Research Manager

KEY INFORMATION
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Position:  Research Manager

Reporting into: Senior Research Director

Duration: 12 months fixed term contract

Based: Hatton Garden, London.

Who we are: Pulsar is an audience intelligence company that helps you find the story in the data. Combining conversational and behavioural data from the web with proprietary AI and the smartest minds, Pulsar helps public and private organisations understand audiences and stay relevant. Learn more about us at: www.pulsarplatform.com.

Our group: Pulsar is part of the Access Intelligence group, consisting of c200 staff across the UK, Australia and the USA. As a group, we are tech innovators, delivering high quality SaaS products that address the fundamental marketing needs of almost 4,000 global brands across numerous industries from Media, FMCG, Tech, Healthcare to PR. Learn more about our group at: www.accessintelligence.com.

What’s the future of customisable beauty?

Who are software developers, and what do they want?

How can universities handle the social media reactions to controversial speakers on campus?

Can we build a brand equity model so good, it replaces a tracker survey?

These are the types of questions we answer in Pulsar’s Consultancy team.

In the last eight years, we’ve been the firm defining what social media research is and what it can deliver within insight, marketing and beyond. Our Product team are continually developing Pulsar to give us the smartest technology in the industry – such as audience analytics and algorithmic image recognition. Then we in the Consultancy team use these tools to gain powerful insights and solve our clients’ business problems – in brand, communications, innovation & strategy.

We think this is the future of research. And we’re looking for people who want to build it with us.

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR
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We’re looking for a Research Manager to join our team. This role is being offered on a 12-month Fixed Term Contract. There may be scope for this to be renewed or even made permanent after this time, though this is not guaranteed.

You may come from all sorts of places – the market research industry. Another digital analytics consultancy. A digital strategist at an advertising agency. A media planner. Insight or data teams at a design research firm or innovation agency. Client side. Or somewhere else. That diversity of experience is something we value, because we look for every team member at Pulsar to bring something uniquely ‘them’ into the business – and to grow & develop our consultancy as a result.

Yes, we’re a social media research platform, and so probably 75% of your projects will use social media methods. You’ll need to have had some experience of working with social media analytics platforms (e.g. Pulsar, Brandwatch, Crimson Hexagon), but also other digital tools such as Facebook Audience Insights, Google search data, or Google Analytics.

But the right person for the role isn’t necessarily a social media zealot. Instead, we’d really like it if you’ve worked with other insight and analytics methods, too. For this role, experience in quantitative insight methods is key: you may be working on projects taking a social dataset, some Google Trends data, your client’s segmentation survey and some TGI stats, and turning these into an integrated story.  You don’t need to have a hardcore statistics or econometrics background (though having done some numerate subjects post-GCSE may help) – what’s important here is basically just liking quantitative data and being able to interpret numbers to say what they mean.

The most important quality we’re looking for, though, is spark and curiosity. The ability to recognize that something looks interesting, and to dig deeper until you get to a nugget of pure insight. Understanding that data isn’t a matter of bar charts and line graphs, but something you can use to tell a story, to surprise and inspire people (to make brands and agencies change the way they do things).

The other part of the Research Manager role is of course “managing” – and at Pulsar, that’s mostly project management at this level: coordinating support, keeping the client informed, managing freelancers and synthesizing everyone’s thinking so that the insight is top notch. You’ll be managing smaller projects and accounts fairly autonomously, and working as a key part of the delivery team on larger six-figure accounts. So we’re looking for someone who’s started to gain experience managing insight projects, and who can be that organized, strategic planner and communicator that makes everything function like clockwork.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
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Alongside an Account Manager, Associate Research Directors and Research Directors heading up Research accounts, you’ll be the day-to-day research contact for continuous and ad hoc research accounts:

• Managing and crafting monthly and ad-hoc report delivery, planning methodology, approach and timelines, and ensuring that every report meets a consistently high standard upon client briefs.
• Using your commercial and strategic insights to build clear, valuable conclusions and recommendations for what your clients should do next on their brief questions.
• Co-ordinating research executives and freelancers in your project teams and contributing to their training and development as researchers.
• Keeping a keen eye on the competitor landscape and industry trends to keep abreast with the cutting edge technology in research and insights deliverables.
• Contribute to a verticalized trends and case study library with the rest of the research team to share knowledge and tactics.
• Be already knowledgable in social listening and social trends tools to analyse conversations, topics and trends alongside influencers
• Contribute to report approach development with Research Leads
• Become proficient in Pulsar TRAC, CORE and TRENDS suites on the platform (if not familiar already) within maximum 2 weeks

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES
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• Collaborative: it’s not about “your project” or “my project” but supporting colleagues across the team so that all our projects are great.
• Good team communication: You keep everyone in the loop about what you’re doing, how long it’s taking & if it’s staying on schedule – and you ask for help & support whenever you need it
• Great client communication skills, too: You’re are happy handling everything from a quick email or phone call, to delivering a full debrief presentation.
• Motivated by a high-paced, start-up environment
• Track record and experience in multivertical client social listening project deliveries, agency experience is a plus
• Fundamentally passionate about the medium you work in: digital and social media. Beyond work projects, you are thinking & reading about how media – and culture – is changing and evolving. And you can bring this knowledge & understanding into your client work.  
• Exceptional organizational skills and keen eye for detail for the delivery of best quality of work across the team
   

WHAT TO EXPECT
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Work on amazing clients and brands – we do social media research for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram themselves, as well as clients in beauty (Coty, Unilever), Tech (Spotify, Sonos, here), Media and Entertainment (Discovery, 20th Century Fox), Automotive (Mazda, GM), and Education (UCL, KCL)

An exciting start-up culture, with state of the art new offices in Hatton Garden with a Gym and Wellness manager included, and a growing office in Los Angeles.

An open, collaborative team atmosphere; we’re friendly, approachable, and help each other every day – whether that’s crafting a tricky search strategy, finessing an insight, or coaching and sharing expertise in new research techniques.

“It’s exciting to be in a rapidly growing industry and you feel like you could be making a contribution to something big.” – Anna Rudkevych, Senior Research Manager

“I work with the most motivated, passionate people I’ve ever met.” – Nisa Bayindir, EVP Behavioural Science.