Analytical Candidates You May Not Have Considered
I’ve been thinking about the problems many of us have in recruiting analytical talent since IIA’s 2011 Predictions webinar. Talent acquisition and talent development are topics that tend to spark passionate debate; even Jim Goodnight and William Green spent time on the topic at their keynote during the last SAS Premier Business Leadership Series. What is the delta in the supply and demand of analytical talent? Here’s one back of the envelope method I like: Indeed.com lists 5,600 open jobs with analytics and statistics in the job description as of this writing, with 185 new jobs posted in the last 48 hours. Compare that to the memberships of LinkedIn groups for analytics, and I’d put the available talent market at 50,000. That’s almost one order of magnitude lower than we’d probably like to see. Pictorially, here’s the growth trend for jobs in our industry. Check out the J curve starting in Jan. 2009. 
(If you’d like more color on the market and salaries, check p. 13 of Robert Half’s 2011 Salary Guide.) Everyone has their success (and failure) stories on hiring great talent. There are some candidate profiles that tend to succeed in our space, but you may not think of themselves specifically as analytical professionals for your industry:
Actuaries. A hot topic at one of the largest actuarial conferences a few months ago was, “How can actuaries branch out, and exert more influence on businesses?” Of course in analytics, opportunities abound for greater influence. Find an actuary with communication skills and business acumen. They are worth their weight in gold, but are sometimes overlooked for other analytical leadership roles, particularly outside of insurance.
Webmasters / Systems Analysts. If you’re in a marketing field, Systems Analysts may be interesting to you. Part of their job is to make sure systems are up and stable using data, as well as evaluating utilization trends on when to invest in new servers. Honestly, some of their screens look exactly like a marketer’s dashboard. They are usually good systems thinkers that can leverage data to make a decision. Webmasters may have even more honed business instincts, particularly if they’ve had to set up advertising analysis services, etc.
Unhappy Engineers, Scientists, Software Engineers. One of the finest business oriented analytics managers I know is a well-trained Chemical Engineer. Of course, there’s already a shortage of engineering talent, so the lowest hanging fruit are people who have talent in their field, but want to switch careers.
Make Your Own. One talented manager in a B2C context found that he was lacking analytical staff, so he tried a novel approach. He structured some of the analytical work he had (including experiment design and some execution of regression analyses) to a group of customer service agents who were under-utilized. I’m saving the full story for another post with specifics, but think about the design of your positions – are you able to create leverage using analytical amateurs for some work? Can you build analytical capability internally? What are your experiences in hiring talent? Post your ideas below and help a colleague find their next superstar.
