Intern - Allstate Research & Planning Center Job Listing at Allstate Insurance Company in Menlo Park, CA

We are seeking an intern to work for 12 weeks in the summer in the role of Researcher and Designer in the Consumer-Centric Research division of the Knowledge Discovery Group.

Responsibilities/Key Activities:

This internship is ideal for the person who wants to understand and be involved with all stages of developing a new product or service.   You will assist the team with projects at various stages of product development, from early-stage needfinding to late-stage user testing and data analysis.  

Depending on the timing of the internship, you may participate in: needfinding research (ethnographic, interviews, secondary); the iterative steps of brainstorming and obtaining user feedback; and/or the management of large-scale product testing and feedback.   Responsibilities may include: arranging and assisting in discussion groups; brainstorming new concepts or improving on existing ones; coordinating product distribution to test users; and/or analyzing data from user testing.   Through it all, you must be an avid observer and note-taker as well as a meticulous and thorough project manager, capable of working with a team to glean insights and customer needs from our research – whether qualitative or quantitative in nature.  

By the end of your internship, you should have assisted in developing a potential new product or service idea (or two).  

Skills/Experience :

• Graduate-level student with a concentration in Product Design, Human Factors, Interaction Design, Sociocultural Anthropology, Psychology, or the like.  

• Previous work experience.

• Work or academic experience that demonstrates familiarity with ethnographic research or needfinding.

• Work or academic experience that demonstrates familiarity with handling data.

• Meticulous attention to detail in execution of a large project.

• Strong written and oral communication skills.

• Team player but able to work independently with minimum direction

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint).

• Ethnographic research and needfinding experience are a plus.

• Must be eligible to work in the U.S. on a full-time basis. Allstate does not sponsor individuals who are not already authorized to work in the United States .

Most important qualities for the candidate are:

§   curiosity:   a desire to understand the customer and why they make the decisions they do;

§   empathy: the ability to relate to the customer and thus uncover their motivations and needs;

§   attention to detail: the capability to perform any research systematically and accurately

§   creativity: the ability to take a list of needs and insights and come up with 30 new ideas

§   strategic focus: the skill to understand the big picture without getting mired in details

§   strong work ethic:   the innate drive to do work extremely well

§   enthusiasm : a passion to understand people and deliver better products and services to them