Victoria
Job title
Strategic Marketing Consultant
Company name and location
Promar International, Newbury
Industry sector
Market Research
Background
Four-year degree in International Relations with German, with one year spent in Germany on the Erasmus Programme
Work experience with wine merchant in London.
Lived and worked in Spain for two years and became fluent in Spanish.
How would you describe your work?
Promar International is a global market consultancy. We undertake detailed research to forecast and report on market trends in the international food and drinks industry.
We produce reports forecasting market activity in the food and drinks sector. Reports are often requested by manufacturers when they are considering launching a new product or introducing an existing product into a new market. For example, they might ask us to examine seven European markets to analyse the potential success of a new energy drink.
So how do languages come into play?
I speak Spanish and German. Recently I was researching markets in Mexico and Spain to assess the potential of new packaging for dairy products. That involved phone calls to our offices and to other industry sources every day for several weeks. The majority of my conversations were in Spanish and I also did quite a bit of reading of local Mexican and Spanish newspapers and journals. For another project I had to set up meetings in Switzerland, so I made extensive use of my German language skills.
Our team here is multi-national. Everyone speaks at least one foreign language so we make the best use of the team’s resources. This often involves conducting primary research in the country, by talking to manufacturers, suppliers and distributors in each country to build up a picture of the market.
What kind of skills and qualities do you need?
Employers look for someone who is:
· Confident and able to work on their own initiative
· A good team player
· Able to extract important points from a mass of information
· Able to analyse and interpret information
· Able to write coherently – good English writing skills are a must.
What do you like most about your job?
I really enjoy the challenge as well as the variety of my work. Each project is different from the last so it’s never boring. There are opportunities to meet new people and use my languages, and all that helps to make a career dynamic and exciting.
Any tips?
Make sure you offer employers something with your languages – say what other skills
you’ve developed using the language.
Source: Paul Kingston Associates / Connexions