How I learned the value of research
And what you can learn from my experience
There’s an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, in which Spock learns that sometimes things go so wrong that you just have to laugh. Today, in a job interview, I had to laugh through an explanation of one of my biggest failures. As the title infers that failure had to do with research.
The situation
I worked at REI for a year with 12 other writers. Our job was quite literally the best job you could ever have. Each of us was hired to write about our favorite sports. An expert fly fisherman wrote about that and other water sports. A guy who hiked the PCT covered hiking and camping. A woman who regularly competed in marathons covered fitness gear, and so on.
The reason for all this activity was that REI had a poor internet presence at the time. They had launched their site in 1996, but it wasn’t getting the traction they were hoping for. Jump ahead a few years, and the writing crew were all hired to make the site a place people wanted to go to. Our articles were an authentic upsell mechanism to help guide people to the right gear for their latest adventure.
After about a year and a half, we had basically completed that task, when several developments came into play — the Razor scooter came out and proved to be immensely popular; new…
