Calling anyone familiar with the market research industry

[researchquery]

I've been out of the industry for 8 years and would very much like to return but need to bring my skills up to date. Unfortunately I can't work for my old employer as I've moved down south.

Am I better off going via an agency or approaching companies directly? Are there many part-timers/people working from home/job-sharers in the industry now (seemed to be none when I left)? Have I got a cat in hell's chance against all the bright young things?

TIA

Hello! Can I start by asking questions? It's not clear whether you want to return as an interviewer, project manager or what? And whether you are looking to work in qual or quant, client or agency side etc? Any specialism? I'm sure that affects the answer you'll get to your questions.

And, are you a member of the MRS? That might be a start.

Ooh a reply, thank you!

I worked for an agency as a DP exec and yes, am a member of the MRS (have kept it up all these years).

Also, I'd love to move eventually to being a research exec (quant) but have no idea what I should study or do to help achieve that goal.

But for now, getting back into DP would be great.

Hi there, If you are a member of the MRS then you should get their magazine which always has jobs & agencies in the back. Would also suggest you look at the training and jobs section on the MRS website.

What qualifications and experience do you have?

8 years experience but no quals as such. Will check out the mrs website, thanks. Do either of you work in MR at the moment?

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Hi

I worked in Market research for 20 + years. I started in DP and then moved on to Research exec (quant), senior project manger and finally Associate Director. I worked primarily in quant, designing research projects and interpreting results.

I was made redundant about 18 months ago from a job where I had been alloed to work part time (first 3 days a week then 4 days a week) after having ds. However once I lost that job ( the company went under) I found it nigh on impossible to find any sort of part time job in the industry again.

The working from home seems to be mostly qual reserachers who often freelance. Freelancing as a quant researcher is more difficult as you need to have a base of clients to contact and work with as a starting point.

If you are looking to get back to work again you could trysome temporary contracts. There is a company called stopgap that does thes for the MR industry. However be prepared for long hours and full time contratcs (though probably short term).

As you may remember agency work tends to mean long hours in order to meet cleint deadlines. If you want to control your hours more, going clientside would be better but these jobs are hard to find withiout real business experience. I would try and use stpgap to get some work experience and maybe

Alos the MRS run courses so maybe attending some to get back in touch with the current work pracices would be good, though possibly a bit expensive to fund.

Finally online research has had an explosion in the last 5-10 years and if ytou can see any way of breaking into thavt let me know!

Wow, that's a really helpful post, thank you. I can't believe that in an industry that has so many female employees, things are still so bad re flexible/part-time work - how depressing .

So thinking of the long game, how did you make the move from DP to RE? Maybe there's something I could be working on/studying while I'm looking? I wonder if any recruitment agencies would be able to match me up with a job-share partner

Researchquery

Sorry I didn't reply before but I got a bit busy and forgot about mn a bit. I am back at work today (not MR job BTW) so can post a bit

I moved from DP to MR by moving to a client from the DP company I worked in. The client had taken our software in-house and asked if I'd be interested in working with training all the execs to use the software and to be the in-house expert. I did that for about 4 years. The company made the research execs do their own dp (it was mostly CATI stuff) which they generally didn't like much but the plus for me was that I could do the dp stuff standing on my head. I also got to do the exec stuff as well so gained experience.

Then I moved to a company that had no in-house dp as I wanted to move away from that a bit. I then spent 10 years just doing a normal senior exec/associate director role but I specialised in media.

I am now a part time administrator running a professional course and exams for the legal profession. I applied as it seems to involve just loads of project management (which research execs usually do loads of) though I didn't know much about it. It is worse paid than MR though.

I'd like to go back to working in MR but I agree that for an industry with so many females in it really deosn't make any concessions for part-time work etc. My old boss was great in that she wanted to keep me so allowed me to do 4 days a week but the truth is that when we had big jobs on I made up the lost Friday on Saturdays and didn't get paid for it.

I think there was a mnetter wo worked freelance as a quant market research person but I've forgotten who she was I'm sorry

Researchquery,

I know a number of people working in qual that work flexibly or part-time but none that job-share. However, the people I know are flexible and very committed to finding workable solutions as well as having a good relationship with their colleagues. If I'm commissioning work I want it done to a high standard by the agreed deadline but don't mind if someone doesn't work Fridays etc. as long as there is cover in place.

I would say many of those working flexibly are really experienced and have a lot to offer so we are really benefiting.

Must say they also seem to understand my needs as a part-timer so when I ask them to get me something by a certain time they do, rather than assuming I'm at my desk all day every day.