How To Hire For The Right Big Data Skills
The continuing growth of Big Data has created a demand for job candidates with specific skills in data science and software engineering. Hiring for the right set of competencies requires insight and experience in recruiting that comes with practice, and which may not be directly available to startup founders and management teams who need it most.
Recruiting Big Data Talent Means Defining The Need First
The power of Big Data is more than one individual manager, or technician can reasonably handle, but under the right control, this IT technology can deliver spectacular results. It is up to IT hiring decision-makers to build a team of the least number of people who can provide the technical solutions and work without the disruption of interpersonal frictions.
There will come the point when you need new employees to expand and execute the development objectives of the project. The talent that you recruit will bring different skills and it is up to your hiring decision-makers to choose the people that represent the best aggregate combinations of skills, both in IT and in teamwork.
Data In — Collecting And Warehousing Data
The specialist in collecting data is more of a data engineer than a scientist; they have to focus on creating systems that deliver the right mix of structure and efficiency that works best for your IT requirements. The position of data warehouse architect plays a central role in any Big Data storage and retrieval strategy solution.
Data Out — Analyzing And Transforming Data
Data scientists provide a more cerebral role of putting the warehoused data to use. The purpose of gathering date is, after all, in exploiting it to create the currency of business intelligence (BI) for your company.
To establish the conditions where your solutions consistently extract the most value, seek out talent with diverse skills in transforming data such as visual analytics and dashboards, in programming and data analysis infrastructure and platforms such as Python, Hive, and Hadoop.
Talent Needs The People Skills Too
Hiring for diversity in development teams will deliver more usable results, and by casting the broadest net, you will find candidates in a market where recruiting demand is high. Events such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Technology conference are an excellent opportunity to extend diversity in your hiring and find outstanding data scientists that tech circles tend to undervalue.
Hiring talent from diverse backgrounds supports creativity and problem solving, it also avoids the blind spots that arise from a narrow base of talent. Consumer-facing companies particularly need feedback when a product or content they design has the risk of being insensitive to race, religion, or gender. A lack of diversity can also result in harassment and discrimination lawsuits within a company. More diverse workforces are better prepared to raise concerns before reaching that point.
Finally, the skills that are familiar to project managers are good to look for in candidates. Team members who can get along well and use a servant-leadership approach, who can work in groups and influence outcomes, without formal authority and titles support higher team morale and greater productivity.
For more tips about how to hire and manage top Big Data talent please check out our IT Workforce Blog.
