Product Research Lead, Stack Overflow for Teams
My journey into research was anything but traditional or planned. I graduated from college with an education degree and taught German in Hungary for a few years. Then, after meeting an American who is now my husband, I moved to the United States. I couldn’t find a full-time language teaching opportunity, so I had to pivot. I used my language skills to translate and do administrative work for a German mining company before I landed an education assistant role with a non-profit. After a few years of helping plan educational events and organize programs for the company’s assemblies and societies, I moved to the survey department where I published and designed survey reports. This is where I was exposed to the world of surveys and data. I switched departments again and applied my questionnaire design, organizational and planning skills in membership marketing. I started conducting focus groups and phone interviews, reporting back on the findings – in addition to designing membership surveys.
When my husband and I moved back to Hungary, I looked for opportunities in the marketing field. I applied for a creative marketing manager role at a large, multi-national market research firm. After a few rounds of interviews, one of the interviewers told me, “You think like a researcher, talk like a researcher … do you want to be a researcher?” I said yes, and this is how I landed a qualitative researcher role.
I’m still very thankful for this employer and the group of researchers who mentored me, showed me the ropes, critiqued my first reports and helped me grow. I found my passion in qualitative research.
After seven years in Hungary, we moved back to the U.S. I worked as a research project manager for an online agile market research firm, then went back to the association I had worked for before and built their research team from the ground up. In addition...