A Market Research Perspective on the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report

The most recent World Economic Forum (WEF) Future of Jobs report shed some light on the jobs, skills, and business priorities that we can expect in the coming months and years. Things are changing rapidly due to a number of factors, with technology playing a leading role in both job growth and decline. The good news? Data professionals (including market researchers) can, for the most part, look to land on the good side of this equation.

According to the report, business intelligence analysts, data analysts and scientists and big data specialists can expect job growth. This is in stark contrast to declining jobs such as many administrative and service functions, like cashiers, post office clerks and door-to-door sales.

As for top skills that are needed in the marketplace, analytical thinking and creative thinking topped the list - two decidedly “human” things that insights professionals engage in on a daily basis. Also in the top 10? Empathy, curiosity, and active listening - also firmly in our wheelhouse.

It’s clear from this ranking that the value of knowledge workers, or those who handle and use information to solve complex problems, remains strong. However, a study by Switzerland’s International Labour Office found that these individuals would be greatly impacted by the rise of generative AI.

Large language models have the potential to automate much of the knowledge worker’s job functions, and are likely to be adopted at scale by this population. “While some jobs will likely be lost in the process, the more likely scenario is for occupations to be transformed as tasks evolve.”

This is especially true in the market research space, as technology continues to automate many of our traditionally mundane tasks. Even if you have creativity, curiosity, and empathy in spades, you must also be able to utilize new tools and technologies in order to offer value over and above the status quo. The WEF report indicates that currently 34% of tasks in the workforce are completed by machines. By 2027, this number is expected to rise to 43%. It’s something we can’t ignore.

Tchicaya Brooks, PhD joined our podcast recently to talk about the future of work. She maintains that traditional management, organizational, and systems theories are outdated in today's workplace, and there is a clear need for new theories tailored to modern conditions.

The nature of work itself has changed, impacted not only by where and how work is conducted, with remote and hybrid work models on the rise, but also by huge advances in technology. While work will pivot more toward using technologies like generative AI, there will also be a pivot toward the “value from people being more about that ‘higher order’ of critical thinking.”

I agree completely. I maintain that automation and other technology can give people “space to think” - which is in fact our tagline at Infotools. While insights professionals have a lot going for us on the human-only skills side of the future of work, we can’t ignore the fact that technology will continue to transform the way we do our jobs on a daily basis. In order to stay competitive, relevant and, let’s face it, employable, we should consider the following:   

Never stop learning

Stay updated on emerging technologies, trends, and methodologies in the field through continuous education and professional development programs. We are lucky in our industry to have some very smart people willing to share their knowledge in a wide number of settings - from free virtual events and webinars, to articles and white papers, all the way to on the stage at industry conferences.

If you’re looking for more formal educational opportunities and certifications, those are available as well, through organizations like Market Research Institute International’s Principles of Market Research program, Women In Research’s WIRe Accelerate program, and ESOMAR Academy, just to name a few. Ongoing education can help you bring new skills to the table, helping you remain adaptable and be an effective problem solver in an evolving landscape.

Develop your empathy

A decidedly human trait, empathy and active listening can help you better understand and connect with clients, stakeholders, and target audiences, enhancing the quality and depth of your insights. Plus, it's just the right thing to do. We wrote about this quite a bit during the height of the pandemic, touching on how empathy can help data quality and uncover a depth of insight that is otherwise impossible to achieve.

And that was during a time when the world was in desperate need of empathy, and this, to a great extent, hasn’t changed. We also hosted Rob Volpe, an “empathy activist”, on our podcast last year. He said that people want authentic, genuine empathy that shows they are understood. This is important for brands to recognize, and our insights should recognize this too, since they are being used for brand decision-making.

Focus on critical thinking

This tops the World Economic Forum report’s list for necessary skills in the future job market. Like empathy, this point surrounds humans doing what only we can do. In today’s ecosystem, it is beneficial to focus on higher-order critical thinking tasks that leverage human strengths, such as creativity, strategic thinking, and problem-solving.

You can hone your skills by asking thought-provoking questions, evaluating information sources, and analyzing arguments, while also seeking feedback from those around you. Making room in your busy day for these practices can be difficult, and that’s where technology comes in.

Embrace technology

If you allow technology to handle routine tasks, you can develop the skills you need to remain relevant and impactful in your job. In our field, you can find innovative solutions at nearly every stage of the research process. Automated marketplaces and DIY sample platforms make finding respondents fast and easy, while surveying them has moved to increasingly intuitive methods - a long cry from the old paper mail-in forms or phone interviews.

On the other end of the spectrum, data analysis and reporting is also enhanced by the proper use of technology, enabling on-the-fly investigation, automated analyses to reveal patterns and trends in the data, and interactive reporting dashboards that can be quickly and easily shared.

AI is being used extensively in many steps of the process, for advanced text analytics, sentiment analysis of social media data, predicting consumer behavior, chatbots for customer feedback collection, image and voice recognition for qualitative analysis and much more. Keep an eye out for practical implementations of AI into the workflow, that will allow you to focus on critical tasks, rather than the mundane.

Perhaps the most important, and most obvious, step everyone should take is to remain agile and adaptive to change in a quickly evolving work environment. Proactively seeking opportunities to innovate, testing research methodologies, and trying new ways to generate insights can help you stay ahead in a field that has a bright outlook for the future - if you can blend the right set of skills and technologies.