Leading the way in expert recruitment

Even 20 years ago, the terms big data and data sci­ence weren’t used. The insight indus­try con­sist­ed of mar­ket researchers and sta­tis­ti­cians, who sup­plied data to peo­ple with the time and skills to process them.

Fast for­ward to 2019: time is scarce and req­ui­site skills have diver­si­fied so much that com­pa­nies now need answers, sto­ries and rec­om­men­da­tions to make sense of the data del­uge they’re sub­ject­ed to.

“The data used to be small so insight could report every­thing that is inter­est­ing. Now data is big and we need to curate it down to a man­age­able size,” says Eliz­a­beth Nor­man, quot­ing her indus­try peer Ray Poyn­ter, fol­low­ing a recent dis­cus­sion.

Ms Nor­man, via her insight indus­try recruit­ment spe­cial­ist com­pa­ny Eliz­a­beth Nor­man Inter­na­tion­al (ENI), recent­ly eval­u­at­ed the par­a­digm shift that has occurred in this realm over the past 30 years. The sec­tor is now not only data cen­tric, but also more inter­na­tion­al than ever before, she empha­sis­es.

I can’t imag­ine an indus­try that could change more than this one has

“We recent­ly tracked down 46 tra­di­tion­al researchers that we’d placed in UK roles back in 2003,” she says. “Of those 46, 12 are now work­ing as insight spe­cial­ists out­side the UK and ten are in pure data sci­ence and ana­lyt­ics roles.

“The job titles they now have, which include social media strate­gist, head of cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, user researcher and mar­ket­ing effec­tive­ness man­ag­er, shows the shift towards a much greater range of tech­niques and skills as the indus­try grows and diver­si­fies.

“The career oppor­tu­ni­ties this growth has giv­en them is also clear; five of them are man­ag­ing direc­tors, anoth­er five are glob­al heads of insight for large, blue-chip organ­i­sa­tions.

“Just from our own stats and the achieve­ments of the peo­ple we placed 16 years ago, you can see how much the indus­try has evolved.”

ENI is wide­ly recog­nised as the lead­ing spe­cial­ist in glob­al insight recruit­ment, match­ing com­pa­nies and can­di­dates to help nego­ti­ate such a fast-mov­ing domain.

“I can’t imag­ine an indus­try that could change more than this one has,” Ms Nor­man con­tin­ues. “It’s not just an indus­try evo­lu­tion; it’s cre­at­ed a huge rise and diver­si­fi­ca­tion in career oppor­tu­ni­ties.

“Once there was just tra­di­tion­al qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive research, with a bit of data added on. Now the range of tech­niques com­pa­nies use include arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), advanced ana­lyt­ics, mobile data, pas­sive data, ethnog­ra­phy, video, social media ana­lyt­ics, bio­met­ric response, gam­i­fi­ca­tion, neu­ro­science and behav­iour­al eco­nom­ics.

“In terms of job roles, this equates to need­ing spe­cial­ists in areas that include data sci­ence, semi­otics, psy­chol­o­gy, video, graph­ic design, sales, AI, mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence, com­put­er pro­gram­ming, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and, for sto­ry-telling, even writ­ing and jour­nal­ism.”

For ENI as a com­pa­ny, the diver­si­fi­ca­tion of data appli­ca­tion and usage has been a chal­lenge. Data has no juris­dic­tion and as a con­se­quence, ENI has worked with almost every sec­tor of prof­it and even non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tions, find­ing insight pro­fes­sion­als to lever­age vast swathes of data.

“All the com­pa­nies we work with have mass­es of data com­ing in and need to make sense of it,” says Ms Nor­man. “They all need peo­ple to help them with it and that’s why our range of clients is so wide.

“ENI has been oper­a­tional for 30 years, but the diver­si­ty of skills com­pa­nies need and the resul­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties that have opened up for poten­tial can­di­dates, means we’ve had to mas­sive­ly widen our scope and under­stand­ing. It’s not just a search for the best researchers and sta­tis­ti­cians any­more.”

Ms Nor­man is huge­ly proud of ENI’s abil­i­ty to keep ahead of this curve, but even more so of the indus­try itself and the indi­vid­u­als the com­pa­ny has placed in insight roles over the years.

She con­cludes: “Of the 46 peo­ple we tracked down from 2003, three of them are actu­al­ly still with the same organ­i­sa­tions we placed them with ini­tial­ly and one has even risen from a junior role to now be head of intel­li­gence and data ana­lyt­ics at Microsoft.

“I love to see that ongo­ing, long involve­ment with the indus­try to see how they, we and the indus­try has man­aged to keep ahead of the biggest par­a­digm shift it’s ever faced.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it elizabethnorman.com