Gongos adds 9 to staff, immediate plans to hire 3 more

Auburn Hills-based Gongos Research has already added nine employees in 2007 and have immediate plans to hire three more. Gongos conducts market research for corporations such as  Best Buy, Hallmark, Nestlé Purina, Domino’s Pizza, Borders, GM, OnStar and Polaris. The reason for the company’s growth, according to president John Gognos, is technology and talent.

“We track top talent and one of our key goals is to leverage technology.” 

In the industry, Gognos is known for its proprietary i°Communities social networking market reasearch site. “We use it to talk with consumers and launch surveys,” says Gognos. Compared to traditional methods of survey delivery, he explains, “There is a much faster turn- around time and a higher response rate.”

Gognos is continuously recruiting employees, he says. The typical researcher that Gognos keeps his eyes open for are marketing students with an interest in consumer behavior or psychology and a strong quantitative background. He has built relationships with area professors and conducts interviews of qualified candidates even prior to a position being open.

“We know we’re going to hire again in the next year or two and this gives us plenty of candidates. This way, we already have highly qualified people waiting for us. We’ve been able to find and attract strong talent in this area.” He says that this method has significantly improved the quality of employees that have been brought onto the Gognos team.

While seven of the recent hires were indeed researchers, two were programmers and the three positions currently available are also for programmers. “As we create more technical products, we need more programmers on staff,” says Gognos.

Gognos has been in business for 16 years and began diversifying its client base 12 years ago. “We used to be 100% automotive, now we are 30% automotive.” The company employs 65 full-time and 7 part-time.

Source: John Gognos, Gognos Research
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh