Senior Research Consultant - Maternity Cover

1. INTRODUCTION

At NextGen, we're building the future of information services: transforming our portfolio of B2B publishing brands into a modern, global information business.

Our business serves professionals across the financial and professional services sector, covering markets such as banking, legal, and insurance. We are a highly diversified business with services that support clients' market intelligence, business development, and workflow solutions. We have over 600 colleagues located in three main hubs, and customers in over 150 countries.

Our business is transforming as we seek to retain the relevance our brands have within the markets they serve, while also taking advantage of our scale to deliver better results for our customers and shareholders.  This means laser focus on responding to our client's needs for specialism, while also building common tools and functions that allow us to meet customer's needs better.
 
We pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial culture – enabling creative, action-oriented, and knowledgeable professionals to do their best work. We also believe in autonomy, accountability, passion, and a sense of humor.

2. JOB PURPOSE

The Senior Research Consultant will be responsible to Stakeholders and clients in the delivery of ad hoc and tracker research programs. This includes, but is not limited to, scoping, questionnaire development, programming, monitoring internal and outsourced fieldwork, validating findings, and reporting conducted by the Survey & Insights team.  You will work closely with the Research Manager, but you will be encouraged to take ownership of smaller quantitative studies and support the Research Manager on larger quantitative programmes.

(S)he will support the Research Manager in preparing our response to Thought Leadership opportunities and other RFPs ensuring that any proposals are fit for purpose and feasible to deliver within understood constraints. The Senior Research Consultant will be guided by the Research Manager and will seek sign off on any proposal from the Head of Primary Research prior to informing to the client.

All Research programs shall be conducted in line with GDPR and other privacy regulations. The Senior Research Consultant will support the Research Manager in delivering both ad hoc research programs and tracker programs to agreed time, budget and client expectations. (S)he will seek efficiencies in our processes ensuring we are cost-effective with regard to third party costs.

To achieve all this, (s)he will help to manage a detailed schedule for all survey projects and liaise with our internal and external teams to deliver projects to agreed time, budget and expectations. The role may include line management on a project-by-project basis, but line management will not be a key element of the role.

3. KEY OBJECTIVES

• Supporting the Research Manager in developing a best-in-class survey operation within the Survey & Insights Research team
• Engaging with outside vendors and overseeing projects
• Meeting with customers, alongside sales and editorial, to build bespoke research projects
• Reviewing all survey templates and signing off new releases throughout the year
• Participating in training to better deliver surveys managed by the Survey & Insights team

• Analysing survey submissions and market feedback 
• Designing multi-use surveys, considering all potential uses across NextGen business units (Market Intelligence, AMS) and products

4. KEY INTERFACES

• Research Manager

• Head of Primary Research 

5. SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE (essential)
 

• You will be expected to work both independently and as part of a committed research and strategy team
• 3-4 years of experience in a B2B environment (particularly in financial or legal sectors)
• Knowledge of quantitative methodologies
• Ability to design and project manage quantitative studies from start to finish including:
• Drafting proposal, questionnaires, reports
• Designing quotas
• Monitoring fieldwork (internal and outsourced) and intervening to maintain deadlines, when necessary
• Specifying tables and data outputs
• Visualising data
• Delivering presentations to internal and external clients

• Contributing to proposals and pitches for new business, ensuring the right quantitative methodologies are selected to deliver against client objectives
• Attend client briefing sessions with the know-how to identify and extract relevant information to enable effective project design 
• Day-to-day project management with the skills to communicate clearly and confidently with suppliers, clients, and internal teams including:
• Testing online surveys
• Monitoring fieldwork
• Alerting internal and external clients to fieldwork issues/challenges early
• Advising internal and external clients on ways to mitigate fieldwork issues/challenges
• Writing DP specs
• Stress-testing data tables
• Strong analytical and critical thinking skills with the ability to turn complex data sets into compelling stories that our clients can easily action 
• Have excellent verbal and written communication skills – preparing deliverables that are engaging, authoritative, and insightful 
• Skills and experience in presenting and clearly communicating research findings to clients and stakeholders - including senior exec level clients
• Proficient in using a range of software, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint
• Highly organised and cool under pressure
• Ability to keep to deadlines, pick things up quickly and multi-task
• A great listener and willing learner
• Ability to successfully collaborate within a global, multidisciplinary internal team
• Outstanding communication and interpersonal abilities with strong influencing skills

SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE (desirable)

• Experience of research in financial or legal markets (desirable)
• Accredited by Market Research Society (desirable)
• Survey design and statistical software knowledge such as SPSS, Stata or R (desirable)