Another way that you can jump into
this is through Kaggle competitions,
which I recommend to people if they are
interested in understanding data science
and who else is out there doing this kind
of work and what they are doing. There
are many tools out there. Certainly what
INFORMS is doing is terrific.
It’s important to keep your skills fresh
and make sure you continue to learn.
When it comes to giving general career
advice, especially to younger candidates,
my advice is this: prepare for three or four
careers during your lifetime. In today’s
world, it’s not good to specialize in one
thing and try to stick with one company
or one industry or one vertical application for your entire career. It’s incredibly
dangerous, and it likely won’t carry you
through a 35-year career. You need to
be continuously learning something new.
People should keep that in mind.
INFORMS offers an analytics certification program (CAP). Is that a differentiator in the job marketplace?
No two candidates are ever equal,
but it can certainly help once there are
enough employers out there who understand what it means to be CAP certified.
I’m seeing people put various MOOCs
(massively open online course) on their
resumes now, along with Kaggle competition results. I have a candidate who
A NA L Y T I C S
actually got his job because of a Kaggle
competition. The first couple of times
he submitted his solution it was totally
rejected, but as he continued to study
the problem and resubmitted, he
climbed up the leaderboard. Then he
started getting calls and job opportunities because of his Kaggle rank.
From your perspective, what does
the future hold for data scientists and
other analytics professionals?
In my 30 years of experience, I have
never seen anything like this. The opportunities for elite analytics candidates have
never been better, and I think what we’re
seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg.
As I said earlier, I really think that my
quantitative candidates are going to be
running companies one day. Certainly
the CMO (chief marketing officer) is going to be coming up through the analytics ranks. Now there’s all this talk about
CAOs (chief analytics officer). I think the
candidates I’m working with have a very
strong chance – if they have leadership
ability and the ambition – to advance up
the ranks and continue to climb and run
organizations at some point. Their quantitative skills are going to be unique and
absolutely required to be a successful
businessperson. It’s their time to shine.
Peter Horner ([email protected]) is the
editor of Analytics and OR/MS Today magazines.
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