I have written before about my career-spanning dilemma about how to explain what I do for a living. Do I answer in one sentence, tell people ‘I’m in market research’ and run the risk of being viewed as a slightly geeky type, obsessed by clip-boards? Or do I try and take up more of their time and outline a typical week in which I might be interviewing an artist in New York
A current project, however, is about to change all of this because I now have a brand new answer at my disposal. Next time someone asks what I do, I’m going to look them in the eye and say, ‘I’m a spy’.
Then it’ll be their choice won’t it. They can go for the longer explanation of my job in which I’ll say I do some undercover work testing whether members of staff are implementing a new training scheme which is being rolled out by a new client. I can back this up saying I’m in possession of a new ‘spy camera’ which I can hide about my person and later produce DVD recordings of the staff encounters I have had.
Or they can stick with the one word answer of ‘spy’ and conjure up their own image of me sipping shaken not stirred cocktails, whilst parachuting down to a snow-capped mountain, at the bottom of which awaits my latest flame in the passenger seat of my personalised number-plated Aston Martin DB7.
Not a bad choice, I believe, because either way I think I’m going to be a winner.
In the longer answer I get a chance to explain why I’ve been doing this job for so many years and why I still find it a most interesting and rewarding profession.
And in the shorter answer I’m no longer geeky clipboard boy who hangs around on street corners.
But Hawker, Barrie Hawker, double o seven and three-quarters, licensed to thrill…
Another option lurks too of course; I can point them in the direction of our new website at http://www.parklaneresearch.co.uk/
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