Fight Extreme Poverty: Behavioral Researcher & Strategist / Lead Consultant

[UPDATE: While we are still accepting applications for future projects, we will not be reviewing new submissions until mid-January due to the high volume of interest and the holiday season. Thank you for your understanding!]

Are you a marketer or designer with a heart for social and environmental impact? Are you passionate about human behavior, qualitative research, and client success?

Appleseed is seeking seasoned and well-rounded behavioral practitioners (marketers, service designers, UX designers, ethnographers, etc.) to join our team of consultants. These collaborators would be client-facing and work both remotely and in the field. They must also share our core values and have the experience and disposition needed to thrive on a globally-distributed small team. We are hiring individuals for an initial project lasting ~4months, with the opportunity to join the Appleseed core team should the initial collaboration be a win-win.

• Type of Role: Full time employee, starting as a Freelance Consultant on first project
• Estimated Duration: 3-5 months for first project
• Location and Start Date: please see project briefings below
• Compensation: USD$80-100K per year salary, but starting with the first project rate (below)

Please feel free to apply even if you are unavailable or uninterested in these particular projects, but are interested in exploring a fit. We'd be happy to do that now, so when the right project opportunity comes up, we can team up with no delay!

Company Overview

 Appleseed is a behavioral agency for global development. We are obsessed with one big problem across the sector: important solutions failing to stick.

Our clients are fighting to end poverty or protect the planet. When they struggle to engage people or drive uptake of a service, product, or idea, they and/or their funders will put us on the case. Appleseed consultants dive deep—taking an ethnographic approach to investigate the challenge and uncover human insights. Then we help our clients design accordingly and bring about changes required for impact.

We envision a day when all impact organizations design purely based on people’s needs and realities. We partner only with nonprofits and funders who seek to preserve human dignity as they go about fostering change within communities. See how we have enabled:

• smallholder farmers in Senegal to space crops for higher yields ‍
• schoolchildren in Kenya to stop drinking contaminated water , or
• farmers in Guatemala to plant a new kind of maize, fortified to combat malnutrition

Working with Appleseed, collaborators may expect:

• Flexible and energizing work culture
• Interesting and meaningful challenges and travel experience
• Exposure to a network of top social impact leaders (doers and funders)
• Small team of candid, curious, fun, and motivated colleagues

To learn more, visit www.appleseedimpact.org

Project Briefings

All our client engagements start with part-time remote preparation: internal onboarding of new team members to Appleseed culture and methodology, data / literature review, stakeholder interviews, project kick-off with the Client, and research planning. Then, we travel to conduct a 2-3 week in-country stint for field research. This 2-3 week in-country stint is full-time and all-consuming. This research stint is followed by part-time remote work to complete the Research Phase and Strategy Phase: research reporting, facilitating acceptance of research insights, and co-designing a strategic playbook with the Client. The Client will then be responsible for experimentation and implementation, based on the behavioral strategy we delivered. Sometimes offer follow-on services to support experimentation and implementation.

All phases of an engagement are handled by a 2-person team: a Project Lead and a Deputy. During the in-country research stint, two client-side team members would join our team of two to conduct mixed-method qualitative research. Fixers and interpreters will be provided by the client or hired as needed. Throughout the project, another Appleseed team member would provide thought-partnership and support remotely.

We are seeking a Lead Consultant. However, if you were to join us, you'd initially serve as the Deputy Behavioral Researcher & Strategist (and a member of Appleseed's core team would lead client management and all phases of work). If you and Appleseed agree there is a mutual fit and desire to continue collaborating, you would then lead the next engagement with a core team member serving as your Deputy.

Nigeria Project - The client on this engagement is a social impact organization based in Nigeria solving uncorrected vision impairment that limits productivity and livelihoods. The target audience will be low-income adults over the age of 40 y.o. in who are screened at a vision camp and confirmed to have presbyopia. The behavioral challenge is for them to purchase a pair of reading glasses at vision camps after being screened and diagnosed with presbyopia (baseline adoption: approximately 1 in 3).

• 2-3 weeks remote part-time + 2 weeks in-person full-time (international travel required) + 2-3 weeks remote part-time. Does not include holidays.
• Collaborating with the Client and team members in different time zones
• Target start date: mid-December
• Compensation: USD$9K-12K

DRC or Ethiopia Project - The client on this engagement is a social impact organization based in Tanzania addressing the lack of accessible and quality education for African children. The target audience will be family caretakers. The behavioral challenge is for them to select and show educational content to their children.

• 4-6 weeks remote part-time + 2-3 weeks in-person full-time (international travel required) + 4-6 weeks remote part-time. Does not include holidays.
• Collaborating with the Client and team members in different time zones
• Target start date: January 2025
• Compensation: USD$16K-20K

The Role

As a Behavioral Research and Strategy Consultant, you would deliver world-class service to our clients around the world. This would entail preparing for and conducting investigative research in the field, analyzing data and reporting insights, producing strategic recommendations, and always upholding Appleseed's brand promise to clients.

On your initial Appleseed project, you would serve in a Deputy role, helping the team leader to carry out client engagements from end-to-end. While your role will be as the Deputy in this first project, we are currently looking for someone ready to be the Team Lead on their subsequent Appleseed project.

As part of Appleseed's inner circle of collaborators, you'd have ongoing chances to work on diverse issues, from agriculture, financial inclusion, WASH, infectious diseases, vision, and more, all while getting a privileged behind-the-scenes look at the operations of various impact organizations. You would also have the chance to learn from and contribute to our model, org culture, aspects of service delivery, and the various techniques we use to uncover and communicate behavioral insights.

If you find all of this exciting, we now invite you to consider our requirements and expectations for this role.

Requirements

Please Do NOT Apply If…

• Your familiarity with the work of changing behavior (however you call it) is more theoretical than practical. I.e. it comes more from books, school, academia, or the experiences of others, instead of your own past efforts
• You're looking for an entry-level or mid-level position
• You cannot name several different teams that you’d be happy for us to call and ask about how you’ve collaborated and added value
• Adventure isn’t in your DNA
• It would be very jarring for you to spend time on a research trip (and possibly spend the night) in a village or urban slum without running water, electricity, or a toilet, while dealing with mosquitoes and the risk of stomach bugs
• You take significant pride in being a perfectionist or workaholic
• You consider yourself to be very wise
• You feel uncomfortable giving/receiving candid feedback and being vulnerable with team members
• This “please do not apply if” section rubs you the wrong way

Please DO Apply If… ✅

• Practical behavior change (however you call it) is your craft, and it has been for many years, approaching or exceeding a decade or more. You enjoy and practice all aspects (research, strategy, design), and you always start with the audience
• If you’ve worked as a consultant, you’ve built authentic and lasting relationships with your clients
• You’d like to join a small remote team doing hard things, and to participate in its growth
• You thrive in small tight-knit groups, and would help tighten the knitting
• You’re a generalist, even if you’re very good at certain things
• There is no work you consider beneath you
• You’re always seeking wisdom
• You consider feedback a gift, even when it is hard to give or receive
• You’re more of a leader than a follower, but you’re certainly able to follow.
• You’re an avid reader and would be excited to join Appleseed’s Book Club

Hiring Process

The team expects to evaluate shortlisted candidates before coming to terms with the best-fitting candidate. Our process will be a two-way conversation to set up a win-win scenario. Applicants are free to suggest other steps, and we always welcome feedback on the candidate experience.

• STAGE 1️⃣ If you believe there's a great fit worth exploring, please answer a questionnaire by clicking "Apply for this job" below. You can expect to hear back promptly. Select candidates will be asked to have a quick exploratory chat (20 min).
• STAGE 2️⃣ If we both agree to continue, qualified candidates will be given a fictional scenario and asked to set up, conduct, and record an interview with a volunteer + write up any insights or recommendations.
• STAGE 3️⃣ Candidates who reach this stage will be given a second challenge, a fictional scenario to prep for a client call and provide feedback for the client.

We know this process will require time and energy investment from both sides, but we think it behooves us to do so to seriously explore a fit. Appleseed is building an inner circle of trusted collaborators. If successful, you may expect this one-time exploration of fit to translate into years of fruitful collaboration!

If you have any questions or comments, please email us at team@appleseedimpact.org. We respect and thank you in advance for the time and energy you spend going through the application process!

Requirements

Qualifications

1. The Craft and Expertise of Marketing to Change Behavior: pursuing mastery in the art and skill of fostering positive and sustainable behavior change. Significant practical experience and theoretical knowledge in a related field, such as marketing or design. This requirement is non-negotiable, and candidates will be tested.
2. B2B Consulting Ability: ideally demonstrated with years of proven track record, great client relationships, and experience showing the diverse skill set required to run the full project lifecycle. By “consultant” we mean you were hired by a client (typically another organization) to deliver services and solve problems on their behalf, and NOT as part of an academic endeavor.
3. Field-Readiness: ideally this would be demonstrated by having led field investigations researching people in places analogous to where we work (e.g. rural villages, informal settlements, etc. of Africa, Asia, and Latin America). Researchers must be ready to live for several days with and among those living in extreme poverty (possibly in places with no running water, electricity, or toilets, sleeping on concrete floors, while dealing with mosquitoes and the risk of stomach bugs, etc.)
4. Remote Teamwork Ability: being self-starting, communicative, accountable, and able to foster trust and belonging within a small remote team.
5. Strong Writing Skills: clear, concise writing both in interpersonal communication and in research reporting.

️ Responsibilities

1. Client Success: delivering impact and client satisfaction, by supporting and leading the project team in executing engagements from start to finish, via the following tasks:
1. Unbiased, mostly qualitative, ethnographic research (field and remote)
2. Development of strategic recommendations
3. Leading clients to internalize findings and accept recommendations
4. Guidance on lean experimentation (if scoped)
5. Client management
6. Note: our engagements focus much more on research & strategy, vs. design/build & implementation)
2. Team and Project Management: maintaining a healthy culture and staying true to Appleseed's core values; managing and training yourself, junior team members, and possibly other freelancers—to achieve objectives on-method, on-time, on-budget.

We trust you to self-filter based on the requirements above and the statements below, so that we may either explore a fit or avoid wasting each other’s time! Culture fit is paramount to us, and we have a good sense of what will / won’t work out. f these criteria encourage you to apply, we look forward to hearing from you!