Cool Job of the Week: Corporate Anthropologist

After reading this month’s issue of The Atlantic my gaze was fixed on their featured article about the rise of corporate anthropology. Imagine this scenario, you’re at a raging house party, booze is flowing, the music is rattling and the guests are letting it all out. Amid this revelry, stands a suit with a notepad. He or she is a corporate anthropologist, and his/her’s job is to study you and to find out how to sell you stuff better!

A new front has opened up in market research and it favors qualitative research over quantitative. Finally, companies are starting to take into account different and creative ways to get to know their customers, over the previously dominant methods of spamming people with telephone polls and surveys.

This gets me excited because previously, the very lucrative world of management consulting is dominated by quantitative consultants, MBAs and engineers that rely heavily on math and spreadsheets. Corporate Anthropologists champion participant observations, the method of having a researcher embedded with his subjects. Its one of the most intense versions of market research ever devised, which has the potential to unearth many hidden truths about consumers.

One company who seems to at the forefront of this new trend is ReD Associates http://www.redassociates.com/ a enthusiastic employer of social scientists. Check out their site. Also if you want to read The Atlantic article I was talking about, you can find it here url:” http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/anthropology-inc/309218/”

I Hope to share new cool jobs with you guys every week!