I knew my dad’s job wasn’t particularly easy, but after shadowing him for only half a day, I realized how that was the
understatement of the century. Extreme patience, ridiculous people skills, and the ability to work under incredible pressure and unfathomable deadlines are not listed under the requirements to be a market researcher; but, they’re important skills one must possess if he/she desires to join this field.
My dad is the vice president of market research at GMR, and he deals with some of the most stressful circumstances a working man would have to deal with. In one of the conference calls made during my visit, one of my dad’s clients wanted a focus group and its results to be completed in one day. This involves finding and renting out a location; locating a group of the exact individuals the client is looking to target; writing a survey for these people to take that’s been approved by the client; having the focus group take the survey; gathering the results and turning them into useful statistics for the company; and, finally, presenting the findings to the client. This entire process takes at least a few days to complete, and that’s only if everyone on my dad’s team is operating at full capacity. During another conference call that occurred that day, a client had my dad “hold on” for ten or fifteen minutes a few times for some odd reason. Apparently, she had to take care of several things that should have been done prior to the call, but she had my dad and his team stand by anyway. Although this situation was incredibly frustrating, my father had to be patient in order to keep the client.
My dad also had to deal with several of his team members coming into his office and telling him that they couldn’t complete one task or another, leaving my dad to pick up the slack (as if managing a group of employees and interns isn’t difficult enough). Not only did the idea of more work stress him out, but the incessant interruptions certainly didn’t help either. The bulk of his job consists of turning ridiculous amounts of data into simple statistics for the client to reference. It’s difficult for him to get this all taken care of, though, when people are frequently interrupting his train of thought.
Even though my dad’s job can be difficult and demanding at times, he still enjoys what he does. Shadowing him for just half a day stressed me out — so I have no idea how my father does it every day — but it made me appreciate what he does a whole lot more.