Volunteers needed to take part in University presentations

One of the key activities we have highlighted (and was the clear winner in our MRS Conference vote) for the industry to help improve how it promotes itself to potential entrants was increasing the amount of proactive engagement it conducts with potential entrants.

As we reported last week, the MRS is starting to roll out a ramped up University engagement programme during this academic year, and its looking for volunteers.

Please visit https://www.mrs.org.uk/careers/graduate_roadshows to find out more details and how you can get involved.

MRS & AQR Graduate Roadshows - more details

Further to our short post last week, here are a few more details about this exciting development and how you can get involved.

For a while now Trish & Ken Parker have been running some roadshows at universities to help promote the profile of research as a career. To date they have visited and presented to over 20 universities. However following one of the main findings of our researching a career was to gain more exposure at universities, the programme is to be ramped up with the aim of reaching 100 universities a year.

To do this we need to gain support from people across the industry to get involved to help make this happen. Whether it be in a senior role to help introduce the session and set out some of the key messages that our project has identified through to middle and junior level people that can share their personal experiences.

The aim is not to make participation onerous and we would hope if lots of people commit to do a single event then we can really make a difference - if you can do more, that would be brilliant!

So if you are interested in challenging perceptions, expanding on what is great about our industry, the variety, innovation and impact on strategy then please drop your details to membership@mrs.org.uk and they will contact you to discuss how you can help.

Great News - MRS & AQR Graduate Roadshow

We have just received notification that following our project running the career hub at this years MRS conference and the fantastic reaction and support its findings & outputs received, the MRS and AQR will be expanding their university graduate roadshow programme.

We'll share more details with you all on Monday and how you can get involved. 

Have a great weekend

What's in a title?

An interesting area of conversation that came out from our discussions at the MRS conference concerned job titles.

Some people felt that different titles represent different levels of responsibilities in different organisations. This makes its hard to identify a clear career path through the industry.

Add to that the changing titles that some organisations and agencies are now using and its not surprising that young people entering the industry feel confused.

Therefore, one of the key learnings we need to consider as we develop our "Story of our Industry", is how we set out the variety of career paths that can be followed.

We are starting to get our ideas together and are looking to develop a campaign approach to help make this happen - keep watching the blog for more info.

MRS 2015 Conference Poll - Which 'next steps' should be the priorities?

Throughout the conference we ran a poll on our hub where we asked people to vote for their top 3 next steps for the project to tale, based on the many different ideas we have captured during the year or so of us gathering evidence.

We received 240 votes across 10 different options - we also allowed people to flag up their own ideas, some of which made it to our cartoon wall.

This is how the results look:-

In the coming weeks we are looking to discuss these results with a number of industry bodies and representatives to galvanise activity and get people involved. Watch thsi space for more details of how you can help.

Another cartoon theme

At the conference, one of the common themes we heard from delegates related to the sheer variety of roles that careers in our industry offer as well as the opportunity to involved in really important projects - here are a couple of images that were generated around this theme:-

It's clear that as part of our next steps of setting out what the story of our industry is, these are important aspects that we will need to incorporate and highlight for potential new joiners looking for a varied and exciting career.

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.

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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.

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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