1. Job Specification
Research Assistant for the Finance and Business team at BDRC
Spring 2018

2. About BDRC
BDRC
London
BDRC China
Beijing
BDRC Australia
Sydney
BDRC Asia
Singapore
& Indonesia
BDRC Americas
Washington DC
Launched in London in 1991, BDRC Group has grown into a renowned international consumer insight consultancy, conducting research in over 60 countries and turning over more than £22,500,000 per annum.
The group’s businesses cover the full range of research services from data collection through to consultancy. BDRC, based in a prime Central London location, works across a range of vertical business sectors. Common to all are seven key challenges where our insight helps inform better decisions:
Markets
opportunities
& dynamics
Customers
experience
& loyalty
Brands
communication
& strategy
Products
development
& pricing
Channels
& innovation
Employees
engagement
& perceptions
Compliance
&
regulation
BDRC offers the full range of research agency services but also provides advice and guidance as to how to interpret, harness and act upon research data.
Two research divisions (Commercial and On-the-Move) contain teams of specialist professionals in Hotels & Hospitality, Culture, Leisure & Tourism, Transportation, Public Sector, Media, Financial Services and General B2B. Combining cross-sector expertise with market specialism allows us to provide an approach that is not only completely in tune with the specifics of a sector, but also benefits from the experience of experts from broader business contexts.

3. AN AWARD-WINNING GROUP OF BUSINESSES
About BDRC
BDRC is a great place to work…
Our Mission: Deliver clear insights for our clients to make better strategic decisions.
Our Vision: Be a leading international research consultancy group
LOCATION
AN AWARD-WINNING GROUP OF BUSINESSES
Euston (18 min walk)
King’s Cross -St Pancras (20 min walk)
Oxford Circus (18)
Covent Garden (8)
Charing Cross (16)
Waterloo (22)
Farringdon (15)
BDRC delivers excellence in the research sector. We are recognised for our research quality, innovation and expertise. This is shown in a number of awards and finalist positions from the Market Research Society among others.
We are here!
ACCREDITATIONS

4. About BDRC You can get involved in lots of activities…
CHARITABLE GIVING
SOCIAL
Staff across the agency are enthusiastic fundraisers. In the past year we have baked cakes, adorned Christmas jumpers and had a book fair in the name of good causes. This year we have given to:
Poppy Appeal
St. Mungo’s Broadway
Coram (our official charity partner)
The way we work together as a team is of the utmost importance to us. For that reason, our staff social committee has a generous budget to spend each year on activities and outings, as well as our annual Christmas Party and Summer Day Out.
Activities are decided by the social committee, and have included in recent years:
Winter Wonderland
Bowling
T20 Cricket
Cookery Experience Day
Rope walking at the O2
BDRC Group staff raising money for Coram on Christmas Jumper Day
Pub quizzes
Science Museum Lates
Rebel Bingo
5-a-side Football
School Sports Day

5. A week in the life of a Junior Researcher at BDRC
Martin Chan, Research Executive (February 2015)
What’s it like to be a junior researcher in market research (MR)? Is it all about using Excel spreadsheets and crunching data all day? For me at least, this isn’t true – my work as a Research Executive at BDRC Continental is both a mentally challenging and creative role that lets me learn about a diverse range of research techniques and exercise my artistic competence in designing client reports and infographics.
Here, I share with you a snapshot of my weekly work as an RE within the Finance and Business team, which I hope provides some insight into the life inside our agency.
Monday and Tuesday
I begin the first day of the week with a fresh cup of coffee at our Holborn office, sit down with a notebook, and start by planning my work for this week. This is a particularly busy week, as I’ll be working on three main projects: Mortgage Achilles, Twystery® and a ZMET project (I’ll explain).
In brief, Mortgage Achilles is an annual ‘quant’ study carried out with 2,600 key audiences in the mortgage market, and my part is to present the raw final data in a meaningful and visually appealing way on a report. Don’t be mistaken, this isn’t just about making things look fancy; this allows vast arrays of numbers to be communicated in such a way so that readers can easily and clearly see what the data means for them.
What I also enjoy about report design and production is that I’m free to be both analytical and creative. In the process, I even get to experiment with tools such as word cloud generators and GIMP. Clearly, MR is not mere number-crunching!
Reports for large studies such as Mortgage Achilles normally take at least a week to complete, but since we’ve made an early start, my work here is done until we agree on the dates for presenting the study to clients who purchased our study.
Wednesday and Thursday
9:40 AM - had a quick briefing from Tim (one of our Directors on the Media team) on our new research product, Twystery®. In essence, Twystery® is about applying the mystery shopping concept on Twitter and hence measures how well businesses/brands are responding to customer tweets. Since Twystery’s a new product, Tim has asked me to help develop a coding methodology for evaluating the tweet responses. While this task and the actual coding of the tweets means two full days of hard work, being able to help bring about a new social media MR product is, rest assured, a highly stimulating and rewarding experience – totally worth the effort!
Friday
TGIF! 10:30 every fortnight on a Friday is usually when we have our ‘resource meetings’, where our team’s middle managers and junior researchers sit together and catch up on our respective schedules. This meeting ensures that nobody is doing too much (or too little) work, and that work is efficiently distributed for all our on-going projects.
For the rest of today, I will be working on a ZMET project – a study using a deep-dive qualitative technique developed at Harvard Business School. This technique helps identify and understand subconscious needs and decision-making, which drive 95% of human behaviour. My responsibility is to analyse the messages our respondents are conveying in these ZMET depth interviews, and identify what they’re saying vis-à-vis our clients’ business objectives - a challenging yet interesting task.
At 16:00 we have “Bitesize” - this is a casual session that runs on the first Friday of every month, where we all come together to share interesting MR insights and ideas, e.g. from projects, attending conferences or Market Research Society (MRS) training sessions. At Bitesize, there’s always a sufficient supply of wine, beer and snacks to keep us refreshed – not bad for a Friday!
After a stimulating exchange with colleagues about the challenges to be aware of when moving telephone tracking studies online, my fascinating week of work ends here. Time to head off for the weekend!

6. About the role Group CEO: Dr Crispian Tarrant
We seek a Research Assistant to join our Finance and Business team.
The Finance and Business team run and deliver projects for a wide variety of clients, many of which are financial service institutions. Our work is a blend of quantitative and qualitative research, long standing ‘tracking’ jobs and shorter ad-hoc projects.
As a research assistant, duties will often be focused on:
Questionnaire or discussion guide design/updates
Quality checking data on tables
Creating and quality checking PowerPoint reports for delivery
Organising and producing other deliverables for clients
Involvement in data collection/fieldwork e.g. telephone interviews, focus groups etc.
Depending upon the individual’s interests, there may be opportunities to be involved in client-facing presentations.
This is a full-time role of 35 hours per week. Office hours are 09:30 – 17:30 (Monday to Friday) including up to one hour for lunch.
Group CEO: Dr Crispian Tarrant
Commercial Division Managing Director: Ian Stevens
Financial and Business
Media
On the Move Division Managing Director: Matthew Costin
Travel, Tourism & Leisure
Hotels, Meetings & Hospitality
Public Sector
Transport

7. About you WHAT WE REQUIRE SALARY AND BENEFITS
We are looking for a fast learner with a keen interest in quantitative and qualitative research and/or work surrounding finance and business. The ideal candidate will be able to communicate and work well within a team and individually, learn fast from other team members and through training sessions, and be enthusiastic about working on a range of projects. Minimum average C at 'A' level (or equivalent) and must be fluent in spoken and written English. You must be an undergraduate on a sandwich course at a university allowing you a 12 month industrial placement. By the end of your placement you will have gained valuable work experience in a thriving, fast growing company in Central London that creates a pathway for a successful career.
Aside from a competitive salary, staff may benefit from:
Workplace contributory pension scheme (company contributes 1% of salary)
Discounted gym membership
Interest-free travel loan
Cycle to work scheme
26 days annual leave plus public holidays
BDRC offers all employees access to extensive, specialist research training through its in-house training programme, which covers core research and analysis skills at introductory, intermediate and advanced levels. Presentation training also feature regularly in the programme, and there is the opportunity to request training in other areas of research-related interest.

8. To apply
Please send your Curriculum Vitae along with a short covering letter, explaining why you’d like to work for BDRC and what you can bring to the team, to…
Bethan Cooke
Associate Director
+44 (0)