Crossroads in my career

[jaylea]

I haven’t been around on GBCN much for the last several years but I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out what to do with my life and thought this may be a good place to get ideas.

I’m a Research Director for a market research consulting firm. I’ve been in this role about a year. Prior to this I was a director of research at a fortune 250 company for 6 years. It developed a toxic culture and I got out (75% of my dept has left in the year since I left).

I am not cut out for consulting. I just have no work life balance and it is an immense amount of stress. It’s a fairly small firm, I’m the only remote worker and I feel like I am penalized for it. Just not a great fit.

I’ve loved research for most of my career but am starting to feel burnt out. It may be because the work environments have been so bad, not sure.

The challenge is that there are only like 3 companies in my area who have in-house research teams, and they aren’t hiring. So my options are either working remotely (not a fan, I find it very isolating) or change my career.

My main skills are project directing/managing, client/customer management, analysis, writing and presenting, transforming data into actionable insights, and of course survey/focus groups/etc work.

I am not a hardcore data scientist/programmer. I could be, but I don’t enjoy that so I’m not looking for heavy analytics roles.

I need more balance in my life. But I’m also very well paid and can’t walk away from a high salary (was well paid in house too, not just consulting so in house would work again)... any ideas on what types of roles may be good?

I’ve been looking at PM jobs but haven’t gotten a lot of traction there so far.

[waverly]

I have a friend that does something similar, and she owns her own business/ firm. I imagine that would be a big paycut until it is off the ground, but just throwing out the idea.

Are you interested in marketing at all, or just the research aspect? For Project Management they might be looking for a more specific type of experience. Keep applying to things that sound interesting.

[supertrooper1]

Have you looked into technical writer jobs?

What about working for the government? www.usajobs.gov/

[jaylea]

Nov 19, 2019 12:23:27 GMT -5 waverly said:

I have a friend that does something similar, and she owns her own business/ firm. I imagine that would be a big paycut until it is off the ground, but just throwing out the idea.

Are you interested in marketing at all, or just the research aspect? For Project Management they might be looking for a more specific type of experience. Keep applying to things that sound interesting.

I don’t think I have the experience to really be able to move into marketing at the level I would need to. while I’ve worked within marketing departments, I was not doing marketing work.

I have a couple of friends who own their own consultancies here too. It’s a small market, I’m not sure I would be able to get what I would need for projects for a long while.

[jaylea]

Nov 19, 2019 12:32:07 GMT -5 supertrooper1 said:

Have you looked into technical writer jobs?

What about working for the government? www.usajobs.gov/

I will look at both of these options. Thanks!

[acr]

I'm a project/program manager for a Data organization within a tech company, which seems like that could align to your experience & interests. I help data science, business intelligence, and related teams to deliver work that aligns to their strategic objectives, so an understanding of their work is helpful.

Other roles I've seen that could be related are in UX Research (https://www.indeed.jobs/career/JobDetail/Director-of-UX-Research/18234 as a senior level role for example)