Qualitative Researcher: Moving from temp to perm

Someone who had been a freelancer in the marketing industry got in touch as based on experience she wanted to see if we could help her secure a permanent position within the insight industry.

She had identified that Research/Insight was where her interest lay and she had some experience from several years’ freelancing. The issue was that her market research skills were very limited and therefore was not an obvious fit for the roles she was applying for in agencies.

Following our initial meeting I was able to establish that whilst her experience was in creative and marketing strategy; she had many transferable skills in branding, communications and innovation and she was clearly someone with a commercial head on her shoulders.

She immediately struck me as someone who had given a lot of thought to why she wanted to take the market research route, and she showed the determination to keep trying and learning as she went. Importantly this candidate was very realistic and happy to take our advice in terms of taking a step down in responsibility to get a foot in the door.

After a conversation with the whole team, we were able to identify potential companies who would be interested in this skill set.  We identified a client who valued her creative background and appreciated the benefits of her client-facing experience gained from previous roles. We knew that this company was strong on training and development and had previously hired candidates on their potential and attitude rather than purely on their hard skills.

We could see that this could be the perfect match; although the role offered was relatively junior, the candidate knew this was the right step for her and is excited about where her new career will take her.