Category: Analytics Training

5 Strategies For Recruiting Analytics Talent

http://data-informed.com/5-strategies-recruiting-training-decision-science-talent

Came across the above mentioned article. It starts, “A career in decision sciences/analytics continues to be one of the sexiest jobs of the 21st century, but the supply of analytics talent threatens to limit the promise of decision sciences.

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A report by McKinsey and Company estimates a shortfall of 140,000 to 190,000 data scientists and 1.5 million managers who have the skills needed to use the insights to drive decisions. And Gartner predicts that by 2015, big data will create 4.4 million jobs globally.

Data scientists are in short supply, but the dearth of decision scientists – the rare breed that combines the interdisciplinary prowess of math, business, technology, behavioral sciences, and design thinking – is even more alarming. For this reason, there needs to be an increased emphasis on recruiting and training as opposed to relying on acquisition.” The writer then listed his 5 strategies for recruiting analytics talent.

I have a few variations on his top 5, here they are:
1. Destroy the Top Talent Only Comes From Top Schools Myth
2. Test For Curiosity and a Learning Mind Set
3. Appreciate an Inter-Disciplinary Perspective
4. Teach the Art of Asking Questions
5. Be Both Big Picture and Tiny Detail Kinds of Analysts

So basically what it boils down too, is that business don’t just need high-end, well-educated data scientists, they need lots of people who think like analysts.

That’s what I specialize in, I take people who are curious, regardless of their background and I train them to unleash their curiosity and empower then to use data to make decisions.

Hiring a data scientist is not really an option for most companies I work with, but hiring one of my trainees to work in their office or online for their business is a very good option.

A Data-Driven Approach To Networking

Starting today, I am going to go into full networking hyper mode. My goal is to find a new outsourcing client here in the U.S. to add to my roster of DMAI clients who are using our services based in the Philippines.

I will also be looking for a few more consulting gigs here that are simple data analytics or market research projects that I can pass on to my intern teams. I have interns both in the U.S. and the Philippines.

So how to make my networking efforts more impactful. Using primarily LinkedIn, I will share blog posts, contribute to groups, add new connections and re-connect with existing ones to share with them updates on DMAI and what we offer.

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I will track all these efforts using a simple Excel spreadsheet. Using excel will help me set and meet daily quotas for new connections, shared articles and sending email messages to existing connections. Just this simple and easy to set up approach will make my networking 10x more impactful because each day I have a clear idea of what’s ahead of me.

For new connections, I had some interns make a list of over 200 companies in the U.S. who posted jobs on indeed.com . I will search LinkedIn to see who 2nd and 3rd connections at these companies are and who might be involved in business strategy, outsourcing and/or analytics and try and add them. I will not just send the standard add me connection request, but one of several canned intros I have prepare depending on job level, company type and how I think DMAI can help them. I will personalize each one. My goal is to do 20 connection requests a day for 10 days. Form that I hope to get about 5 hot leads to work on.

For sharing, I will repost and/or link to various blog posts I have written or will write over the next two weeks. My goal is to post to 10 groups a day. So in two weeks I will have shared my story over 100 times to a variety of analytics and outsourcing focused groups. From this effort I hope to get 2-3 more leads.

Finally, for re-connecting, I will send 10 emails a day to connections who might either be interested in our services or sharing our story with their connections who might. These will not be hard sell e-mails, but more an update on what I have been doing and how DMAI has grown since the last time we talked. I can export a list of my connections from LinkedIn that includes e-mail address of all my connections. I’ll then sort it by company and focus on connections with companies involved in analytics and/or outsourcing. Again a half dozen or so leads should come out of this.

So over the next two weeks, I plan on spending about 2 hours a day networking with 400 points of contact and hope to get 20 or so leads that will end up bringing me 1-2 clients.

And I will use an analytics approach to track my progress towards my goals and in the end give me a bunch of data to use to see where to refocus future networking efforts.

I will let you know how it goes. And if you ever want help doing something like this, DMAI has helped clients in the past with similar approaches!

Five Current Trends in Analytics

Earlier this week, I conducted a Business Analytics Training in our new office in Ortigas. One of the things I talked about was some of the current trends in analytics. Here are my top 5:

1. Everyone Has To Be A Data Scientist
2. Finding Unstructured Data on the Internet
3. Company Specific Analytics Solutions
4. Data Visualization
5. Business Dashboards for Management

When it comes to data science, I take the approach that anyone working with data and analysis has to start thinking of themselves as a data scientist. Its the biggest buzz word in the industry right now.

Finding unstructured data on the internet to compliment structured internal business data is still one of the key skills sets that separates good analytics from great analytics.

Company specific solutions are becoming a requirement and really pose a threat to analytics solutions that too general and too high level.

The number of people who can take data and turn it into art is growing rapidly, but the need for skilled data artists is growing even faster.

And finally, something that has been true for while now… one of the biggest needs out there is someone who can take lots of reports and simplify the data into a single visual.

As they say, the more things change (and analytics gets more complicated) the more they stay the same (what a great analyst needs is being able to add the art to the science).

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I Always Say… Data Science Is Just As Much Art As It Is Science!

“A data scientist is that unique blend of skills that can both unlock the insights of data and tell a fantastic story via the data.” … that’s a quote by DJ Patil, who is generally considered one of the world’s top data scientists.

The term data scientist has really taken off in the analytics world the past few years and the number of job postings, college courses and certifying bodies continues to rocket upwards. Here in the Philippines I am starting to see a number of analytics gurus using that title and have even started seeing some of the bigger BPOs look for skills sets inline with this type of title,

However, even the most veteran data geeks, have a hard time really determining what role data scientist can play in the BPO industry and to what level you can set up outsourcing team to do data science… aka analytics… aka data-driven decision-making. Its really, quite a wide open topic without a lot of clear guidance trickling down into the industry here.

That will change. And it will change quickly. The number of analytics trainings and data-centric conferences and college course geared towards data science careers is exploding. In fact i will be speaking at two of events of this kind later this month. One geared to college students looking into analytics careers and one for a cross section of practitioners looking for deeper understanding of the analytics environment.

To that end, I wanted to share a few visuals that I will be using in my presentations… both with a slant towards guiding students towards the right analytics career for them.

The first is a great visual showing the diverse skills a true data scientist needs to be awesome. Source: http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/the-22-skills-of-a-data-scientist

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The second is a a great way to show what data geeks really need to become data rock stars. Source: http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/are-you-a-data-scientist

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Choose Not To Get Involved? Then You Really Have No Right To Complain

A good friend and key business partner, Penny Bongato, recently authored the cover story for the AmCham Journal’s September 2014 issue.

I wanted to share some highlights form one of the foremost thought leaders of industry-academe collaboration here in the Philippines.

“Industry. The Academe. When have they ever been in harmony? Some academics say “Leave the teaching to us. We will produce the graduates you need.” Industry however claims that the academe is not producing the quality graduates they need.

Meanwhile, the academe complains that Industry has not been very forthright in articulating what it is exactly that they require of the graduate I believe our expectation is that Academe is supposed to produce employable graduates.

With the challenges businesses face today (i.e., changing technology, fierce competition, and especially globalization) there is not much room or time to train the new employee, similar to the kind of new employee training we had decades ago. If industry continues to harbor this expectation, the often cited phenomenon called the Jobs versus Skills mismatch will keep getting wider.

We have complained about this for decades. In this scenario, what would Industry’s role be? In the four years that I have been with the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), I have personally witnessed instances of true collaboration between the ITBPM industry, where I belong, and the academe.”

This area of industry-academe collaboration is one of my passions, long ago seeing a greater need to prepare Filipino students for BPO careers. One of the first people I made a point of befriending when I moved to the Philippines to set up my business was Penny. Since we first met over three years ago we have been able to work on several projects together, including me being sent by BPAP to speak in front of students about careers in the BPO industry. Besides speaking to students, I have made a point to recruit students and fresh grads as trainees, OJT and even as employees because I recognize the need to help move this collaboration along.

As Benedict Hernandez, IBPAP’s Chairman of the Executive Committee, CCAP President and the Head of Accenture BPO said, “If you [as a member of the IT BPM industry] choose not get involved, you really have no right to complain.”

I also believe this to be so true! So as both a regular guest lecturer in academe and an owner of a BPO company, I call on my brothers and sister in both arenas to stop complaining and start acting. In the end, the ultimate beneficiary of this is our students… aka our future!

Thanks so much Penny, for sharing these incredible insights and challenging us all to up our game in a time of great national need.

A Few More Internet Research Tips

Just wanted to share a few more tips from my presentation on Mastering Internet Research:

Additional considerations to make before you start your search:

1. Where should you search? Google is not the only answer. There are over a trillion web sites out there and its growing every day. The IMDB is a much better place to get movie info then a google search.

2. How will you plan your search? Setting parameters is a big key to being a master internet researcher. Besides setting aside a certain amount of time, you can also give yourself boundaries on the number of sources you need and the type of content you want to find.

3. How will you evaluate the sources? Making sure the data you find is accurate is so key. Looking at reliable sources, validating data with a second reference and comparing your findings to published works are good ways to avoid bad data.

Some final tips to be a master internet researcher:

4. Use Find or Ctrl-F to Help Navigate Search Results– Often it is difficult to understand why a site is retrieved in a search. The Find or Ctrl-F feature will quickly allow you to search the text of a site and locate specific keywords.

5. When Using Wikipedia – View a Page’s History
All Wikipedia pages’ edits are saved, and the site makes it easy to view changes.

If you’re interested in seeing a page’s history, simply click the “View history” tab on the top right of any page. As well as seeing recent edits, you can click “Compare selected revisions” to see then-and-now versions of the content.

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Internet Research Tips

About to do a training for some of my team on how to master internet research. Here are some of the excellent tips on how to optimize Google searches that I will be sharing:

1. Use unique, specific terms – It is simply amazing how many Web pages are returned when performing a search. You might guess that the terms blue dolphin are relatively specialized. A Google search of those terms returned 2,440,000 results! To reduce the number of pages returned, use unique terms that are specific to the subject you are researching.

2. Use browser history – Many times, I will be researching an item and scanning through dozens of pages when I suddenly remember something I had originally dismissed as being irrelevant. If you can remember the general date and time of the search you can look through the browser history to find the Web page.

3. Don’t use common words and punctuation – Common terms like a and the are called stop words and are usually ignored. There are cases when common words like the are significant. For instance, Raven and The Raven return entirely different results.

4. Set a time limit — then change tactics
Sometimes, you never can find what you are looking for. Start an internal clock, and when a certain amount of time has elapsed without results, stop beating your head against the wall. It’s time to try something else:
> Use a different search engine, like Yahoo! Bing, Startpage, or Lycos.
> Ask a peer.
> Call support.
> Ask a question in the appropriate forum.
> Use search experts who can find the answer for you.

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The Internet is the great equalizer for those who know how to use it efficiently. Anyone can now easily find facts using a search engine — assuming they know a few basic tricks.

Never underestimate the power of a skilled search expert.

Data Analytics and Its Application in the Academic Institution

Something I will be presenting at a conference coming up in October…

Over the past few years we have seen a dynamic shift in the way data analytics as a discipline is being matriculated by colleges and universities in the Philippines. Great leaps forward in the field of data analytics is under way through a combination of government, private industry and academic partnerships.

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Participants will be provided a comprehensive overview of the current and future state of data analytics in both the education system and the Philippines as a whole. Highlights will be shared using Tableau, one of the leading business intelligence software applications available. Focus will be given to how schools, companies and training programs are empowering graduates to hit the ground running as analysts.

The facilitator for this session is Daniel Meyer, President & Founder of DMAI, an analytics training, consulting and outsourcing company based in Ortigas. Mr. Meyer spent 15 years as a senior analytics consultant with Wells Fargo Bank in the U.S. and has a Master’s Degree in Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For the past three years Mr. Meyer has conducted various data analytics trainings for hundreds of businesses, university students and young professionals here in the Philippines.

Check out the website to learn more: http://www.parssu.org/

Optimize Your Business and Competitive Intelligence With More Data-Driven Decision-Making

Here is a Training Proposal I just submitted. I hope it gets approved as it will be a fun class to teach.

Title: Optimize Your Business and Competitive Intelligence With More Data-Driven Decision-Making

Length: 8 hours in a 1 day session

Facilitator: Daniel Meyer, President of DMAI and Inspire Analytics Expert with over 15 years of experience with Business and Competitive Intelligence experience. Served as top BI and CI Analyst for Remittances at Wells Fargo Bank for seven years.

Main Focus: Customized program on Business and Competitive Intelligence (i.e. identifying BD opportunities which includes effective market monitoring, and competitive analysis).

Through a variety of lecture, discussion and group exercise, participants will be empowered to maximize the data around them to deliver industry leading research and analysis.

Topic Areas Include:
• Overview of Business and Competitive Intelligence Concepts
• Brining More Analytics Into Your BI and CI Process
• Finding The Right Data At The Right Time
• Building and Understanding Your Competitor Landscape
• How To Conduct More Data-Driven Competitive Analysis
• Measure the Effectiveness of Your Market Monitoring
• Using Data-Visualization To Enhance Your Reporting
• Capitalizing On Business Development Opportunities

Participants: In-house Research team who are involved in the following services: Competitive Research Reports, Industry and Environment Scanning Reports, Market Research and Strategic Reports

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Assessing the Analytics Culture In A Company

Yesterday I conducted a public training on business analytics and one of the exercise we completed was doing a self-assessment of the business each participant currently finds themself in. 

  • Level 1 – No analytics at all.
  • Level 2 – Only a few people use analytics and most key management decisions are not made based on data, but on experience
  • Level 3 – Some people use some analytics to make some decisions, but its generally inconsistent across the organization.
  • Level 4 – Most decision makers have access and generally use analytics. Several key team members have strong analyst backgrounds.
  • Level 5 – Every team member from top down knows analytics, has access to the data they need and are empowered to take action on it.

We need to work hard to develop an analytics culture in our businesses.

No technological solution or influx of top talent simply layered on top of existing processes and culture, can achieve these results. Further, pockets of existing analytical talent quickly grow disillusioned and, because they are not integrated into the business as a whole, fail to deliver much strategic value.