The amount of information on big data, trends and all kinds of technologies is overwhelming. Remember that the human capital, in this case, the big data scientists are playing a key role in all of this. They are enablers. Read further to learn about tips and insights to hire the right big data scientists.
InformationWeek provides seven insights on hiring big data scientists:
1. Location matters.
2. Age and gender matter.
3. Creative types earn more than administrators.
4. Birds of feather flock together.
5. The standouts are good at listening, learning and communicating.
6. Renting can make more sense than buying.
7. Self service opens up opportunities.
What I can make up of these seven points is that experience (coming with age) and emotional intelligence capabilities are key.
CIO.com gives the reader five tips when hiring big data scientists:
1. Look for a team instead of one person
2. Look internally
3. Sell them on your company
4. Look for consulting Skills
5. Join networking and technical user groups
The first one is interesting, in an article I wrote a month ago, I wrote if the one-person data scientist even existed. Why?
The key characteristics of a data-scientist are:
- Analytical
- Business savvyness
- Communication
- Engagement
- Creativity
This poses the question, does a real one-person data scientist exist?
The other points that resonate with me from the CIO article are to look for consulting skills.
Business credibility
The tip I would add is to look for a data scientist that has a good level of business-understanding credibility. There are great data scientists that can do fantastic things with data, but translating it into relevant actions that helps the organization further is not present.
This is of course a two-way process, the organization needs to educate, but the data scientist needs to have the right soft skills to ask the right questions, have good understanding how companies function and so forth, this doesn’t have to be on an excellent level, but a good one.There’s the team again. A business consultant or analyst can do that part effectively.
It’s not the data that results in business value, it’s the action.
Gianluigi Cuccureddu is co-founder of Damarque, helping you to improve your commercial performance through better engagement with your employees, customers and strategic business partners.
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