Principal Consultant

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 700 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Finland and beyond. 

The Role

This is an exciting opportunity for a candidate eager to help leading companies and market participants by delivering custom consulting engagements that enable our clients to thrive in volatile commodity markets.

The Principal Consultant will focus on leading and delivering custom consulting and research projects that span the forest products industry, including timber, wood products, pulp, paper, packaging and tissue. Specifically, you will lead and deliver projects that include tailored market overviews and outlooks, assessments and analysis supporting financing and financial due-diligence, feedstock analysis, industry cost modelling and analysis, supply-chain mapping and other bespoke engagements.

You will be joining a dynamic global team dedicated to analysing and forecasting the forest products industry. You will leverage Fastmarkets' existing data, insights and analyst team as an integral component of our consulting delivery.

The ideal candidate will thrive in a fast-paced and innovative environment, have a can-do attitude and can juggle a wide variety of tasks and projects.

Responsibilities

• Winning, executing, and project managing a range of commodity-related market consultancy projects across forest products markets
• Leading the delivery of consultancy projects with a strong onus on meeting client requirements, expectations and deadlines utilizing modelling, data collection, and research interview techniques 
• Developing and delivering compelling and impactful high-quality deliverables that are robust, accurate, and well-researched
• Customizing house forecasts and cost models, including supply, demand, capacity, cost, and other critical metrics
• Partnering with our sales teams to develop and support strategies to drive the commercial success of the consulting practice
• Developing and building existing customer relationships and acquiring new consultancy customers, as well as repeat business
• Creating customized pitch decks and proposals utilizing strong technical knowledge of the commodity markets
• Participating in events and sales/marketing activities with a focus on existing and potential client business opportunities
• Utilizing professional network to source independent contractors to support delivery of engagements.

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world's leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We're proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on...

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

• 10+ years of consulting experience in forest products commodities research and analysis, including timber, pulp, paper, packaging and/or timber.
• Ability and experience in managing, conducting, and researching commodity market studies both self-sufficiently, as well as with members of a team often not located in the same office
• Strong acumen and desire for business development is essential
• Experience in complex solution selling and project execution/management involving single-client consultancy services work
• Experience in project and client relationship management across varying customer profiles
• Strong commercial focus with good understanding from working with stakeholders at C-level
• Fluent in English, a second language preferred
• Effective communication in person, online, and in writing (Word and PowerPoint)
• Flexibility and willingness to travel when required
• An already established client and industry contact network is desirable
• Self-starter and 'hunter' mentality with strong personal drive is essential, with the ability to thrive in a multitasking environment
• Accountable and performance-driven
• Effective and amiable team player keen on making clients, project members, and colleagues happy while achieving ambitious objectives.

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It's this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

• METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers' experience and our business performance
  
   
• ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
  
   
• GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
  
   
• INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
  
   
• CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
  
   
• COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

You've read a little about us – now it's over to you

If you like what you've read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it's time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it's used to determine whether or not you'll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we'll ask you on the day.

It's vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you're great.