The Tale of a Surprise Career Creation
How Gwen Carden Became A Market Research Recruiter

by Gwen Carden

In 2002 if you had told me I’d be doing what I’m doing now – recruiting respondents for qualitative market research companies – I wouldn’t have believed it. In fact, it wasn’t until 2001 that I knew anything at all about market research. It was about that time that I kept having a gut feeling that seemed to come out of nowhere that my experience as a journalist, writer and student of human behavior would be a good fit for market research. I began conducting searches on the internet when I had free time, driven to learn all I could about the field, but not understanding why.

I had been a successful journalist for many years, writing feature stories, medical stories, consumer stories, and really enjoying it, but that little voice inside kept saying, “There are new worlds to conquer, and you aren’t done yet.”

One day in one of those rare serendipitous moments that you remember for a lifetime, I saw an ad that would change my life.

Just three days earlier I had decided to join the Florida Freelance Writers Association, which allowed me access into their job bank. On my first visit to the bank, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was an ad from a market research company looking for writers to prepare reports. They directed prospects to their website.

I excitedly typed in their URL.

To my delight, the website was professional, inviting and had a delicious sampling of consultant jobs that needed filling. In an instant I knew who was going to fill at least one of those jobs – report writing. I can’t tell you how I knew. I can’t tell you exactly why I knew. I just knew. Significant changes to my future lay with a company that only moments earlier I had never even heard of.

Applying to work as a consultant with this company was no easy task. Before they would even talk to someone interested in writing reports, one had to (1) download about 50 pages of transcript notes from a focus group (2) write a 20-page sample report from those notes, and (3) sign a confidentiality agreement.

I stopped everything I was doing and went into overdrive. I had never even seen a market research report. I requested a sample and was sent one. For three days I culled through the notes, wrote outlines, summarized facts, deleted paragraphs, re-worked sentences. Was I crazy to do so much for an opportunity offered by an unknown company that might not even want me? Maybe, but I didn’t care. I barely noticed the hours ticking away. Finally I finished, wrote a cover letter detailing my credentials including a resume, hit the “send” button and went to the gym.

Two days later I received a phone call from that company's president.

“It’s strange how the perfect person comes along just when you need them to,” she chirped. She began to detail a project requiring finding and interviewing physicians in various countries around the world who specialized in treating a rare form of a particular disease. She didn’t have any names.

“Can you do it?” she asked?

“I think I can,” I replied, my pulse racing, my head spinning and my heart jumping for joy (and screaming to myself, “Are you NUTS to say yes to this?”)

A life-altering opportunity had just hopped into my lap and it was up to me do something about it.

A week later I had filled the quota, including interviewing the doctors (some at very strange hours to accommodate their time zones), and had a check delivered to my door by Fedex. The company’s president later told me she didn’t think it could be done and was glad she hadn’t told me it couldn’t be done.

It would be the start of a wonderful working relationship with a new client, and more than that, a new career for me.

Before long my new client gave me some reports to write. Then she asked me if I thought I could handle a recruit of doctors and patients for her. Once again I said yes, with many butterflies abounding in my stomach.

No one was more surprised than I when I seemed to almost always find the people we needed and people almost always showed up.

Little by little other companies learned about my newfound skill, and before I knew it, I had several clients. To my amazement, with a lot of support and guidance from my original clients, a little gumption on my part and some luck, a new career created itself for me.

Today I am still refining who I am in this business. Every project brings a new challenge. Every new client teaches me something and requires me to think creatively. And every time someone puts their faith and trust in me I feel a wave of gratitude that like my original client they, too, see “something” in me that enables me to continue to grow and thrive in the market research field.

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