The career opportunities in economics and development consulting is rather growing in the post-pandemic period. As this pandemic has brought economic slowdown, reduction in sales and consumption expenditures across the regions and nations. This has prompted for wider scale research and market study to assess this phenomena. The development consulting sector was also affected during the pandemic period and this workload needs to be carried further in the post pandemic period. In this blog I am going to enumerate career opportunities in above mentioned sectors in further detail.

The undergraduate courses in Economics and Business Economics discipline provide sufficient training and insights among students to start entry level jobs in market research, data driven analysis and scoping assessment provided by various companies, research wings of manufacturing companies and non-government organizations. The development consulting sectors open the door for entry in Business Development Area, Research Assistant, Assistant Manager Project and Project Associate. Similarly, the post-graduate courses in Economics and Management enable our students to challenges in these sectors as Research Manager, Project Manager, Project Fellow, Project Coordinator, and Research Consultant roles. Master’s in Business Administration students can explore specific research projects in their specialization domains of Human Resource, Marketing and Finance related researches. Policy based research and research think-tanks also provide job opportunities to post-graduate candidates in economics and management. Further, the nature and specifications of these jobs are different from traditional job opportunities.

In an ordinary search of “Market Research Analyst” to popular job portal lists 18,236 job openings across geographical regions and specialization domains. This search is dominated by 6,419 jobs in data science and 4260 in software engineering followed closely by Sales and Business Development (1552), BFSI, Investment (971), Marketing & Marketing Research (642), Consumer Support (522), Finance (516), Project Planning (425), Human Resource Management (378), and Project Management (352). Foreign Multinational Companies like; Accenture, Spice Work, BNY Mellon, IBM and others.

In development consulting sector, career opportunities for economics and business graduates are available at three levels; a) International b) National and c) Regional. There are 2600 live job opportunities are currently available for economics graduate at regional level in north Indian states. Students can start their career right after undergraduate degree as project assistant, Field Investigators, Data Analyst, and Program Manager in various development consulting projects. Post-graduate students can start their career as research assistant, research fellow, project coordinator and Data Manager. Students with Accounting and Finance major can also support project activity in their accounting and audit processes. Companies like KPMG, PWC, Ernst& Young, Boston Consulting Group, Grandthorton and several others are working in the are area of execution, planning and evaluation of development activities financed by respective government agencies along with national and international development financing units. These development finance units could be Asian Development Bank, DFID, USAID, UNDP, UNICEF, World Bank, IMF and similar such organizations.

What are the skills required in Market Research and Development Consulting Projects?

The skill sets required for career in these domains are slightly different from a regular and traditional careers. In almost all the market research projects and development projects persons are required with thorough knowledge of deductive and inductive reasoning as they would be required to apply it quite often at their work place. Let’s understand the inductive and deductive in a much simpler way. Students belonging to Medical Courses require four meals in a day and students belong to Para Medical Courses require only two meals in a day and at the max three meals in a day. If this information is given what logic one can deduct from it? There can be multiple inferences drawn from this information of two sentences. Now the challenge is who would get the most relevant inference out of these two sentences. If you are aspiring a career in market research you brain stimulus should be acting in planning the requirements of two sets of markets these two sets of students belong too. It’s not just about four meals in a day and three meals in a day it is complete different sets of goods they would be consuming given the pattern of food preferences. If someone is looking a career in development she would be deducting the economic class of these two sets of students. Their career choices are not determined by their cognitive abilities but incomes of their respective families. You would also identify the challenges of exceptions of economic class in these sets.

The second most sought after skill in both the career domains are networking skills. These networking skills are different from usual networking skills as one would require to place networked persons according to requirements and upgrade with their utility. Here is an example; most of the dataset required for market research are not easily accessible and even for easily accessible data sets the validity and reliability is a big issue for customised sample based researches. One would like to be networked with right set of people to address such issues.

Besides these skills, writing, comprehension and affinity to detail are must in these career domains.

Preparation for the market research and development consulting

The preparation for such kind of skills begin with school days and it gets consolidated with higher education. Students opting for economics, statistics, social work and business studies are getting better comprehension in these career domains relative to other subjects. Students from Engineering and Medical fields are are also required in Development consultancy as well as market research. This field is challenging as well as exciting for such persons who are looking to upgrade themselves with the changing context. The concept of lifelong learning is appropriate for such career domains as every new project open afresh canvas for learning and growth. Business consulting, Investment consulting are relatively more rewarding than the development consulting however, for the early career students development consulting can act as a Launchpad. Further, advancement in skills can lead to other consulting jobs.

For greater understanding in development consulting one must visit the websites of donor agencies.