For Every Ten Analyst Postings, There Are Only Two Qaulified Candidates

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100792215

Wow! That was a pretty mind-boggling stat when I cam across it. So of all the analyst postings out there, only 20% will be filled with quality candidates. The problem is even more acute because of the diversity of needs. No two companies build business analyst or data analysts positions the same. And the combination of skills and experience make it almost impossible for fresh graduates to apply. I’ve seen data suggesting that there are only about 20,000-30,000 people out there working right now in the U.S. who would be considered top data analysts. Yet there are 100,000 job postings right now on indeed.com for analysts here in the U.S. I also previously published research on analytics in the Philippines showing a 33% year over year growth in the need for analysts on jobstreet.com.ph

However, there are a lot analytics professionals out there looking for work. How is this possible? Well, when you look deeply into the job descriptions, you see the complexity of the requirements. The mix of technical skills, soft skills and specific experience are pretty rate combinations. It is almost like managers are throwing together a wish list of the perfect candidate without any real thought on what the chances are of actually finding someone like that. Then to make the problem worse, they pass the requirements to HR who then take a checklist approach to recruitment and can’t find many if any candidates who match all the requirements. Its quite amazing actually. But not a good kind of amazing.