Purple Squirrels are a Myth
Don’t place your bets on hunting for the one; rethink your talent strategy for your data organization.
We need to approach our data talent strategy differently. Among the legends and lore in the human resource realm, the esteemed purple squirrels are the impossibly perfect candidate that recruiters seek that exactly fits the job. They are highly sought-after individuals with the right mix of skills, qualifications, experience, and pay expectations. Many recruiting expeditions launch but few return with the prized purple squirrel, leaving roles vacant for extended periods, risking their team’s burnout and losing business productivity. Especially in the healthcare data & analytics sector, this is a leader fool’s errand.
Key Take-Aways
- Talent management for healthcare data teams is challenging due to sub-specialized domain knowledge and technical capabilities.
- Leaders should cultivate and orchestrate a multi-disciplinary data team instead of hunting for impossibly perfect candidates (purple squirrels).
Healthcare is a Challenge for Data Leaders to Recruit
Recruiting the right talent requires a high bar of sub-specialized domain knowledge and technical capability.
Using oncology as an example, one quickly realizes that:
- Cancer is a multitude of diseases, with variations in its tumor types and sub-types;
- the course of clinical management is a mix of highly specialized modalities, from imaging, pathology, surgery, and radiation to drugs; and
- data is highly complex in its volume, velocity, and variability.
To give data context and meaning, you need knowledge and experience combination of all the above. You need a team, not a purple squirrel.
Healthcare Leaders Need to Rethink Their Talent Strategy for Data Teams
Building a modern and adaptable data team is balancing different dynamics:
- Hard skills: domain knowledge and technical data know-how
- Soft skills: communication, problem-solving, and teamwork
The talent strategy should focus on recruiting, developing, and retaining a multi-disciplinary team:
- Recruitment: Don’t recruit for an army of purple squirrels. Build a multi-disciplinary team capable of and interested in “crossing lanes.”
- Development: Invest in developing your talent’s hard- and soft skills and challenge them to “cross over” into projects that expose them to new concepts and experiences:
- Domain experts should build up their technical data skills (e.g., modeling, tools, coding, data processes);
- Data experts, such as data scientists, data engineers, and data product management, should build up their domain understanding (e.g., clinical, operational, financial).
- Retention: With the insatiable demand for data & analytics, rewards and recognition matter:
- Stay vigilant about the competitive talent market and pay expectations; be prepared to advocate for your top talent.
- Continuously partner with your HR colleagues. Build a pipeline and network of talent, don’t wait until you need to hire.
Bottom line, think of your talent strategy more as cultivating and orchestrating a multi-disciplinary, technicolor team of squirrels rather than hunting for mythical purple squirrels! 🐿️
Share Your Thoughts
What is the right mix of talent for a modern healthcare data team? What types of expertise do you have on your data team?
😎 Are you the “Nick Fury” of data assembling a kick-ass data organization? Follow me at Ground_Truth and let me know how it’s going.
