Consultant - Education

Consultant - Education

Department: Consulting

Employment Type: Temps plein

Location: Montreal, Canada - Head Office

Reporting To: Director of Consulting

Description

The Decision Lab is an applied behavioral science consulting firm based in Montréal. Our mission is to democratize the insights generated by behavioral insights to help people live better lives. We’re a young company, but we punch above our weight: in the past, we’ve worked with partners like the Gates Foundation, Capital One, and the World Bank, using scientific thinking to tackle some of the thorniest problems of our day.

Everything we do at TDL is guided by SPICE: Socially conscious, Pragmatic, Inventive, Catalytic, and Evidence-based. You can read more about us and our core values here.

We started The Decision Lab because we saw a fundamental gap between behavioral science theory and application. The Consultant role is at the front line of bridging this gap. This means that we look for bright, capable and curious candidates with a strong grasp of behavioral science concepts (from the point of view of behavioral economics, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, etc.) who have a thirst for translating evidence (be it desk research, experiments or analytics) into practical and valuable solutions and content for private clients or public consumption.

The Decision Lab is a place where you can learn to use evidence-based approaches to solve diverse & complex challenges. You will work alongside intelligent & free-thinking colleagues who lead with optimism, pragmatism and empathy. Rather than reusing the same behavior change frameworks, TDL develops custom solutions – this means that in addition to being evidence-based, your role will be fundamentally creative and you will have the opportunity to evolve and express your thinking in the work you do. Our team members help and empower each other and we have a rich set of tools and frameworks that you will be exposed to, but you will ultimately be responsible for your work – past hires tell us they are surprised to what extent they are able to take intellectual ownership of the projects they work on.

What you'll be working on

• Performing desk research, data analysis, and stakeholder interviews to understand and document the project context
• Perform research and capacity‑building activities focused on improving understanding of the K‑12 market (and beyond) for products and services
• Finding and synthesizing relevant research
• Working with a diversity of stakeholders to situate the project context and identify stakeholder needs
• Adapting proprietary and third‑party data‑gathering instruments to uncover systemic and behavioral challenges in education
• Generating hypotheses and validating them through targeted fieldwork
• Analyzing and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative findings to answer core questions
• Prioritizing findings and distilling key insights by collaborating with other consultants and directors to produce client‑facing deliverables
• Creating and delivering workshops and other skill‑building activities with stakeholders
• Presenting findings to internal and client stakeholder groups; including funders and project partners
• Producing reports that highlight key insights in user‑friendly ways
• Guiding junior team members, including associates, to support the above activities

What we are looking for

We are looking for a candidate with professional experience in and knowledge of the education sector in addition to experience working as a consultant or researcher. Key attributes of the ideal candidate include:

• Experience: 2+ years experience in a role in either the for‑profit or non‑profit sector working on issues related to education and equity, preferably in the U.S. K‑12 education sector. The ideal candidate will have worked on any or all of the above: system‑level education issues, K12 market dynamics, and capacity building with actors in the education system.
• Analytic Rigor: You are committed to using rigorous testing to decide what the right course of action is rather than relying on intuition; a good grasp of qualitative and quantitative methods, experimental design, and statistics is a plus, including awareness of the considerations of scaling interventions in education contexts.
• Business Sense: You are a holistic, strategic thinker who constantly connects the dots between ideas, problems, organizations, and how ethical & sustained impact can be achieved; strong verbal & written skills are a must
• Culture: You are an independent thinker comfortable working in an often ambiguous and dynamic environment

About the role

• Type: Permanent position
• Hybrid - 2 days a week in Montreal office
• Seniority level and responsibility for this role scale based on candidate experience, on a case‑by‑case basis.