MrWeb 21 YEARS: Communities - Chest, or Chance?

There are lots of options for those wishing to join this successful sector (see job listings in the publication) but how do you find the treasure and minimise the risk? Nick Thomas taps the experience of four of the sector's recruitment specialists to help you pick all the right cards and avoid the blues.


This article taps the recruitment expertise of Bonnie McAlpine of Hannelius Recruitment, Sinead Hasson of Hasson Associates, Andrew Goobey of Spalding Goobey, and Sarah Penny from Verve - but all conclusions, errors and poor jokes are my own - NT


So you want to work with insight communities? In general terms it's a sound decision, because the area is fairly fast-growing but also well-established - not a 'boom and bust' or over-hyped technology - and yet the skillset has much in common with traditional research. Future-proofed, as far as anything can be these days, but also rooted in something that's been proven useful and resilient over many decades, and unlikely to be 'replaced by a robot' any time soon. 'Human insight' is here to stay, and very hard to do - perhaps impossible - with a computer.

Move on from that general declaration of intent, however, and there are a number of questions to ask and decisions to make. Within the sector there are many different types of company:

• some are mostly or entirely technology specialists, helping clients set up their own digital communities but then leaving them mostly to their own devices (or seeking help from third parties) in order to make the most of them
• others offer research and analytics skills and consultancy, either to run communities for clients, to use them to tackle specific business needs and challenges, or at the very least to help ensure they get the most from them
• this latter group, which can use proprietary technology or bring in someone else's, can be further split between insight specialists, and those with a broader remit - for example FeverBee (see article in section 2 of this month's supplement).

Note that even among the insight specialists, the approach varies very widely. As you'll see from Sarah Penny's thoughts in the supplement, Verve employs many people from a traditional research background and promises deep thinking and analytical nous, as well as the ability to conduct agile and iterative projects taking advantage of all the speed and flexibility the latest tech can offer. Our other sponsors also boast great research pedigrees and their execs get fully involved with clients' business decisions front and back end of projects. But you'll find some companies out there which are much more focused on the speed and cost benefits, and not requiring hefty analysis from their research staff.

While the latter is absolutely fine with some clients, it may not be what you're looking for if you have a keen interest in long-term strategy and complex analytics. Researchers who have *only* worked on digital methodologies can be viewed as less rounded, as opposed to those converting a base of traditional skills into a career in 'digital'. The most important piece of advice I'd give, therefore, is *not* just to think of a company you're applying to as 'a communities specialist', but to 'probe fully' and find out as much as you can about the nature of the projects you'll be working on and the input you'll have, when you go for interview. That said, here are some general thoughts after talking to four recruiters with experience in the area.


The Skillset

As above, many of the skills involved in working with communities are the same as for traditional research - the ability to think about business issues and define them in terms of the information needed; the knack of framing questions clearly and so as to engage respondents; energy and discretion for dealing with individual respondents; skill in interpreting and weighing up evidence gathered, with business objectives and realities in mind. On the whole, however, there is more requirement for quick thinking, rapid changes of direction and organisation, than in traditional research - top end project management skills are useful even when the role is not pure project management (and there are some of the latter in the communities field as well).

Technical skills are not as important as you might think - familiarity and comfort with modern communications certainly helps, but is not the core of the role for most community researchers. Sinead Hasson comments: 'In our experience they're not overly techy, and most products and platforms will be supported by a tech team'.

Sound qualitative skills are very likely to be key. Some communities are set up to deliver quant-style numbers and findings, and in the US - the home of 'qual on a quant scale' - you may well be blurring the lines a bit: however one of the big advantages of communities over other digital methods such as social media analysis is the depth of insight they offer, and the chance to dig deeper into attitudes and behaviour. If you don't have qual skills or like qual, choose your communities role very carefully.

Client handling and communication skills are likely to be important. 'Some communities roles can resemble [traditional] continuous research projects', says Bonnie McAlpine, 'with a long-running client, and mostly incremental changes to questionnaires. This means it's more like an account manager role, with very regular client contact, and feedback dripping through rather than one big tranche of back-end analysis to get your teeth into'. She adds: 'Comparing to a tracker, both require the exec to stay smart, but the communities person will field more constant requests from the client, with changes made in real time and short projects sometimes added in'.


Specialist or Not?

One area on which all our recruiters are agreed is that you don't have to be a specialist or already have specific experience to break into the field. Almost all firms looking for someone to work on communities will at least consider people with no prior experience of them, and most will not see it as a particular disadvantage. Core research skills are much more important. 'Generally we find those with traditional research training can move fairly easily into online when they want' says Andrew Goobey. He adds: 'This is true for people at all levels - those at senior level are far from being set in their ways in this respect - they have generally surprised us with their willingness and ability to learn various digital skills'. 'From their side', says Sinead Hasson, 'companies are always happy to retrain, so it often comes down to how willing 'traditional' researchers are to let go of the older methods'.

So is communities experience 'part of the toolkit' for a well-rounded researcher? Yes says Hasson: 'We suggest that all researchers try to gain as much experience as possible across methods... however there are specialists, and you do need to be clear because if you spend 5 years moderating online communities it might be hard to make the transition back'. McAlpine agrees: 'In some cases the lack of back-end analysis can put researchers off. It can be harder to recruit for senior roles, although the scale of responsibilities, the other challenges and the big client names can all help to counter this'.

For junior researchers, McAlpine says the experience is good, although they need to ensure they are still getting a broad education. 'In communities roles, juniors can control projects from start to finish more. There are some good challenges at the design stage eg how to get people to use online diaries. But be careful in case it's a narrow niche, exciting but not that intricate. For example you'll often miss out on the 'big presentation', the trip to the client with eagerly-awaited findings - purely because you've been feeding back results to them throughout'.


The Job Market

'Finding junior level people for communities roles - up to 5 years, say, is relatively easy', says Hasson. 'Then it can get harder because some more senior candidates feel it won't give them the balance they're after'. None of our recruiters disagreed with either side of this.

For a good candidate, it's not hard to 'get into communities' says McAlpine. This should come as no surprise: MR in general is a candidates' market. Good people are *always* in short supply and always have been for the 21 years we've been watching. Even if you're looking to work in one of the big names, the fact the jobs are sought after is often balanced by the fact the companies are growing fast.

How attractive is it as an option? Well, given the provisos above - especially that of looking carefully at the individual company and the nature of the work you'll be doing - it ought to be firmly on the jobseeker's radar. For quallies, it may indeed promise something they've been seeking for a long time: 'We used to struggle with candidates who said they wanted to stay in qual but didn't want to do evening groups', says Andrew Goobey. 'We found nice ways to say "Good luck with that!" - but nowadays digital qual is an option for them so we can be more help'. This is certainly true in terms of *where* you spend your evenings, if not for how late you work - see Sarah Penny's comments.

That leads on to one thing we haven't mentioned - quality of life. Some of the fast-growing communities firms are truly progressive in their working practices and generally great fun to work for. In chapter 7 of the communities supplement you'll find both general descriptions of careers at the sponsor companies, and a listing of current vacancies at these and many other employers, taken from the 2,500 ads in MrWeb's index (www.mrweb.com/jobs ). Of course you will find the supplement's list goes out of date whereas the index won't, but we hope the ads here whet some appetites.


Nick Thomas


Recruiter contacts:
bonnie@hanneliusrecruitment.com
s.penny@addverve.com
sinead@hassonassociates.com
andrew@spalding-goobey.co.uk

View and download the full supplement here.

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

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