aren’t, disappearing on expensive vacations, etc.

Get creative. People feel valued primarily if their efforts are recognized and appreciated. So if this cannot be demonstrated in a pay increases or bonuses right now, offer some alternative benefits. For example, give people the option to telecommute one or two days a week; let them work flex hours; give them some extra time off if you see they’ve been working late on a project. Make sure you’re communicating that you appreciate their efforts and that there are rewards and opportunities as the business climate improves.

Businesses that feel their employees should have the “I’m lucky to have a job” attitude are in danger of losing their best talent and will be left scrambling to hire once things improve. This is a small community and people talk. Do you want to be known as a great company to work for or a sweatshop? Hiring is challenging, expensive and time-consuming. The companies who are focusing now on how to maintain their top talent are way ahead of the game.

Posted in Corporate Researchers, For Employers | 1 Comment

The five questions to ask applicants in an interview

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Brad Remillard

Editor’s note: Brad Remillard is cofounder of Impact Hiring Solutions and coauthor of You’re Not the Person I Hired: A CEO’s Guide to Hiring Top Talent. For more information visit www.bradremillard.com.

Do other people in your organization interview candidates who will end up working directly for you? Just about everyone answers yes to this question. The follow-up to that is, have you ever sat in on the interviews with these co-workers and assessed if they are competent interviewers? I don’t mean co-interview with them but specifically be there to gauge their interviewing abilities. Most answer no to this question.

Think about it: You are relying on their opinion to hire someone who will play a role in your success, yet you don’t even know if they are competent interviewers. So you cross your fingers and hope everything works out. Crossed fingers and hope make a poor hiring process.

There are two reasons interviewing fails:

1. Few people are naturally good interviewers. Just as few people are natural at music, sports or math, most would be considered amateurs when it comes to interviewing. Do you want to have your success based on the work of amateurs?

The vast majority of people learn to interview from the people who interviewed them. That is not a training program. Interviewing is a skill that needs to be developed and honed. Most people have either had no training or it was one short class years ago and they’ve long forgotten what they learned. Given that fact, how can anyone expect their managers to be competent interviewers? Skills need to be practiced or at least kept up-to-date to be effective.

A lack of training and practice creates one major flaw that poor interviewers make over and over again: They don’t probe deeply enough into what the candidate tells them. They tend to just accept or reject what they are told without asking for facts, times, data, outcomes, challenges, team issues, names, etc. It’s not that the person doesn’t want to probe, they just don’t know how or they are uncomfortable asking these types of questions.

2. Vague questions equal vague hires. Can you guess what percentage of hiring managers actually review the details of the job description with the co-workers who will be interviewing the candidates? Less than 10 percent.

Oftentimes, those in the second or third round of interviews really don’t understand the position. They interview every candidate much the same way regardless of position. It is the one-size-fits-all interviewing syndrome. The problem is, once the person comes on board the job expectations by their new manager are rarely vague and generic.

So that means the other people interviewing simply assume they know what is important in the job, what specific issues need to be probed and what questions they should ask to determine if the person is qualified for the job they themselves don’t even understand. Is it any wonder interviewing fails?

Interviewing doesn’t have to be all that complicated. It doesn’t have to be so sophisticated that a person needs to go through extensive training every time they have an interview. In fact, interviewing should be simple, thorough and easy for everyone to understand.

Well-trained interviewers can get about 80 percent of the information they need to decide whether or not the person can do the job with just five questions. If job candidates can’t sufficiently answer these five core questions, then all the other questions are irrelevant. In fact, for most hires at the manager level and higher, if the candidate can’t get past the first three, you should move on.

The five questions are:

1. Give me an example where you demonstrated high initiative. Just about every position requires initiative. The degree of initiative may change based on the position but if they don’t have it at the level you need, do you really need to continue?

2. Give me an example where you successfully executed on a critical project. If you have critical issues you need addressed and they haven’t shown an ability to do so, you may not have the right person.

3. Give me an example where you led a cross-functional team on a complex project. Leadership is something managers must possess. The cross-functional aspect is important, because motivating people over whom one does not have authority is just one difference between managing and leading.

4. Give me an example where you have done X in your current company. Aligning past experiences and accomplishments with regards to scope, size and organization is important.

5. When you come on board, how would you accomplish X within X period of time? Getting them to describe how they will do the job in your company, with your resources and your culture demonstrates their ability to adapt to your company.

Once the interviewer asks each of these questions, then simply probe deeply with who, what, when, where, why and how. Ask follow-up questions. If the candidate really did what they claim to have done they will be able to describe it in great detail. Probing deeply is what will separate those who did it from those who are merely claiming they did it.

Posted in Employment Tips, For Employers | Comment

In 2012, will social media data analysis still give us fits?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Joe Rydholm

We’re getting ready to field our annual researcher salary survey and so I’ve been rereading some of the output from the 2011 study. One of the goals of this blog will be to give readers some tips and guidance on keeping their skills in line with current market demands and as I’ve been assessing the changes from last year to this year, I feel like these passages from my July 2011 Trade Talk column are still applicable today. (We had asked 2011 salary-survey respondents to tell us what they viewed as the biggest challenges facing MR in the coming years and my column focused on themes that emerged from the verbatims.)

Respondents were generally of two minds on the topic of social media data. While they recognize that it’s here to stay and acknowledge that it has a role as a listening device, many seem overwhelmed by the thought of having to make sense of it and are also alarmed that internal clients view it as a (potentially free) replacement for ad hoc research projects.

As one Quirk’s reader put it, social media makes some marketers feel, “that they know their customers sufficiently without marketing research. These days, members of the general public make their voices heard through all sorts of media, including social ones, and some may feel that those voices are representative. In essence, they are saying, ‘We’ve given the public sufficient attention through listening to what they’re saying in letters, blogs, tweets, etc.,’ but not really recognizing that simply giving time to ‘the public’ does not equate to understanding the feelings and motivations of their customers.”

Further, said another, “there’s a trend toward mining social data as a substitute for conducting research, which may be useful in some regards, but could also end up ‘listening to all the gossip in the neighborhood’ rather than providing actionable data.”

Some researchers expressed feelings of being damned if they do, damned if they don’t when it comes to social media and other new data-gathering techniques. By ceding ground to or giving too much legitimacy to social media data, researchers could be rendered irrelevant in the eyes of those hungry for “insights.”

But despite anger over “the perception that social media is the answer to EVERYTHING!” these data sources can’t be ignored, especially when internal calls for mining them grow louder by the day. And the researcher who ignores them or denigrates them runs the risk of being seen as out of touch (at best) or unhelpful (at worst): “By not keeping up with newest Web technology, social media, competitive intelligence, we will allow others to supplant what should be a market research function.”

While a host of external factors were mentioned as problematic, some respondents pointed a finger back at themselves and their peers:

“Too many researchers see/envision the value of research in and of itself. Too few can make a clear business case for their research. In particular, non-commercial (govt. and academics) give research a terribly bad name/image (i.e., eggheads who are theoretical twits, suck off other peoples’ money/resources and do little other than study ‘stuff’ that matters little if at all). I’m quite serious about the foregoing comments.”

“Staying relevant. Researchers need to adapt their presentations to actually drive action on the insights obtained. The ones that get it get rehired and/or promoted. The ones that don’t get stuck in the same job for 15 years with no advancement, always wondering why.”

“We need to focus on the quality of research. With the number of companies, different technologies, new methodologies, overseas analytics, we need to be very diligent with the data. Make sure our findings don’t end up under the heading of ‘lies, damned lies and statistics.’”

Watch for our June issue to find out what the focus of this year’s angst will be!

Posted in Corporate Researchers, Employment Tips, Employment Trends, The Business of Research | Comment

Welcome to the Quirk’s Research Careers blog!

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Joe Rydholm

With the industry undergoing potentially seismic shifts and changes, thanks in large part to the explosion in data sources available to both marketers and marketing researchers alike, job descriptions and employee skill sets are changing too, no matter if you’re a corporate researcher or a research vendor. Our goal with this blog is to deliver helpful and informative posts that will keep you up to date on trends in employment in our industry and also offer practical advice on getting – and keeping – your ideal job or your ideal job candidate.

No matter where you are in the research employment realm – employer, employee, recruiter, placement firm, consultant, analyst – we welcome your input for this blog and invite you to submit your posts, ideas for posts or fodder for posts (press releases, study results, etc.) to Quirk’s Editor Joseph Rydholm at joe@quirks.com.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comment