Graduate Social Researcher

Graduate Social Researcher

Permanent, Full Time

£28,848 to £33,938 per annum

Location: Chelmsford

Closing Date: Sunday 17th August 2025 at 11.59pm

This role is open to individuals who already have the right to work permanently in the UK; Essex County Council do not have the ability to provide visa sponsorship for this position.

Essential Requirements for the role:

• Educated to degree level, with 2.1 or above in a relevant subject (e.g., sociology, public policy, economic, psychology other social sciences).
• Have practical experience designing and conducting primary social research using qualitative and/or quantitative methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups or surveys).
• Familiarity with data analysis tools, such as Excel, Power BI, R or NVivo.
• Be available for an in-person interview at County Hall, Chelmsford between 1st - 5th September 2025.

Desirable Requirements for the role:

• Previous work experience (including internships or work placements) in a social research focused role, either for a research agency or an embedded research function in an organisation.
• Previous work experience (including internships or work placements) in a local authority, charity, or other public sector organisation.

Interview dates and location: 2nd, 3rd and 5th of September 2025, taking place at County Hall, Chelmsford, Essex. CM1 2QH.

About Us:

Are you looking to become a crucial part of a flexible and high achieving team? Do you want to help shape the future of our local authority and our county? This could be the opportunity you are looking for!

Benefits:

• Healthy work life balance; flexible and hybrid working options.
• Wide range of learning and development opportunities.
• IT equipment and home-working equipment provided.
• 26 days annual leave + bank holidays + option to purchase extra.
• Generous Local Government Salary related pension scheme.
• Access to hundreds of discounts and benefits through Essex Rewards.
• Access to our Health & Wellbeing Platform with Lifeworks.
• Two paid days for individual volunteering and two paid days for team volunteering each year.
• Disability Confident Leader: we are committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job.
• Plus, many more exciting benefits coming soon!

What one of our Researchers says about the role:

"Beginning my career as a Graduate Researcher was an incredible opportunity which allowed me to build upon the knowledge I gained at university, whilst also learning entirely new skills. During my time here I have been supported by such a welcoming team and have now progressed to becoming a Researcher. I can't wait to continue my journey at Essex County Council and continue working towards impactful result."

The Role:

The Graduate Researcher role is part of a flexible team within the Research & Citizen Insight team which sits within the Policy Unit, providing key stakeholders with the insight and intelligence needed for effective leadership, governance and decision making, which are informed by robust research and evidence, while keeping Essex citizens at the heart of everything we do.

The role will employ a range of research techniques and will support the Researchers and Senior Researchers within the team on every aspect of the research project life cycle. Typical tasks may include scoping; literature reviews; research design; materials design, such as survey or discussion guides; respondent recruitment; fieldwork, including interview, focus groups or facilitating workshops; analysis and report writing. The role will work across a range of business and service areas and will require collaboration with insight professionals across the organisation.

The role requires the ability to demonstrate research skills in a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and will be supported to develop these by a team of senior researchers and researchers.

About You:

• Knowledge and practical experience in qualitative and quantitative research.
• Knowledge and understanding of the practical implementation of the Data Protection Act and researcher ethics in relation to managing data for analytical and research purposes.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, and experience of working as part of a team as well as unsupervised.
• Ability to communicate clearly and appropriately with a range of different audiences. This could include report writing, data visualisation, facilitation, and presentation skills.
• Good project management skills.
• Clear and creative thinker uses evidence to identify problems, trends, and patterns, and present information in clear ways.
• Interested in social issues that affect local communities.

What will you be doing?

• Support our research team to understand and define needs to develop research projects, using a variety of primary and secondary research techniques. Provide powerful insight aligned to priorities and activities within the Everyone's Essex plan.
• Supported to build and maintain relationships with different research service providers and internal/external stakeholders.
• Organise and prepare research materials and data collection documents such as questionnaires, discussion guides, informed consent forms and interviewer briefing notes.
• Undertake desk research to collate, summarise, and evaluate secondary evidence reports to understand current landscape of topics to inform research design and decision making.
• Gather, analyse, and interpret a range of primary research data using digital and non-digital methods such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, verbatim coding, and ethnographic / observational techniques.
• Support the recruitment and screening processes of participants for the use of research projects, including scheduling interviews, focus groups and workshops.
• Working with a range of researchers supporting high quality insight that draws on a range of sources and uses the most appropriate medium to visualise insight to tell compelling and actionable stories with clear recommendations to improve outcomes for local people or organisational effectiveness.
• Understand and apply research best practice to support the delivery of high-quality ethical research and evaluating services within Essex County Council and partner services.
• Support the evidence-based practice service as part of the Research & Citizen Insight team offer, consulting with stakeholders and dealing with requests as and when required.
• Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.
• This is an 'anywhere worker' role, but there will be a need to collaborate with the team in County Hall, Chelmsford, intermittently depending on business need.