UK Research Firms Widen the Net

UK research employers are at last showing a little more flexibility in their attempts to find candidates for hard-to-fill positions, according to feedback from specialist recruiters, quoted in the forthcoming MRWho.

As ever, the hardest roles to fill are for mid-level researchers, in particular Senior Research Executives, but with Associate Directors also getting a lot of mentions. In terms of sector knowledge, pharmaceutical researchers are widely acknowledged to be in the shortest supply; and in terms of techniques, good qual researchers are (even) harder to find than good quant. Of late, there have also been shortages of professionals with particular technical skills like econometrics.

Business development skills have traditionally been lacking in the MR industry and with both supply and demand growing fairly fast there is still as big a gap as ever. Overall there is a slight reaction against the recent trend for business developers who have no involvement in running the surveys they sell, but some agencies are developing such roles further / taking them more seriously, introducing a sales OTE structure instead of using the same no-commission structure as for client service execs.

Trends in employer tactics to get and keep suitable research exec staff are encouraging: several recruiters report that the development and retention of staff is increasingly of concern to research providers, and that a wider range of skill sets is at last being considered instead of the old narrow focus on 'classically trained researchers'. The increased flexibility is matched, and perhaps caused by, by a greater impatience to find suitable candidates. Employers are no longer prepared to hold out 9 months for the perfect candidate to fill a role, whereas in the past they have done so – but the focus is more on finding 'talent' rather than necessarily the exact skills and experience.

In addition, recruiters report a new acceptance by agencies that they need to offer a variety of project work to retain good staff: and some are reorganising teams and accounts to avoid researchers getting stuck on long-running massive tracking studies, for example. Accompanying this is a general rise in recruitment of and attempts to retain graduates, with early promotion and rises for good candidates.

Although not isolated examples, these trends are not yet 'sweeping the industry' and we'll keep track of whether they develop or fizzle out, in future MRWho issues. The current article also talks in more detail about trends in business development, and about other sectors and techniques.

MRWho is a supplement to DRNO concentrating on 'People and Skills in MR' and sent on an occasional basis as a .pdf file. Subscription is free – to be added to the list please email your name, job title, company name and the email address to which you'd like it sent, to mrwho@mrweb.com. See www.mrweb.com/who for more details.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.