The Traits of a Successful Data Scientist googletag.
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display(div-gpt-ad-1439400881943-0); }); The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Future of Jobs Report surveyed more than 300 of the world’s largest companies and 85 percent said they intended to expand their use of big data analytics by 2022.
First and foremost, data scientists must be problem solvers.
They need to be curious, understand what data to look for, how to find it and how to extract meaning from it.
One of the fundamental differences between traditional, hypothesis-based science and data science is that our computing power today allows us to extract trends from data that may tell us a story, rather than having a focused question and line of inquiry to test and understand a phenomenon.
From a technical standpoint, data scientists need a grounding in math or statistics, IT or coding, or at least have people around them who can code.
It is amazing how many resources have developed in the last five years to provide learning that is either free-of-charge or relatively inexpensive for those that are curious and have basic foundations from which to learn data science methods and tools.
Data scientists will therefore need to be able to interpret what various data sets mean for the business, and be able to communicate those findings to senior, probably non-technically-minded decision makers.
How will these data sets make the enterprise more efficient, productive, secure, compliant and – ultimately – more profitable.
Training is Key to Enterprise-wide Success One of the responsibilities of a data scientist will be to make sure that data skills are nurtured across the enterprise.
According to the World Economic Forum, by 2022 just over half (54%) of employees will require significant retraining and upskilling, including analytical thinking.
The data scientist will be critical in driving the overall success of the enterprise, and in the U.
S.
, we can expect some of those profits being ploughed back into using data to help further improvements in hiring, training, product development, marketing and more.
Forrester Research analyst Brandon Purcell said demand for data scientists will only continue to grow.
A career in data science is not only one of the most in-demand opportunities, it is also a rewarding position that helps inform the most important decisions an enterprise can make.
About the Author Rich Cober is MicroStrategy’s Chief Human Resources Officer.
MicroStrategy is a leading BI platform.
In this role, Rich leads MicroStrategy’s teams responsible for HR Business Partnership, HR Operations, Talent Acquisition, and Talent Management.
Prior to this role, Rich worked for Marriott International where he served as a senior HR Business Partner, senior leader within Marriott’s learning organization, and a senior leader responsible for Marriott’s Talent Management Analytics and Solutions (TMAS) Team.
Rich began his career earning his Ph.
D.
in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Akron, was a visiting professor in Cleveland State University’s School of Business and then spent several years working in management consulting.
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