Interviewing manager — Natasha Johnson

Natasha works as an interviewing manager while studying a Masters in sociological research

What courses did you study and where?

I studied BA in theology and religious studies at the University of Leeds, graduating in 2021. I am currently undertaking a part-time MSc in sociological research at The University of Manchester.

How did you get your current role?

My first job at Kwest was as an interviewer, getting feedback from social housing residents about the service from their landlords. I started working there when I began my MSc in September 2022. In April 2023, I was promoted to interviewing manager.

What's a typical working day like?

Kwest has a big team of interviewers who get feedback from social housing residents about the service they receive. As an interviewing manager, I do a bit of everything to make sure our interviewers get the highest quality feedback possible for us and our clients.

For most of the day, I'm listening to interviews, ensuring they are conducted according to Kwest's policies, or training staff on new surveys. I also coach people on the comments they write about their interviews, making sure we are getting as much useful feedback as possible. If needed, I do training sessions with interviewers about their performance. The rest of the day I interview residents myself.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I enjoy working with people, identifying where they might be struggling interviewing people and working through possible solutions together. When I see our discussion has helped them, that feels great.

What are the challenges?

Training and managing people were a new experience for me. Having been a full-time interviewer I empathise with all the things interviewers need to juggle - productivity, success rate, and writing up quality comments. With this in mind, I'm continuously evaluating what I could do better when I train people.

How does your Masters support you in your day to day work?

Both my qualitative and quantitative research training in my Masters have helped me understand how and why Kwest operates as it does. For example, studying surveys as a methodology has helped massively. One of the things interviewers are measured on is 'success rate', which quantifies the number of residents who agree to do the survey out of those we speak to. It's important for the quality of our research as high success rates give us the biggest sample possible, resulting in a more useful data set for analysis.

How has your role developed and what are your career ambitions?

My role was only created when I started doing it, and my responsibilities have grown a lot since then. I used to only monitor interviews by listening to them, but now I coach people on their writing, train people on new projects and have a much more hands-on role in helping people do good interviews.

I hope to take my experience in a research company and move into a research associate or analyst position in the social research or market research sector.

What are your top tips for choosing a Masters?

My advice would be to take some time to work out what you want in your career first and consider whether you need a Masters, and if so, which one makes up for what skills you might not already have. As I wanted to go into research outside of academia, I knew a Masters would help, but I chose an MSc with more research methods training than my undergraduate had.

What advice can you give to others wanting to get into this job?

• Look at jobs that are in any way related to your desired field, as you can end up getting new opportunities you didn't know were out there. You might also grow your network with people in your field.
• For learning how to manage and train people, it's important to learn how each person you work with is different and what approach you can take to help them succeed.
• To get into research, dip your toe into both quantitative and qualitative methods. Understanding the importance of both and some basic skills is essential.

Find out more

• Explore the role of a social researcher.
• Discover careers at Kwest.