You're hiring market research professionals. How do you know you're getting the best?

Market research is a vital skill for any business that wants to understand its customers, competitors, and opportunities. But how do you hire the best market research professionals for your team? What skills, qualifications, and experience should you look for? And how do you assess their performance and potential? In this article, we'll share some tips and best practices for hiring market research professionals that can help you achieve your goals.

1 Define your needs

Before you start looking for candidates, you need to define your market research needs and objectives. What kind of research do you want to conduct? What are the questions you want to answer? What are the methods and tools you want to use? How do you plan to use the research results? These questions will help you determine the scope, budget, and timeline of your market research project, and the skills and experience you need from your market research professionals.

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2 Look for relevant skills

Market research professionals should possess a variety of skills that enable them to design, execute, analyze, and communicate research efficiently. Core skills include the ability to formulate clear research objectives and questions, collect and manage data from various sources, apply statistical methods to analyze data, present data in an engaging way, and communicate research findings and recommendations to different audiences. Depending on your needs, you may also look for industry knowledge, domain expertise, and technical proficiency in specific software or tools for market research.

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Ian Stewart

Helping organizations make strategic decisions through expert opinion research
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Referrals are worth their weight in gold. Researchers know that excellent work on a project begets more work, and these kinds of companies/researchers are easy to find if you do your homework and ask around about who is the best. Ask them to tell you about their experience, and you will quickly be able to find a small group of firms or researchers that you'll want to work with.

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3 Check for qualifications and experience

Skills are essential for market research professionals, but they aren't enough to guarantee the quality and reliability of their work. It's important to check their qualifications and experience, which can indicate their knowledge, credibility, and track record in market research. Education, certification, portfolio, and references are all important considerations. Education should include the level and type of education in market research or related fields such as marketing, business, statistics, psychology, or sociology. Certification can come from professional associations or organizations in market research such as the Insights Association, the Market Research Society, or the International Institute of Market Research and Analytics. A portfolio should include samples or examples of previous or current market research projects, reports, or presentations. Lastly, references should include feedback or testimonials from previous or current employers, clients, or colleagues.

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4 Conduct a thorough interview

The interview is a critical step in hiring market research professionals, as it allows you to assess their fit, personality, and potential for your team and project. You should discuss their motivation for wanting to work for you, as well as their expectations from the role and the project. Additionally, you should ask them to demonstrate their skills in market research by explaining their research design, data collection, data analysis, and data visualization processes. You should also ask them about their experience in market research, such as their most successful or challenging projects, industry knowledge or domain expertise. Lastly, assess their communication skills by having them present their research findings and recommendations and answer your questions clearly and confidently.

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5 Evaluate and compare candidates

After you have interviewed all the candidates, you need to evaluate and compare them based on the criteria you have established for your market research professionals. You can use a scoring system, a rating scale, or a checklist to rank the candidates according to their skills, qualifications, experience, and fit. You can also solicit feedback from other team members or stakeholders who participated in the interview process, or conduct a background check to verify the candidates' information. Once you have narrowed down your choices, you can make an offer to the best candidate, or conduct a second round of interviews if needed.

Hiring market research professionals is not an easy task, but it can be rewarding if you follow these tips and best practices. By defining your needs, looking for relevant skills, checking for qualifications and experience, conducting a thorough interview, and evaluating and comparing candidates, you can find the best market research professionals for your team and project.

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Severine Tarayre

Consumer Insights | Brand Strategy | Product Innovation | Ex-WPP (Ogilvy, Landor)
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To evaluate market research professionals skills, it can be helpful to give an assignment to do. It does not have to be very time-consuming, you can create case studies that do not require a long time to execute but can help you to understand how the candidate thinks, what questions the person asks, how they present their results, etc. It should be adapted to the level of seniority of your applicant. A few examples: - ask the candidate to build a few tables and charts from it + a few sentences about the results from an excel sheet with raw data - you give a fake RFP and ask the applicant to write a few bullet points about the research approach and questions they would ask the clients for clarification - write a questionnaire draft

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Woody Youngs

Senior Research Investigator
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Three thoughts: (1) If hiring an entry-level researcher, internships can be a great proving ground. (2) If hiring a more seasoned pro, you might consider trusted suppliers. In that case you know the person's COMPETENCIES, CHARACTER, and potential fit (CHEMISTRY) with your organization's culture. Those 3 things can be hard to assess in an interview with a stranger! That's not to say that people who do well as suppliers will make great corporate researchers - but you have the advantage of an established track record. (3) Seasoned pros come with their own benefits and baggage. While they may have specialized niche expertise (pos.) - they may also have other knowledge gaps to fill (neg.). In all cases, the 3 C's of hiring matter!

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You're hiring market research professionals. How do you know you're getting the best?

1

2

3

4

5

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1 Define your needs

2 Look for relevant skills

3 Check for qualifications and experience

4 Conduct a thorough interview

5 Evaluate and compare candidates

6 Here’s what else to consider

Market Research

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You're hiring market research professionals. How do you know you're getting the best?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Define your needs

2 Look for relevant skills

3 Check for qualifications and experience

4 Conduct a thorough interview

5 Evaluate and compare candidates

6 Here’s what else to consider

Market Research

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