Another volunteer's viewpoint

Today we have a 1st hand account of a day on the careers Hub at this years MRS Conference - this time from Danielle Todd from Relish Research.

---------------------------------------------------

As those of us established in this industry well know, we are a smorgasbord of passionate, creative and vocal people, with rich experience, numerous areas of expertise, and coming from multifarious backgrounds. Yet, as Chime and ENI discovered, most of us (53%) stumbled into, and then, fell head over heels in love with this industry. But during our university careers, we were completely oblivious to the delights and opportunities of this industry we have come to call home. 

We simply cannot let this disservice to the reputation of our industry continue!

The Researching…a Career Hub was set up to spread this news, as well as gather stories, support and momentum to rectify and publicise market research’s hidden reputation, and boy did the attendees of MRS Impact deliver! The Hub was consistently awash with many delegates, from those with a few years’ experience to those who would only dare write 25+ in the ‘years in the industry’ box! All delegates were eager to impart their passion and enthusiasm for our beloved industry, through video confessions, cartoons, and a pledge to be of future help to the cause.

Fitting quite nicely with the theme of MRS Impact 2015 – creating action and change through insight - I was proud to see so many fellow research lovers, client and agency, young and old, all happy to sign up to be of future help in a

wide range of planned activities aimed at educating the next wave of potential market research stars on how our industry can provide interesting and fulfilling careers.

I, for one, am keen to see the next steps come to fruition, and look forward to the day when we can watch potential market research stars falling over themselves to enter – rather than simply falling – into a career in our great industry.

A volunteer's viewpoint

We were lucky enough to have a number of heroic volunteers to help us on the hub at the MRS Conference last week - here are some observations from one of them, Nicola Scobell from TNS Global.

---------------------------------------------

True to its name, this year’s MRS conference was all about making an impact and driving change. In his inspiring opening speech Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, urged delegates to consider if they were doing enough.

Motivated by this introduction, I was happy to spend the rest of the day talking to delegates about the ‘Researching a career’ project at the conference hub. What struck me immediately was the broad recognition that something needs to be done to improve the image of our industry for new recruits. The hub attracted a lot of attention and it was very encouraging to see so many people willing to get involved and tell their stories.

In-keeping with a key theme of the conference, we asked delegates to become storytellers and tell us about their experiences of their career in research. 

Stories were captured on film and drawn up as cartoons.

The variety of images captured shows how diverse our industry really is - it was great to see the story emerge over the course of the day.

The highlight of the day for me was the opportunity to speak to a wide variety of interesting people; all had different stories to tell but each shared a common passion for their job. A truly inspiring day!

Starting to examine our cartoons

Our first in this series looks at one of the underpinning facts that we have discovered in this project - the number of people who say that they have fallen into the industry:-

Whether it be in the Uk or further afield, it is clear to see how many people don't set out to enter our industry. When we have investigated, most people have no correct perception of what a career in the world of insight/research/data analysis can offer.

In the upcoming posts, we'll highlight some the ideas people have suggested to address this and the language that has been suggested to attract more people in the future.

Conference Hub - what was it like?

Ok - as I write this, my feet still ache and my voice box is very sore - but but did we have a great time at the MRS Conference with our Hub.

With the conference attracting over 700 insight professionals, we were always going to be busy but what amazed us all was the great level of support we had from right across the industry - EVERYONE said they said the project had identified a key issue and most pleasing was looking to do something about it!

So whether people were giving their thoughts on video or chatting to one of us and having those points turned into great cartoons by our illustrator Will, voting for their preferred next steps or signing up to be a friend of the project going forward, there was fantastic support throughout.

In the the coming days and weeks we'll share different elements of the feedback here, whether it be video clips, cartoon elements, details of the vote or eye witness accounts from the great members of our project team who helped man the stand. 

Please sign up and follow our blog to keep in touch

Thanks


Mark
Hub co-ordinator

Researching a Career - 2015 MRS Conference Hub

We are gradually constructing our design and approach ready for how the hub will operate at this years conference.

As well as being able to come up and chat to members of the project team and R-Netters about the project & the results seen so far, you'll also be able to:-

a) tell us your story on video about what makes you proud to work in the industry, which words you would use to sell the industry to potential entrants as well as how you would go about portraying the industry differently to the wider world? 

b) take part in an art installation to show what a varied career a life in the world or research and insight can be

c) sign up to support future industry body supported activity to make many recommendations seen in our project, reality!

So, if you are panning to attend the conference, please come and say hello. If you can't make it, please do keep visiting this blog in the run up to the conference where we will post some updates and hopefully some live feedback.

Breaking News - Project Hub at 2015 MRS Annual Conference

Caroline and I have been at the venue of the 2015 MRS Conference "Impact 2015" this morning measuring up for the project hub we are going to run at the event this year. We have a number of exciting things planned and we'll tell you about them here on the blog (and via twitter) in the coming weeks.

The key aims of attending being to spread the news about some of our headline findings to date AND also look to get people signed up to help us take the message about what a great career research & insight can offer people out to potential new entrants.

Going to be a busy few weeks.

Thanks


Mark

Telling our Story with the R-Net'ers

We had a great session last week with the RNET’ers at MRS HQ.

As well as sharing some of the key headlines from our work to date, we had our attendees work on developing the "Story of Research" that will form the central core to our future planned communication activity.

Attendees completed a storybook to identify the key aspects of what should attract and engage people about a career in market research as well as how they can develop themselves as they progress in this varied and exciting area of work.

The delegates also had the opportunity to draw out how they thought a communication approach could be shaped – a couple of the great ideas are shown below

In the coming weeks the project team will be liaising with a number of industry bodies to develop a co-ordinated series of activities to start to action and communicate in a new way about our industry.

One of those areas will be about looking for representatives of our industries to go and talk to people at colleges, universities and schools about what a great career market research can offer – all materials and content will be provided centrally – we’d perhaps just need a few hours of your time each year to go and give a couple of presentations in your area.

If you are interested in being kept in the loop on this developing activity, please drop a short email to Mark  Hirst, one of the project team at markh@cie.uk.com and he will add you to our growing list of potential volunteers keen to turn our growing knowledge in this area into targeted action.

Building "The Story of Research"

We had a great time at our session on Thursday evening Edinburgh with the MRS Scotland group. Thanks to everyone that turned up and helped make the evening a success.

After explaining the journey of discovery we had made to date, including sharing some of the key facts and figures we have identified, we then got into the interactive part of the session.

The audience were asked to reflect on both what they had heard as well as their own experiences as researchers to help them set out a number of key areas of how they would go about selling the Market Research Industry to someone who had not heard about it before, never mind considered it as a career path.

We will be bringing these ideas together with similar outputs from other sessions we have/are running with the aim of developing a series of strong messages to share wider afield.

The attendees were then split into two teams and in a short amount of time, asked to produce a 60 sec advert selling their industry.

These proved to be very informative as well as demonstrating the ingenious and resourcefulness of those people who work in the world of Market Research!!!!

Again, we captured these adverts on video so we can use aspects of each in our developing communication plan.

We finished with a Q&A session over sandwiches and wine where everyone shared their own views about a number of aspects we had discussed.

Certainly our project team got loads from the session and judging by the comments we received on the evening and via Twitter, our audience found the interactive session a good use of their time.

We will be keeping everyone in the loop as we continue our different steams of research activity, and most importantly as we move into the Action phase of the project.

We're in Scotland on the 30th October

At the MRS networking event on the 30th October, our project will be presenting some of the headlines from the work we have done so far as well as getting the attendees to help devise some of the actions for the industry to take.

Full details of the meeting can be found at: https://www.mrs.org.uk/event/course/3105/id/7615

Survey of Esomar Members

Starting tomorrow Esomar members will receive an invite to take part in a survey, giving them the opportunity to share their opinions and experiences to help us on the project.

The survey will allow us to build on the findings from the UK and give us a truly international view of this subject.

The fieldwork period will run for 3 weeks.