A Couple Unexpected Perks to Working in Market Research
I noticed something the other morning while I was working on a research presentation for one of our clients, and it made me chuckle a bit.
While I was alphabetizing various names of competitors, I realized that I was able to put them in order without having to sing the A-B-C’s song in my head, because it just came naturally after having gone through the exercise thousands of times!
It made me think about the fact that there are quite a few other small skills that have been refined while working at Ideba, that I never really thought about:
- Typing thousands of interview transcripts has boosted my typing speed from 40 words per minute (WPM) to 75 WPM, putting me squarely in the “fast” category, and about 10 WPM slower than “pro”. Try your hand at www.typingtest.com for a free test.
- Geography skills were never my strong suit in school, but after marking up demographics slides for our international clients, I am now confident pointing out all European countries, most Asian/S. American countries, and a few African countries on a map. Of course, I deserve no bragging rights for this one… but yes… can also identify 50 US states.
- Mental arithmetic skills have also been boosted from all the quantitative metrics and statistics created for clients. Being able to look at a set of numbers and ensure sums, differences, averages, and percentages are all in accordance with each other is essential to avoid criticism and inaccuracies.
I can imagine all professional careers result in similar or same seemingly minute skillsets; so, I am curious to hear from readers what skills they have sharpened – perhaps unknowingly – while working a day-job. Leave a comment on LinkedIn to let me know.
-Lee Sumner, Research Director
