Insight Director Executive Search for a Growing Research & Insight Consultancy

Professional Services Reseach Consultancy Insight Case Study

Growth can expose a very different kind of leadership gap.

For one established Research and Insight consultancy, increasing client demand and a significant new project created the need for additional senior capability.

The business already had strong research expertise.

What it needed next was someone who could combine Customer Experience measurement, Insight, Analytics and consultancy thinking with the leadership and commercial credibility to help clients turn data into better decisions and outcomes.

Douglas Jackson was engaged to search beyond the client’s existing network and identify an Insight Director capable of supporting the next stage of the business’s growth.

Search at a Glance

Role: Insight Director
Sector: Research, Insight & Customer Experience Consultancy
Environment: Established, growing consultancy
Search Type: Executive Search
Specialisms: Customer Insight, Research, Analytics, CX Measurement & Consultancy

The Business Context

The consultancy was experiencing growth across the business.

Its existing network had produced several potential candidates, but the leadership team wanted to understand what the wider market could offer rather than limiting the appointment to familiar profiles.

A larger new client project was also increasing pressure on the existing team, creating a need for additional senior capability.

At the same time, demand for experienced Insight and Analytics professionals was increasing significantly across the market.

The client therefore needed a search partner capable of taking its proposition to a much broader pool of talent and engaging people who might not otherwise have considered joining the organisation.

The Leadership Challenge

The role required much more than an experienced researcher.

The successful individual needed to bring:

• strong Customer Experience measurement expertise
• the ability to turn research and analytics into meaningful action
• leadership capability
• client relationship skills
• consultancy experience
• confidence interpreting complex data
• the ability to communicate insight clearly
• a strong commercial orientation

The central requirement was the ability to move from:

data → insight → decision → commercial outcome

The consultancy’s point of difference was not simply producing research.

It was helping clients solve problems, identify opportunities and build stronger businesses.

The Insight Director therefore needed to operate comfortably on both sides of that equation.

Looking Beyond the Traditional Talent Pool

The client had historically recruited heavily from within the Research sector.

For this appointment, however, they were deliberately open to a broader perspective.

They wanted to consider not only senior consultancy professionals but also individuals with client-side experience, particularly those who had led larger Insight programmes or programmes of organisational change.

That widened the search considerably.

Instead of asking only:

“Who has worked in a similar consultancy?”

we could also ask:

“Who understands how organisations actually use Insight to make better decisions?”

That distinction allowed the client to compare different types of leadership capability rather than repeatedly recruiting from the same established pool.

Defining What Good Looked Like

The search required a balance of technical, commercial and leadership capability.

The successful candidate needed to understand Customer Experience measurement and Insight delivery, but also be comfortable:

• creating a vision for success
• developing senior client relationships
• communicating complex findings
• interpreting a broad range of analytics
• identifying improvements in customer experience
• translating findings into action
• contributing to the growth of the consultancy itself

In a competitive talent market, that combination was relatively scarce.

The Search Approach

Once the search was confirmed, Douglas Jackson developed a market-mapping strategy spanning both consultancy and client-side organisations.

We considered:

• existing Directors
• high-performing Heads of Insight
• senior Customer Insight professionals
• Research and Analytics leaders
• individuals with consultancy exposure
• client-side leaders interested in moving into an advisory environment

Two weeks of initial research produced a longlist of more than 130 potential candidates across the UK.

Rather than relying on advertising or waiting for active applicants, every relevant individual was approached directly for an exploratory conversation.

Engaging a Highly Competitive Talent Market

The market was particularly active.

Many of the strongest potential candidates had either moved recently or were already receiving multiple approaches.

That meant the quality of the approach mattered.

Our conversations were deliberately personal, consultative and non-pushy.

A number of candidates told us they would not normally have taken a recruitment call or considered moving, but were willing to explore the opportunity because of the way the conversation had been positioned.

This is particularly important in specialist leadership markets.

The most relevant person is often not actively applying for a new role.

The search therefore has to create enough interest for someone successful and settled to reconsider what they might want next.

Giving the Client Market Choice

Following the search and assessment process, Douglas Jackson produced a shortlist of six candidates.

Two sat slightly above the client’s original remuneration expectations.

Rather than removing them from consideration, we included them to give the client visibility of the wider market and allow them to understand the relationship between:

capability, availability and remuneration.

This allowed the leadership team to make an informed decision rather than having the search artificially constrained by the original salary assumption.

Four candidates within the preferred remuneration range progressed to interview, with two quickly emerging as particularly strong options.

Managing a Competitive Candidate Process

One candidate rapidly became the preferred individual.

They were also progressing with another opportunity.

That introduced a familiar challenge in senior hiring:

speed without pressure.

Our role was to keep both sides informed, provide honest feedback and ensure the process continued only if the opportunity remained genuinely right for both the candidate and the client.

The organisation subsequently made an offer.

The candidate accepted, completed their notice period and successfully joined the business.

The Outcome

The assignment delivered an Insight Director capable of bringing together:

Customer Insight + Analytics + Consultancy + Leadership + Commercial Thinking

The appointment gave the organisation additional senior capability at a point of increased client demand and business growth.

Just as importantly, the search gave the client access to a broader talent market than its existing network could provide.

What This Search Demonstrates

Existing networks are valuable — but they have limits

For specialist businesses, internal networks can generate strong candidates.

But they can also repeatedly produce people with similar backgrounds.

An external market map allows the organisation to compare the familiar with the genuinely different.

Client-side experience can strengthen consultancy leadership

Consultancies do not always need to recruit solely from other consultancies.

Someone who has been responsible for implementing Insight and Analytics inside an organisation can bring a valuable understanding of what clients actually need from their advisers.

Insight needs to connect to action

The value of an Insight leader increasingly lies beyond producing better information.

The strongest leaders can help organisations decide:

what does this mean, what should we do differently and what value will that create?

Search provides market intelligence as well as candidates

Presenting individuals outside the initial remuneration range was deliberate.

It allowed the client to understand what additional capability was available and make an informed decision about where to invest.

Candidate engagement matters in scarce markets

When the best people are receiving multiple approaches, generic outreach is unlikely to work.

Successful search depends upon creating a relevant, credible conversation around the opportunity.

The Leadership Signal

Organisations increasingly have access to more data, more research and more analytics.

That has not necessarily made decision-making easier.

The real leadership capability lies in translating information into:

understanding → action → business performance.

For Research, Insight and Analytics teams, technical capability remains essential.

But the differentiator is increasingly commercial interpretation.

Can the leader connect what the data says with what the organisation should actually do?

That was ultimately the capability this search was designed to find.

Hiring Senior Insight, Analytics or Data Leadership?

Douglas Jackson works with organisations appointing senior leaders across Customer Insight, Research, Data, Analytics, Strategy and Decision Intelligence.

Our approach combines market mapping, direct search and detailed assessment to identify leaders capable of turning information into better organisational decisions and commercial outcomes.

Talk to us about your next Insight Director, Management Consulting leadership appointment →

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