“Are you prepped for the avalanche of data?"
It’s a fair question Entelo’s Loni Spratt asks modern recruiters and hiring managers.
With the rise of new tech and tools, companies aren’t only able to find new ways to garner information, they’re able to answer questions, predict industry trends, and understand how to better retain talent and customers.
You’ve heard the data scientist is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century. Why the hype? If you haven’t yet considered adding this role to the top of your talent funnel, you could very well be a few steps behind the competition.
Missed our webinar on how to recruit data scientists on Kaggle? Read on.
There’s a chance you won’t find very many data scientists.
Not by that exact job title, at least. Because the role itself is fairly new and is often the hybrid of tech and quantitative analysts, sourcing data scientists can be a shot in the dark. Data science represents the overlap of social science, statistics, information, computer science, and design. Try this sourcing method: Look at larger companies’ heads of data science and take note of their backgrounds. What were their previous job titles? What skills and experiences are associated with those job titles? What’s their educational background? Where and what did they study? You may notice many of these people have Ph.Ds in a variety of research-focused areas, like statistics, neuroscience, operations research, and physical chemistry, which can reveal their understanding of how to analyze multiple data sets and tell stories about their research.=
Kaggle is the world’s largest community of data scientists.
With about 200,000 data scientists from all over the world, Kaggle offers a crowdsourced platform for researches and companies to post their data to be modeled. Here are three ways to source talent on the channel:
- Kaggle competitions
- By its nature as a site on which data scientists compete to produce the best data models, recruiters and hiring managers can see tangible proof of candidates’ skills, and outreach accordingly.
- By its nature as a site on which data scientists compete to produce the best data models, recruiters and hiring managers can see tangible proof of candidates’ skills, and outreach accordingly.
- The Kaggle job board
- Users on Kaggle also head to site in search of jobs. A more active form of recruiting, but you can quickly get your opportunities in front of job seekers actively looking for a new role. Job postings start at $345.
- Users on Kaggle also head to site in search of jobs. A more active form of recruiting, but you can quickly get your opportunities in front of job seekers actively looking for a new role. Job postings start at $345.
- Google x-ray searches of Kaggle
- This means typing “site:kaggle.com/users/“ then including keywords indicating your sourcing criteria. For example, [site:kaggle.com/users/* “united states” “master * highest] to search for users on Kaggle who are in the US, who have ranked in the highest rank of the Master tier. The asterisk prevents the search results from pulling in profiles who may have the word “master” as part of their profile, like someone with a master’s degree. Here’s another example: typing [site:kaggle.com/users* “united states” hive OR hadoop OR Pig] to search for Kaggle users with experience with the Hive, Hadoop, or Pig languages living in the US.
Try sourcing for talent who are part of the Insight Data Science program.
Founded in 2012, Insight Data Science is an intensive six week post-doctoral training fellowship based in Silicon Valley and New York City that trains and provides full coverage of their data science and data engineering programs. Insight Fellows, as they’re called, go in with the intention of making the transition between academia to a career in data science. You can search through the Insight Fellows page for candidates or include keywords “Insight Data Science” or “Insight Fellow” as part of your search through social networks.
These LinkedIn groups can also help with the search for data scientists.
- Hadoop Users
- Machine Learning Connection, Private (They’re no longer accepting memberships for sources and recruiters, but if you click through to the group, you’ll be able to see group members who are in your network, and source additional candidates through their networks.)
- Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Data Visiualization
- Big Data Professionals, Architects Scientists Analytics Experts Developers Cloud Computing NoSQL BI
These three takeaways is just a fraction of what we covered during the full webinar “How to Recruit Data Scientists on Kaggle” and you can download our notes and watch the on-demand presentation here.
Next week, we’ll cover the differences between data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists. Subscribe to the Entelo Blog to be the first to know when we publish the post! Don't forget – we've got three other webinars on recruiting tech talent. Check 'em out and save your seat!
