MAVEN ANALYTICS….the best advice from Analytics Recruiters
Our expert Recruiter panel is back. This time they are talking about Analytics the skills that are hardest to find.
Understanding scarcity in the job market can help you steer your development in the right direction.
Here are just some of the themes that emerged…
1) Data science & machine learning skills are hard to find
This probably comes as no surprise, but it was eye opening to hear most of our Recruiters with similar stories.
2) Business problem solving is in high demand
The question specified “technical skills”, but Recruiters still listed problem solving skills as being in-demand.
3) Communication skills are critical and can be hard to find
Again, despite the call for technical skills, we heard how important communication can be.
We talk a lot about the tools. We should probably talk more about applying them to business needs.
You might have seen our article on the best advice from Analytics Recruiters. If you found their advice valuable (I know I did!) and have been waiting for more, you’ll enjoy this…
Today we’ve asked our expert Recruiter panel another high value question:
What is the hardest analytics technical skill to find when you are searching for candidates?
Why should you care about their answers to this question?
As we’ve talked about before, when you’re building a career, you want to put yourself on the right side of supply and demand. When your skills are both rare and valuable, you’ll be in demand and will be able to write your own ticket.
By understanding the skills that Recruiters are having a hard time finding, you can start to think about which of these rare and valuable skills might be a fit for your interests and ambitions, and you can start learning.
Of course, you don’t have to learn all of these, or any of them. But, if you’ve been thinking about how to make yourself more valuable, and weren’t sure what to learn next, these are great candidates.
(Re-)Introducing our Recruiter panel
As a reminder, we brought you the best. Here’s a quick rundown of their credentials…
- Each of these people is at the top of their game. They are Founders, CEOs, Partners, Managing Directors, VPs. We brought you the best!
- They have a TON of experience. The MINIMUM experience in Recruiting for this panel is 15 years. The Max. 30 years! These people know the deal. Listen to them.
- They all specialize. Remember last time when we talked about focus being your friend? These are niche players. That means they have deep expertise and a vast network in a specific area. This is the type of Recruiter you want to connect with.
- I recommend each one of these people and stand behind that recommendation.They are great Recruiters. If you’re looking to make connections in their field, these are great people to talk to.
Now that we’ve introduced our top notch Recruiters, let’s talk about the technical skills they have had the hardest time finding. We will run through their responses in no particular order…
Dan Foley is the Founder and CEO of Curate Partners, which specializes in serving organizations seeking digital transformation and technology innovation. A major component of their business is Data and Analytics roles, and they also handle Product Management and User Experience, which is great for those in our audience who consider themselves “quant business people” rather than pure play Analysts. Similar to Dan’s prior advice to see trends and “follow the money”, he’s already seeing some of these trends play out and result in a talent shortage…
I would say anything around AI or Machine Learning. We know it’s the future and the bigger players like Apple, Google, IBM are all putting out tools, but there is not enough talent to utilize them until they are in the market a little longer.
David Honig is the Founder and President of MarketSearch. He focuses on Marketing roles, where ability to work with data is often a core competency. For folks who consider themselves (or want to become) “Quant Marketers”, like me, David is a great guy to know. His firm works with experienced candidates (at least 3 years of relevant experience) who can hit the ground running as immediate contributors. Yet again, from David we hear about the challenge of finding great problem solving, insight generation, and communication skills. These are so important!
There are two types of Analysts. The first is an Analyst who can just pull the data & present to the Marketing Team. The other, a much more difficult find is the Analyst who can pull the data, sort and make sense of the data then most importantly add valuable insights to what these numbers mean and make the recommendations to help support innovative planning. Don’t be that first person; your career will stall.
In addition to getting a lot of valuable insight into the technical skills that are underserved in the marketplace, I found it great to hear that problem solving and communication skills were still so highly rated. Tools will come and go many times throughout our careers, but the ability to apply our technical skills to business problems and communicate the things we are uncovering will never go out of style.
I hope you found some value in this. Maybe you have identified a skill or two that you would like to pick up. If so, that’s great. Help fill the talent void, and make youself more valuable!
Happy learning!