THE ROLE

JOSEPH is looking for an Associate to join the strategic work of the firm.

This is a role for someone at the beginning of an exceptional career in strategy.

You will work alongside Strategists and Principals on real questions facing real organizations—investigating markets, studying customers, analyzing competitors, testing assumptions, and helping turn what we learn into strategic direction.

You will not spend your first years sitting far away from the thinking.

You will be part of it.

We expect Associates to be curious, rigorous, resourceful, and increasingly capable of forming a point of view of their own.

You don't need to arrive knowing every answer.

You need to be unusually good at finding them.

THE WORK

Strategy begins with understanding.

Before we recommend where a brand should compete, we need to understand the market.

Before we decide which customer matters most, we need to understand how customers actually behave.

Before we recommend a position, we need to understand what competitors own, what customers value, and where an opportunity exists.

That work requires more than collecting information.

It requires knowing what to look for.

You will help our teams investigate difficult questions, find credible evidence, identify patterns, and determine what those findings mean for the strategic decision in front of us.

Over time, you'll move from helping find the evidence to helping determine the answer.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Conduct research across markets, customers, competitors, categories, and broader cultural and business trends.
• Find credible information from primary and secondary sources.
• Analyze qualitative and quantitative information.
• Identify patterns, contradictions, opportunities, and unanswered questions.
• Build competitive landscapes and market perspectives.
• Support customer and audience analysis.
• Contribute to positioning, customer, competitive, and growth strategy engagements.
• Test hypotheses against available evidence.
• Turn research into observations and observations into insight.
• Help build clear, rigorous strategic arguments.
• Contribute to presentations and client materials.
• Participate in internal strategy discussions and client working sessions.
• Work directly with Strategists, Principals, and Research Analysts.
• Develop and defend your own point of view.
• Contribute to JOSEPH's growing body of knowledge and thinking.

THE STANDARD

We don't expect Associates to know everything.

We expect them to want to understand everything.

You notice things.

You ask why.

You keep looking when the first search doesn't produce the answer.

You question information rather than simply repeating it.

You recognize the difference between something that is interesting and something that changes how we understand the problem.

You care about details because details can change conclusions.

But you can also step away from the details and ask:

What does this actually mean?

That question matters here.

HOW YOU THINK

You are curious beyond your job description.

A new industry doesn't intimidate you. It makes you want to understand how it works.

You enjoy discovering connections other people haven't noticed.

You are skeptical of easy answers.

You don't confuse confidence with correctness.

You can change your mind.

You can receive criticism without becoming defensive and challenge an idea without making the disagreement personal.

You care about language because clear writing usually reflects clear thinking.

You don't wait to be told every next step.

When you encounter something you don't understand, your instinct is to investigate it.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

We are interested in exceptional early-career candidates from a range of backgrounds.

You may have experience in strategy, consulting, marketing, research, economics, business, communications, analytics, consumer insights, or another discipline that taught you how to investigate problems and think critically.

You may also be entering strategy from somewhere less conventional.

That's okay.

We care about intellectual curiosity, analytical ability, communication, initiative, and evidence that you can learn quickly.

Strong writing matters.

Strong research skills matter.

The ability to explain why you believe something matters.

A prestigious résumé is not the requirement.

Potential is.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

This is not an administrative support position.

It is not account coordination.

It is not social media management.

It is not campaign execution.

And it is not a role where junior people are expected to quietly take notes while everyone else does the thinking.

There will be foundational work. There will be details. There will be research that requires patience and discipline.

But there should always be a reason for it.

We expect you to understand the question behind the work—and increasingly contribute to answering it.

WHY JOSEPH

The beginning of a career matters.

The environment you enter teaches you what good work looks like, what questions are worth asking, and what standards you accept for yourself.

At JOSEPH, you will learn strategy by being close to strategy.

Close to the research.

Close to the problem.

Close to experienced strategists.

Close to the client.

And close to the decisions our work is intended to influence.

You will see how an ambiguous question becomes a structured problem, how evidence becomes insight, how insight becomes choice, and how choice becomes direction.

Then you'll begin doing more of it yourself.

HOW YOU'LL GROW

Your responsibility should grow as quickly as your judgment does.

At first, you may own a piece of research.

Then an analysis.

Then a hypothesis.

Then part of the argument.

Eventually, you'll be expected to look at a difficult question and determine how you would approach it yourself.

We will challenge your thinking.

We will ask you why.

We will expect you to defend your conclusions.

And when the evidence doesn't support them, we'll expect you to change them.

The goal isn't to make you excellent at being an Associate.

The goal is to develop you into an exceptional strategist.

COMPENSATION

JOSEPH intends to attract exceptional people and compensate them accordingly.

Compensation for this position will be competitive and commensurate with experience, capabilities, and the scope of responsibility.

Specific compensation and benefits will be discussed during the interview process and reflected in the final offer as applicable.

LOCATION

JOSEPH is based in Orange County, California.

The nature of our work requires close collaboration with firm leadership, colleagues, and clients. Specific working arrangements and expectations will be discussed during the interview process.

ABOUT JOSEPH

JOSEPH is a strategic marketing advisory firm.

We help leadership make the choices that shape positioning, customers, competition, and growth.

We work upstream of execution—where the problem is defined, priorities are established, tradeoffs are made, and direction is determined.

Our job is not to add complexity.

It is to reduce it.

Know Your Move.