In Depth: An interview with Vera Kerr

She came into the industry, though, virtually by accident. A neighbour in Sheffield was carrying out market research on a big government job, and wanted help with interviewing. Vera went along and never looked back.

Some four years later, she was asked to help out with her first qual project. "I remember it well," she says. "It was to recruit people for a group discussion, eight people who had bought Tyne Brand minced meat, back in 1970."

Her involvement in market research caused a stir with friends and relatives..

"I was just a housewife with three kids and you didn't work in those days," she says. "You were a loose woman if you did. My husband used to be horrified. But it got my brain going and I thought it was marvellous. Living in a semi-detached in Sheffield, I had all these people from London turning up in long fur coats and Doctor Who scarves."

Times have changed, however, and not just on the fashion front. Her first priority, in days of yore, was to make people feel relaxed when recruiting. She was taught, she says, that the most important thing was to make them feel good.

Nowadays the wheel has turned full circle. The group has to fit much more with the client rather than vice versa. One example, she says, is that clients can ring up wanting mothers with kids at three in the afternoon. "Well, anybody knows that the most important thing for a mum is to be outside the school gates at that time," she says, "not contributing to a group discussion. Clients are being unrealistic. And nowadays it is very hard to get groups of women during the day because most of them work."

As for the recruiters, there are rumours that they represent a dying breed. The problem, says Vera, is that many newcomers lack staying power. "Young ones come in, but they don¹t stick it," she says. "It is not so much a matter of pay, but of antisocial hours."

It could be that the industry is creating a problem for itself in years to come. The warning lights have already gone on at certain ad agencies, whose Christmas recruiter lunches attract few under fifty, and probably none under forty.

Panels are often put forward as a viable alternative, but she gives them short thrift, relating horror stories of the US where they are commonplace. In her view, the recruitment of a group is virtually an art form. She prides herself on knowing the inhabitants of her home town, of mentally filing any new acquaintance she makes, either while working or down at the local supermarket.