The Role / Position Overview

The Audience Feedback Research Team (AFT) are looking for a talented, friendly and enthusiastic Senior Research Executive to join their team in our London office. You will be joining a small but highly impactful team responsible for designing and implementing our Audience Feedback Research Programme. The team sits within the wider Analytics department and we will provide you with plenty of opportunities to develop your analytical skills, and build compelling stories using multiple data sources. 

Our team conducts research across the FT, and you will gain experience conducting research for Editorial, our Product team, Marketing and B2B departments amongst others. You will also play a key role in helping establish the Audience Feedback Programme at the heart of everything the FT does. 

The primary objective of your research will be to help provide an ‘audience perspective’ to support and guide the FT in maintaining it’s reputation as a premium audience-centric news media brand. You will have the opportunity to present your research to senior stakeholders across the FT with regular guidance and support from your team, line manager and wider Analytics department. You’ll be joining a friendly team where you’ll be encouraged to develop as a researcher and be given freedom and autonomy to take ownership of your own research projects (with support when you need it). 

Key Responsibilities

• Helping to administer the Audience Feedback Research Programme. This will include quality checking and sending surveys, managing fieldwork requests and governance of our survey software (Qualtrics) database. 

• Evaluating research briefs, and choosing the most appropriate methodology to answer the question. 

• Designing research projects that will provide actionable insights for stakeholders across the FT

• Collaboration with stakeholders across the business and guiding them to identify where research can help support their business objectives.

• Acting as a point of contact for stakeholders across the business and pointing them to existing research / data, answering questions about the research process and using the survey platform. 

• Conducting analysis of the AFT team’s data and preparing visually compelling presentations to share across the wider business. 

• Data management -  Preparing feedback data for analysis, requesting relevant data for research projects, managing erasure and opt-out requests from research projects

• Contributing new ideas for research projects designed to help decision-makers at the FT act with confidence

• To support the development of research programmes for new workstreams, with a view to taking ownership of it’s administration and impact

Required Skills / Experience 

Essential:

• 2+ years experience as a professional researcher - either working within an agency or in-house (private, public or third sector) 

• Proven research skills, experience of using a range of methods and techniques to deliver actionable insights to answer a range of questions

• Excellent quantitative skills - You will be very comfortable with large datasets, demonstrating a good working knowledge of data collection, cleansing, and statistical analysis methods 

• Clear communication and presentation skills, able to tell a compelling narrative using both quantitative and qualitative data. Experience of presenting to senior stakeholders. 

• Good initiative, to solve problems, manage workload and set expectations

• Strong collaboration skills, knowing how to contribute and influence through finding common ground and building rapport with team members

• Natural curiosity, a desire to understand the digital news media industry and the challenges and opportunities facing the FT

• Self-starter, the ability to identify opportunities / pain points and putting in place a plan of action to see them through to a successful resolution

• Experience using survey software (e.g. Qualtrics, Survey Monkey) etc. to deliver high quality surveys

Desirable: 

• Knowledge / Experience of data platforms such as R, SPSS, SQL etc. would be extremely beneficial 

• Data Visualisation - the ability to present data in a compelling way

• A masters degree with a substantial research methods component

Growth and development

We have a transparent, measureable progression framework, which will outline all of the skills FT researchers need, and detail on how to progress in each skill category. We will use this as a basis for your biannual reviews, where you’ll self assess against the progression framework, track progression, and agree areas of focus with your line manager. 

We invest in our people to allow them to grow both personally and professionally whilst working at The FT. We offer a variety of ways in which you can progress your career with us, some of which are highlighted below: 

• Career coaching - Career coaching is time spent focused on you and how you can achieve your career aspirations. 

• Mentoring programme - The mentoring programme aims to connect people across the business to support professional and personal growth through knowledge sharing and guidance.

• Learning and development - The FT offers a host of learning and development opportunities that will not only help you build the skills you need to grow in your profession or field, but will also help you improve your own personal development, with courses such as self-coaching, productivity, presentation confidence, research techniques and much more.

What’s in it for you? Our Benefits

Our benefits vary depending on location, but we are committed to providing best in class perks across all our offices as well as an inclusive environment to develop your career. Examples of our benefits include; generous annual leave allowances, flexible working (including working from home), medical cover, enhanced maternity & paternity packages, subsidised gym memberships and Giving Back opportunities. Full details of our benefits can be found here.

Further Information

The FT are committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer who seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We also promote flexible working and will consider specific requests around flexibility for all roles where it can be accommodated. Please let us know if you require any adjustments as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements, or have any questions, please contact a member of our HR team who will be happy to help.