I know a managing director from this marketing research company, www.analyticpartners.com, and I know they are hiring mainly because my managing director contact told me how he is struggling to find quality candidates.
I asked him a few things about his biz, and here's what he told me:
I asked him why his company doesn't move the market research analyst jobs to India. He told me that he needs analysts to act as consultants and visit clients and give presentations. So, he says, it does not make sense to hire and trains guys in Bangalore when he needs people in touch with American culture and American media consumption habits to go to Cleveland to talk to clients and consult with them on their business.
I pressed further and argued that surely he has numbers crunching jobs that don't require client contact, and why didn't it make sense to move the "back office" jobs to India. He said that if it is a mindless job that just requires drones crunching numbers, they invest in automation... it is better to have computers doing the repetitive, mindless tasks rather than hiring 100 low-wage workers in a 3rd world country and putting up with the headaches of managing that operation.
I asked him about the talent coming from American colleges, and he said they have a hard time finding employees with the requisite skills in mathematics and statistics. He said that too many young people get liberal arts degrees like history, art, English literature, etc. He said that a psychology degree should, in theory, give people some remote foundation in doing statistical work, but that most psychology degree holders learn "pop psychology" and none of the hard science stuff like learning how to create statistically sound studies, or even understanding standard errors of the mean.
I asked him how this deep recession is affecting his business. He said that since his company analyzes consumer staples, that the recession had had minimal impact on their business. He said that when people stop eating, and stop washing their hair, he will have reason to be concerned. He said they have some automotive clients, and obviously, big-ticket items are moving much more slowly in the recession, but it has not impacted his business in that the car companies are still there, and they are still selling some cars, and they still have to figure out how to best take market share from their competitors.... his words were something like: "As long as you see car commercials on TV, then you know they have enough money to keep doing market research. When Chevy and Toyota stop advertising, then you know there is no budget for what we do."
So, marketing research analyst might be a recession resistant job, but you gotta study the hard stuff in college for it to be an option. A womens' studies degree or an art history degree isn't going to cut it.
