This morning, just in the hour that you were getting ready for school, you made a lot of choices. For instance, maybe you had Shredded Wheat for breakfast, not Rice Krispies or Cheerios. Maybe you washed your hair with Pantene, not Suave. And then maybe your parents drove you to school in a Honda, not a Nissan or a Ford.

When you’re in the grocery store selecting something as simple and ordinary as a brand of shampoo, you might not think about it but there’s someone out there watching, recording, and analyzing your choices. Those (borderline creepy) people are market research analysts, who research and gather data about consumers and competitors in order to help a company market its products and services effectively. In a nutshell, market research analysts find out what people are buying, and what can be done to make them buy more of it.

Pretty much every company, from the oldest names in the biz to the flashiest, hippest startup where everyone’s wearing a plaid shirt and hipster beard – needs to know how to sell its products. In fact, analysts pop up in more places than zits on a greasy teen who doesn’t know what face cleanser is. But market research analysts tend to cluster in industries like finance, and insurance—the oily, zit-covered T-zones of the market research world.

Some market research analysts research trends for the specific company they work for. In that case, you better like the product you’re researching because your entire job is figuring out how much other people like the products and how you can get them to cough up the monies to buy it. Other market analysts are hired guns who work for consulting firms that swoop in to do all the dirty research work for their clients. And on rare occasions, people who work full-time in government or business who just don’t get enough spreadsheet-lovin’ in their day-to-day lives consult on a part-time basis.

Do you like making questionnaires? Aren’t sure? Want to take a questionnaire about it? If questionnaires, surveys, and polls sound like fun to you, then you might have the makings of a market researcher. You also need to know how to convert crazy complex data into easy-to-digest written reports, tables, and graphs. No one cares that the p-, q- or r- or something-value is this or that number. Your clients care about what that number tells them about their business. In this respect, you need to be a good middleman, able to translate numbers into language that managers can understand.

So you need to love statistics. And when we say, “You have to love statistics,” what we mean is, “You need to be the kind of person who leaves the office, goes home, makes a delightful Cobb salad, and relaxes, feet up on the table, by reading about real estate trends.” Just for funsies. “Market research analyst” is basically code for lovable, dweeby types more comfortable in front of a spreadsheet than in front of real people. Okay, to be fair, you might deal with humans every so often, such as when leading focus groups. But expect to spend your days in front of a spreadsheet for many, many hours at a time, until your eyes are bloodshot and your right index finger won’t stop twitching from all the clicking.

Honestly, it’s a good thing the average market research analyst is more into numbers than people, because you won’t have much of a social life with this job. As a market researcher, you’ll work regular business hours —and then some. While it’s true that you have some flexibility in the company that you work for, you have a lot less flexible hours. A tiny piece of paper saying your working hours are 50 to 55 hours per week doesn’t mean jack when you’re working under a deadline (which you always will be) and have two days to finish an eighty-page report on why a razor with seventeen blades won’t sell any better than a razor with five blades. Realize that you’ll be working between 60 and 70 hours a week, straining your eyes against the light of the computer screen, in your office all alone, while all your coworkers head home to go for a jog or have a nice family dinner.

Basically, this is a job for people who are interested in advertising, but don’t have the leadership savvy to lead marketing campaigns. Think less Don Draper, more John Tukey. It’s a job for people who like following and forecasting different marketplace and sales trends, but are too risk-averse to put their own money on the line or product on the shelves. And that’s okay. In return, market research analysts get a decent, steady paycheck and some pretty interesting behind-the-scenes insight into why we buy the things we buy.

If your head is filled with all sorts of new inventions—a hair dye that changes according to your mood! a microwave-hovercraft that drives you to school at the same time that it prepares your morning Hot Pocket!—then it doesn’t take a research analyst to know that this isn’t the right fit for you. But if you’re more interested in knowing which type of Hot Pocket the average college student would most want to eat while flying to school on a hovercraft, then maybe market research analysis is worth looking into.

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