Hello. We’re the lang cat and we’re hiring again. You can’t stop a good thing when it’s on a roll. (Of course, this isn’t strictly accurate; a well-placed obstruction of sufficient size and density will do the job quite nicely. But that’s not important right now.)

We’re expanding the research and analysis side of the lang cat. We’re known for our in-depth understanding of how stuff works, particularly in and around platforms, pensions and investments. We use this understanding to advise our clients, help advisers with selecting which Stuff to use (this gets called ‘due diligence’ but shouldn’t be, really) and produce our famous guides and research papers, which cleverly mix top quality analysis with pictures of aggressive cross-dressing cartoon cats.

In recent times we’ve found the demand for this stuff is in danger of outstripping our capacity, and so it’s time to scale up. So we are looking for one or more research analysts, proposition analysts or research and proposition analysts, depending on your point of view.

Here are the things that the successful applicant(s) will be involved in:

• Researching and analysing propositions in the retail investment market
• Designing and implementing research programmes with advisers; writing these up and potentially presenting back to clients
• Developing, updating and maintaining our sprawling proposition databases
• Conducting due diligence reviews with advisers (we’ll show you how)
• Helping with the production of our regular market insight products
• Catching interesting things as they happen and turning them into insight that we and our clients can use
• Helping out on bespoke client work including analysis, writing up, proofing and checking.

There might be more. You don’t have to be ninja level in all of these; you might be a proposition analyst specialist, for example, or maybe a dyed-in-the-wool researcher. Both are fine, and that’s why we aren’t being specific on how many folk we are looking for.

WHAT SORT OF CAT ARE YOU?

To be successful you’ll need to be:

• Experienced in retail financial services, sorry, but these are specialist areas in which to work
• Able to demonstrate relevant experience in either research, proposition management, or analysis
• Be brilliant at assessing data, proposition features and market trends and turning your assessments into compelling written analysis
• Literate and numerate, and maybe even able to deal with PowerBI and SQL

In terms of the sort of person you need to be, we’re looking for:

• the ability to stop fannying about and get ripped in
• the curiosity and subject matter interest which takes you past the job in hand and into the bits on top or off to the side that really lift the work above the herd
• an innate confidence, not arrogance, in your experience, knowledge and skills
• the gumption to hold your own in a team of strong-willed and often bloody-minded financial services professionals
• an ability to work a problem until you can find a solution for it.

We’re a small team of just under 20 folk, so you’ll need to be able to build close relationships quickly with your colleagues; we all depend on each other every day.

EXCHANGING YOUR LABOUR FOR REMUNERATION

We think these are full-time gigs in our lovely airy offices in fashionable Leith. You might think different, and you might be right, so we’re happy to hear from those who reckon they can nail it with different working patterns. We are supporters of flexible working and lots of us have different work patterns depending on family commitments.

Salary is dependent on experience. No-one ever knows what that means in ads like this, but make the case for what you think you’re worth and why. We’ve seen similar gigs at/around the £25k-£35k mark so that’s where our heads are at. If we’re wrong tell us why.

There’s a bonus scheme, life cover, a training allowance, a pension to which we pay 8% of your salary a year, and you can have a holiday sometimes if you must. The coffee is plentiful and there are biscuits from time to time if anyone remembers to go to the shop.

WHAT TO DO NOW!  GO GO GO

If your resting heart rate has just gone through the ceiling then send an email here at your earliest convenience.. We’ll want a decent covering note and a CV, and we’d love to see anything you can show us in terms of projects you’ve worked on before that we might find interesting.

Pro tip: it’ll be worth taking 5 minutes to read up on us and what we do before you apply.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Now GO.

The closing date is 23 July 2018. We won’t respond to any applications before that date, so don’t worry if you don’t hear anything straight away.

A note to agencies

Hi handsome. As ever, we’re not going to spend money on agency fees, which sucks if you’re you but is really good if you’re us. If you really believe you have the answer to our dreams, by all means get in touch, but by doing so you agree that if we don’t take your candidate you will pay us 25% of the first year’s salary he or she was hoping for. Sauce for the goose, etc.