Thanks in part to the media coverage of Big Data, analytics
has become inescapable. To those who have worked in and around this industry
for years this information is nothing new - merely more visible. Every day I’m
hearing about more and more businesses warming to the idea that there are
actionable insights readily available in their data if they know how to use it.
It is an exciting time to be a statistician, data scientist,
or analytics professional, and if you thought 2013 was big, 2014 promises to be
even bigger. Without further ado, here are my top predictions for the analytics
hiring market:
1.) Real-time
analytics becomes increasingly important to business intelligence – Industries
like the gaming industry already give their customers incentives in real-time
and retailers are quickly moving toward real-time couponing. Those of you with
real-time data experience will be in high-demand for these growing roles.
2.) Data
scientists will be embedded in analytics groups – In addition to analysts
who can build complex models, there will be an increasing need for data
scientists, who with their background in analytics and computer science can
wrangle massive, unstructured data sets. Companies hoping to extract the full
benefit from their data sets will need a combination of both groups.
3.) If you
don’t have digital you will be a dinosaur! - If your skill set doesn’t
already include digital analytics your career plan should be to get experience
and soon. Without it your skills will
become outdated and obsolete.
4.) Sentiment
analysis will continue to erode traditional survey methods – Use of social
media data and other “free sources” has the opportunity to overtake traditional
survey methods, which will impact the marketing research talent landscape.
5.) Corporations
will bring on internal staff to replace high paid consultants- Consultants
got the ball rolling, and now companies will seek to take on full time staff.
6.) However,
this will not adversely affect the consulting industry – Demand is so high
for analytics experts (and continuing to grow) that there will still be companies
looking to small and large consulting firms. Despite some companies hiring full
time staff, the consulting industry will continue to experience growth. Heavy
travel schedules will continue to be the norm for these opportunities.
7.) The trend
towards wearables and PEDs will create new positions- If the buzz
from CES2014
is to be believed, the wearables
trend is increasing. As with any new technology that creates massive
amounts of data, analytics positions will be created in the industry to make
sense of and capitalize on all that information.
8.) Startups’
grip on the hiring market will loosen- I have spoken with candidates who
have worked with many failed startups, and I think that this year the tendency
towards hopping from failed startup to failed startup will begin to shake out. Candidates
who have been through the failed startup cycle will begin to realize that to
build a career it will be important to learn from an established group.
9.) Graduates
from the new analytics programs will begin to hit the job market - This is
not so much a prediction as it is inevitable, and I am very interested to see
how well these new programs have prepared their students to enter the quantitative
workforce.
What trends do you think we will see in the analytics hiring
market? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
