 afternoon everybody and welcome to this webinar. My name is Torsten Bell, I'm the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank, but I'm here on behalf of the wider sector of around 20 organisations, mainly think tanks, but some similar ones, things called funders, trade unions or membership organisations, but they all share similarities which is they're aiming to understand the world and hopefully to improve the world, and they cover a wide range of subjects from economics to health, which before the pandemic we thought were very separate subjects and the last year has taught us aren't quite as separate as we all thought they were, but as I say working on different areas, but something that they all share is that the world of policymaking needs to do better in lots of ways, but one way in which it needs to do better is in terms of representation, whether that's about the ethnicity of people that work in it, whether it's about the volume of people with disabilities who work in it, whether it's about class backgrounds and actually whether it's about age and a number of other areas, so across a range of areas we need to do better on representation. Now that matters in all organisations and one of the good things over previous years has been a growing recognition of that in all sectors, corporate third sector and the public sector, but it's particularly important in organisations that are involved in public policy that are involved in setting public debates and about providing potential answers to those debates, because if you're not representative then you won't be thinking broadly about those issues and you won't be coming at them from a range of perspectives, so that's why this webinar is happening today, because there's a recognition, a shared recognition of a problem, but that's only of use to anybody if something actually changes in the coming years. Now organisations themselves obviously need to work on how they recruit and I think the sector is generally changing on that front, but we also want people to know about the sector, to want to apply, to think that that is a place where they could find their home, it shouldn't matter whether your mum or dad can explain to you what a think tank is and if anyone finds a mum or dad that can explain what a think tank is they're doing better than I suspect most, but that shouldn't matter to whether people are applying to work in these organisations and it certainly shouldn't matter to whether or not people find a home and a job in those organisations, so what we're going to cover in this webinar today is what think tanks are, what they do, what it's like to work for one or at least what some people have found it's like to work for one and also I think it's importantly what other organisations that are closely similar in some ways or that they work with day to day, so we can give you a sense of the broader sector, not just the bits of it that we all collectively work in. Now all of us when we've been planning out this webinar I should say thank you to the team, quite a large team of people that have been working today to make today happen, then we're also painfully aware that this is a tough time for people to be looking for work, this is not the world we all wanted to find ourselves in in lots of different ways, there's lots of grim news including on the unemployment front in the news day to day and we know for young people in particular this is a hard crisis and it comes on back of a tough time, all the ideals of people thinking that they were going to be owning a home by the time they were 25 feel like a very long time ago as in before most of our lifetimes, so the goal of today is to make that feel a little bit easier and I do I want to end on a positive before hunting over and getting going on this seminar which is that you know a generation ago when I was starting work in these kinds of worlds the the the the if anything reflecting back on it the problem was that far too many people thought they had all the answers okay now that was a substantive problem because it turned out they were wrong and didn't have all the answers but it was also a problem in terms of what people thought they were doing by taking up these careers and one thing that is very very clear in a country that has been just the last decade through a huge financial crisis a big internal row about brexit and now the pandemic is a really strong recognition that we don't have all the answers we need whether that's how to make an economy grow, how to make sure we fairly spread the rewards of that economy, how to reduce health inequality or how to deliver net zero in the decades ahead there are big questions to answer and for people starting out on their careers I hope that means that there's there's an exciting things for you to do in the coming years it's not about going to work in a think tank and they're doing nothing interesting to work on there are a lot of very big questions to work on and that is a good time to think about a career now are the only other thing I want to say is don't when you're thinking about that set yourself ludicrous tests that you fail to meet people only very very odd people really know what they're going to be doing with their lives over the course of more than like the next few years so don't think in those terms instead I would think in terms of what are the interesting questions that I want to help contribute to in a society to help answer and where are the opportunities that happen to be available now to do that in the future I think if you think in those terms then I hope the people you're going to hear from later today and hopefully in the months ahead will be able to help you think through those things and as I say there are a lot of big questions worth thinking about so maybe just pick one rather than agonising about everything in life and just to finish off I hope to see lots of you in the years and maybe even the decades to come and whatever you decide about your careers and your future we hope that the next few hours are really useful to you so thank you all for taking the time to join us today thank you for everyone that's organised this seminar I think it's a really important thing for the sector as a whole and hopefully it's useful to all of you and I'm going to hand over to Nicola Blacklaus from the Institute for Government who is chairing the sessions that are following she's going to run you through what's going to happen for the rest of the day but I hope this is useful to you and have a good day everyone over to you Nicola. Thanks Torsten thanks for that kind of overview of the event and what we're trying to do here I'd also like to echo his thanks to all of you for taking the time to attend the event it's fantastic to see that we've got so many of you with us. As Torsten said my name's Nicola I work at a think tank called the Institute for Government and I'm just going to spend a couple of minutes telling you a bit about how the event's going to work before we move on to our two excellent speakers for the rest of this first session so there are lots of organisations involved in this event I think 20-ish in total and they all have different ways of working and as Torsten mentioned focus on different policy areas and the focus of today's event is really on insight into and kind of career paths within the sector so it might not be possible to answer specific questions about individual organisations but we'll be sending around some FAQs afterwards including information on how to get in touch with specific organisations if you need to and I also want to quickly mention that in the email you received about this event with all the zoom links into the sessions there's a link to an equal opportunities form that if you have a second after the event we'd be really grateful if you filled out it just helps us to analyse the reach of the event and helps us to plan our kind of outreach going forward so for the rest of this first session we have two speakers we have Nicole Sykes who's the director of external affairs at pro bono economics and Sarah Arnold senior economist at the new economics foundation. Nicole is going to give an overview kind of introduction to think tanks and the wider sector and then we're going to take some questions from you guys in the audience and then Sarah is going to give some kind of general guidance on making good applications for jobs in think tanks in the sector and then she'll take some questions after that as well. In terms of how the Q&A will work you can use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit questions you might find it easier to do that as we're going along as things occur to you and then I'll look through them and put them to our speakers or when it gets to that part of the session you can use the raise hand function also at the bottom of your screen I will kind of call you out our excellent technical support team will unmute you and you can ask the question that way if you prefer to do that. After that after this session we're going to split off into groups and you'll all have the option to go to three out of six more focus sessions depending on your interests and these are kind of designed to replace the networking that would have been possible at a live event and the aim is to give you an opportunity to ask questions directly to a range of people from all the organizations taking part. So without further ado I will hand over to Nicole take it away. Thank you I'm going to desperately try to share my screen which at this point in the pandemic I should be able to do it and hopefully you can see slides up there. Fabulous all right so my job today is to let you know what is a think tank. It can sound pretty mysterious I know some people think of think tanks they think of a bunch of faceless people sat in a basement somewhere having deep thoughts and whispering into the ears of government and as Torsten mentioned even people who are quite close to people who are within this world also don't know what we do. I asked my mother a couple of years ago what she thought my job was and she told me it was what you write to the prime minister and tell her what to do don't you and I couldn't tell if that was making my job sound really boring or really grand but either way I'm going to try and explain this afternoon what a think tank is and what you can do on one so hopefully they'll be less mysterious. So what do think tanks do at their core and you should have seen in the event invitation today and as Torsten was saying it's about solving problems. Step one for most think tanks is identifying those problems and whether that's diving into the data and the numbers that exist out there to try and figure out what's going on or if it's talking to people holding focus groups holding interviews trying to understand what's going on in the country or the world it's about identifying problems and then hopefully trying to suggest some solutions to those problems often working with others and trying to figure out okay who should be doing what to fix what's going on in this world and then finally to various degrees think tanks will try and persuade others to adopt their solutions that might just be working with policymakers and saying hey we've learned this stuff we think it's useful to you or it might be going out there and really actively trying to campaign and influence people to adopt their solutions and and different think tanks will take different approaches. What kind of think tanks what kind of problems to think tanks try and solve well these are just some of the headlines that the think tanks that you will be meeting today have generated over the last couple of weeks. It really is a huge variety out there and there is a think tank for everyone depending on what your niche is even if it's you know how to bioluminescent algeas generate green energy there's a think tank out there. So really but this is what people see from the outside they see the headlines they see the focus on policy and problems what does it actually look inside well to take you through that I'm going to start with the people who make up a think tank if you want to understand sort of the car engine let's understand its parts now no two think tanks are the same but they will have one of three they will have three core components as a rule starting with the policy and research team probably who you think about when you think of a when you think of a think tank the people doing the thinking they may be economists like Sarah they may be academics they may be just generalists just people generally interested in solving problems and certainly in my experience the better think tanks and the better research teams have a huge variety of expertise in my last team working on brexit and migration policy we had a climate researcher and she brought tons of different points of view that we never would have had before and made us stronger I work on charity policy now and we have a housing expert we have a guy who did a degree in musicology and really it's just people who want to solve problems working together but it's all very well as I said having ideas if you then don't do anything with them and so most think tanks will have some form of external affairs team it might not be called that but I'll have some sort of team focused on getting the policy and research out into the world that might be through events like this one and the wonderful events team we have here about having discussions and getting your ideas out there and also getting other ideas into the mix. Similarly there are often communications functions people working with the media people on social media doing design and marketing who make the policy and research look good so people want to read it and want to engage in it and display it in different ways and also some think tanks will have public affairs teams people who are focused on relationships with policymakers and government convincing them that they want to work with the think tanks and take up their ideas and last but very much not least there are also the operations teams within think tanks people working on finance and systems and basically keeping roofs over our heads and making sure that the lights stay on and everyone gets paid they are absolutely essential so whatever your interest there is some role within a think tank for you there are many many different roles you can play but maybe nothing on there particularly jumps out at you maybe maybe you haven't yet found your think tank niche so I'm going to talk to you about the think tank ecosystem that Torsten mentioned because it's not just those think tanks that have these three parts there are other organizations that have these parts plus some other bits that have some crossover so if that's your think tank there with your policy your operations and your external affairs there are also membership organizations and unions who are the members of these well they can really vary there are business groups for example who have businesses as their members people like the CBI or the British Chambers of Commerce there are professional organizations where the engineers will join the Institute of Engineering or the unions where the workers are their members and for all of these organizations they will have something like a think tank at their heart they will have a policy unit by large they will have a policy unit they will be coming up with ideas and trying to convince governments or other people to adopt their ideas or just to make their sector better and they will also have other roles within them they may have people doing their sales of their memberships managing their members to make sure they get what they need or delivering them services but there's lots of crossover in between one of the other sectors that has a lot of crossover is charities now that might surprise you but if I say something like Cancer Research UK they have a whole policy team a whole public affairs team that looks pretty much exactly like any think tank would embedded within them trying to talk to government and saying look this is what you need to do also trying to talk to hospitals and other health providers saying look this is how policy can change so we can do better for people with cancer if you're in that world you will also course you know charities don't just do that they're also looking at the services they deliver there are fundraising roles in there as well so lots of routes through to sort of a think tank adjacent world of course there's also the private sector and I've just picked out three elements where there's lots of crossover with think tanks one of the agencies public affairs agencies people who specialize in that public affairs element selling things into government convincing people if you if you work in one of those there's often them routes into think tanks as well specifically on the government side and you get a really great real world experience of a small number of businesses that you work for and and what they care about so many lots of businesses will have a small public affairs and policy team certainly big businesses if you think about the pandemic and someone like Pfizer for example they would have had their public affairs team working really closely with government say look these are the things that need to change to make sure that we can get our vaccine out to everyone and will make probably more of an impact than some of the think tanks have and then finally the media you know if you are interested in the communication side about the headlines and that kind of thing then there are lots of sort of routes from media into think tanks too final two so I'm just wrapping up with obviously government most think tanks when they are looking to change policy and change how the country works they're generally focused at government that's not always true there may be other groups but governments are really big stakeholder and if you go into work for the civil service or you go into be a researcher for an MP or for an assistant to a council group or just just just go ahead get elected I guess but if you do that then you'd have a really great experience of how policies are actually made you get that real life experience which is hugely valuable if you want to join a think tank and finally academia of course there's tons of routes between think tanks and academia some think tanks are very very academic some are less so and I think you'll see some of that kind of pulled out and explored at the events later today so hopefully that will have given you an overview of what think tanks do what are the different jobs that you can have within them and what are the different jobs that link to them hopefully that is less mysterious I've not yet tested this on my mum but if your feedback's good I'll give it a go thanks so much Nicole okay so we've got a couple of minutes to pause the questions at this point I'm just looking at the Q&A now and we've already had a few coming in so the first one I'm going to ask is from Chris Wright and he asks whether all research team research team people do external affairs work as well or are they generally different people working on these kind of distinct tasks that is a great question by and large most people will do both not least because not always I think Sarah raised an eyebrow not always but certainly in my experience most people will do both mostly because it helps if you are a researcher to be engaging with the people you're trying to influence from the start it's not just here's a report I'm going to chuck it at you it's how do we work together what are the problems that you're seeing and what are some of the solutions that you'd like testing out so by and large if you're doing this really well you are working together and some teams might just have sort of experts in the public affairs side who can help people who don't have that experience to go out and make the most of their research on the public affairs side great we have another question here Matt asks how I think tanks funded oh great question lots of different ways I will give you three examples one is sort of through endowments so a large grant or philanthropic individual will say you know I'm going to give you this investment or this pot of money I'm explaining this in the simplest possible terms and I want you to do research around this topic area and it's sort of your job to work out what you do with that budget some think tanks and this is where the academic side comes in some think tanks will apply for grants for their particular kind of research they'll partner with a university or academic institution or they'll be applying for grants from other philanthropic sources so rather than having one funder they'll be going out to lots of different ones and some are consultancy based so they will sell their research they will say you can you know whoever you are you can if we have an expertise on this you can buy our research in our reports and that might be selling it to the Welsh Government or it might be selling it to a charity or it might be selling it to a business but yeah so those are probably the three main ways endowments grants and consultancy fees and some will do a mix it should be said as well sure yeah okay so I'm going to have one last question for Nicole and then we're going to move on to Sarah so Emily Cushlow asks how best would you work out which part of the think tank best fits your skills it's a really good question and I don't think there's one um I don't think there's one route um I think what I'm hoping to communicate with the ecosystem side of things is that there's lots of movement between them and you can start out looking for you know if you're starting on that journey it's what sounds interesting what do I what do I want to work on what's out there and you can try it for a bit and then you learn a load of skills and if you decide that actually your bit of policy and research isn't what you want to do find somewhere else you've learned loads you've you've learned loads of skills they're really really transferable and you you should be able to shift between any parts of those ecosystems and generally be stronger for it um I wouldn't I wouldn't stress too much about the first job being the perfect job because it rarely will be but you will learn a lot and you you need to focus on getting what you can out of it wow okay great thanks so much Nicole um so now I'm going to hand over to Sarah from the New Economics Foundation who's going to get into the thorny issue of applying for jobs in this sector go for it Sarah. Hi um I yeah as I have not got a set of slides or a presentation I'm afraid but I am going to talk you through um the process the application process that we have at Neff and that is quite similar to many other organizations having um asked around a little bit and then share a couple of tips that I've um I've got from a bunch of different colleagues so just for some background I have been involved in hiring three assistant researchers um at the New Economics Foundation over the last two years um uh two I was on the interview panel on one year sifting um and assistant researchers of what we call the I guess the entry level um part researcher part on the policy side in particular um so the way it works for us is um you it's like a lot of application processes you submit an application and we have a specific form others may ask for a cover letter and CV within shortlist applications um now normally we get somewhere between 100 and 500 applications for each of our um entry level positions um and the most recent one had was at the upper end of that I think so that's it's I'm not trying to put anyone off but it's important to be not disheartened I guess if you don't necessarily get the first job that you apply for because to some extent it is just um it is there's a quite a significant element of luck as well although you can obviously do a lot to to kind of come around that so we get all these applications and then we shortlist them um by explicitly scoring all applications in terms of whether a person has met the specification criteria specified on the job description most job descriptions will have a list of required elements and a list of desirable elements um are we um score specifically on the required elements so you will potentially be shortlisted if you have all the required elements you do not need to have all the desirable elements it's the required elements that we really focus on um and that's another point that I really want to impress upon everybody because um I think a lot of times people are put off by these long lists of desirable skills and desirable additional things that um get put on job descriptions to be honest a lot of the time that is just done by by people kind of just thinking about what would be desirable but they're genuinely not required so some people would only apply for a job if they have literally everything on that list I actually am one of those people um but that doesn't or I felt like I was one of those people but that you shouldn't necessarily need need them um and so I would strongly encourage everyone to apply as long as you have all the required elements the desirable ones are kind of nice additional nice to have but are not completely necessary so we'll score everybody um you must well basically score each element against um against criteria where you get a nought if something's not met one if it's partially met or two if it's fully met and you need to get a two in all required things to be eligible um and then we look at all the top scores and essentially pick our our favorites um in a discussion um internally we then invite the shortlisted candidates to interview so normally we invite six people to interview from our pool of between a hundred and five hundred so it really is narrowing down quite a lot they'll then have a short task to write a blog and an interview um and sometimes a second interview but so given all that here are some specific tips I've uh I've gathered from talking to a variety of different colleagues so firstly you will probably be one of um lots of applicants so really make it easy to see how you meet the job spec and address absolutely everything that is required in the desirable thing um you could quite it can be quite easy so you're simply kind of bullet point and explicitly use the wording from a job description um or an application um so that you stand out to the people who are just sifting through the applications um you basically want to make it as easy as possible for the person reading your application to understand exactly how you meet the criteria specified um now that might seem a little bit like you're kind of just I was a bit worried that my first application didn't look very sophisticated because it was just a list of bullet points about how I'd address how I met the kind of the job specification but that now that I've been the one on the other side kind of reading through all the applications that is perfect that is exactly what you want you just want to see how someone meets the criteria that you've asked for um the second thing is don't worry too much about demonstrating things through formal work experience or not through formal work experience or however whatever your experiences are just think about how those experiences explicitly link to whatever is required in the job specification um you can use a university project for something for example if it says working in a team feel free to use a university project if that is your experience that you've got um I for example there was um a bit in my um one that asked for application uh sorry that asked for experience using um a specific statistical analysis software that I had only used at university I hadn't used in any kind of professional capacity um I was worried that that meant that I wasn't eligible um but I applied anyway and it turned out that was completely fine I've been taught on the job it's not been an issue so it's fine to just be honest about your experiences and it's fine to use university experiences if that's what you've got um thirdly it's really helpful to demonstrate clearly your interest in the values of the organization um not potentially just by repeating phrases at the website but it's it's helpful to specifically engage with one or two pieces of recent research that you found particularly insightful or particularly interesting and explain why in the application just so people can see why you're specifically interested in in this organization as opposed to another organization um it's also fine if you don't have kind of the kind of the standard um a standard route that's completely fine if you've got previous work experience in a completely different sector um just be clear about that and talk about how the skills that you've got from there might apply so um our most recent assistant researcher um he spent three years working at Vodafone before switching into the think tank sector and was able to demonstrate um in his interview how his experience of working in a team at Vodafone meant that he had skills to work in a team at the organized at the organization I work for um another point is to ask for feedback so you may not get a job or you may not even get an interview because there will potentially be quite a few candidates applying it's completely a fine to ask for feedback sometimes you're really really close um it might just be that somebody else was um had a very as more specific fit or it might be that you had a really good application but there was say one thing missing so it's completely fine to ask for feedback and can be really helpful if you do apply and just miss out um and finally you do not necessarily need any kind of specific degree but it really will vary by think tank so um at the new economics foundation we do not require um any specific degree um of any kind for any of our positions I don't oh the chief economist is required to have a first degree of some kind but actually our chief economist doesn't even have an economics degree he has a geography degree um and a lot of interest and um on the job training in economics so you don't necessarily need to have kind of what you might think of as standard but that is that does vary across different think tanks so what I would do in thinking about kind of your education pathway if you do have a couple of think tanks or or think tanks you might be interested in working in in mind have a look at what they require um because it is quite variable some of them might need um a master's and a specific subject but even if you don't necessarily have the exact requirement as set out in the job description it's worth if it's somewhere you really want to work just giving them a ring and seeing or contacting someone I linked in setting out your experiences and asking them if they think that it is a relevant fit because you might find that it actually is um often what's put out in job description is very much a one-size-fits-all thing but obviously everyone's got a lot of very different experiences so it's about learning how to translate your experiences into the job description or specification that is there to um get people's attention thanks very much Sarah you covered so much useful ground there um so I'm glad that you covered requirements or norm requirements about degrees because loads of people have asked about that um we've also had a really good question from Ella who asks about whether work in the think tank sector is stable and whether you tend to be employed for a period of time to research something specific or if you stick with the same employer kind of regardless of project if you like so that that is as far as I understand it very a variable by think tank depending on their funding model um a lot of think tanks do at least try for junior roles to provide some kind of continuity in certainty um so it may be that you would apply to work at a think tank you might start on a specific project but you then might work on another project later depending on on the funding but that isn't a true of all think tanks some do have kind of a specific fixed-term funding model I think that's getting rarer though and more and more think tanks are are very keen to provide um kind of that continuity and that support because it's also um quite stressful for junior staff to constantly feel like they have to switch um and so that is the direction that many think tanks are trying to move um you might find that they say um on the application that it's an initially a fixed-term contract say for a year with a possibility of future extensions that happens more at a senior level because that's more about you fundraising essentially for your own future position and happens less at a junior level um but it's also completely fine to ask if you see something like that like a fixed-term contract to say what what do you think is the likelihood of it being extended how how have people in the past have they been extended have they been kept on um and that can provide a bit more insight for you um to see whether that is going to provide you any kind of security and then it's your choice basically whether you want a job with security or whether you want that opportunity sure um there's been a couple of other questions about from a few different people about whether it's better to work for a more for a larger or more established organization or whether people should aim for smaller organizations obviously that's um there's probably an element of personal preference there but I wondered if you've got any thoughts about that what the benefits are maybe of working for organizations of different sizes um so I can only talk about my experiences I've worked I would say probably mostly for relatively small organizations I started off working in a very small organization with only five people and now I work in an organization that's got 50 people that Neff um working in a very small organization is good in many ways in that you get a lot more responsibility very quickly in that if you demonstrate your abilities it's a small team everyone does everything so that can be really good but you also then have less people to learn from um and you potentially have less opportunities to focus um so there's kind of I guess it's a swings and roundabouts thing I think for me it was really great to have some experiences in a small organization but I do I personally appreciate having more colleagues to learn from um and I guess more opportunities to do different things as well because it's a bigger organization not in terms of my role but in terms of subject areas because I can move around and they've got more we're less specialized because we're bigger yeah that makes total sense okay fantastic so we're pretty much out of time for this session now so as I mentioned at the beginning we have got six sessions over the next hour and a half um where you'll be able to talk to team members from different organizations about their role and maybe who will also be able to cover some of the questions we've had loads of questions in no way we could cover all of them in our time some of those sessions are running concurrently so you can choose kind of option A or option B to attend but all the sessions will be available recordings of them on the resolution foundation website afterwards the first two are going to start at 4.45 so 10 minutes from now session 2a is on influencing policy and session 2b is focusing on communications and media sessions 3a and 3b will start at quarter past five and the final pair of sessions will start at 5.40 and the links to join all these sessions are in the email sent to you earlier today so go and have a break and stretch your legs and then come back for the next round of sessions so I just like to thank Torsten and Nicole and Sarah again for their contributions to this session and hopefully we'll see you in those next sessions shortly thanks very much