Big Data Talent War: 10 Analytics Job Trends
A gap is emerging among data-savvy professionals, with big-data-analysis and predictive skills trumping routine business-intelligence and information-management talents.
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10 Career-Changing Analytics And Big-Data Job Trends
There's a war on to attract and retain business intelligence (BI) and information management (IM) professionals. That much is clear from the BI, analytics, and IM version of our annual InformationWeek IT Salary Survey, Big Data Widens Analytic Talent Gap.
For years, our salary surveys have reported BI and IM professionals to be at or near the top of the IT salary spectrum. Results are much the same in our 2012 survey, though the gap between management and staff salaries has widened. The median BI staff base salary is $90,000, up from $85,000 in 2011. The median BI management salary is $119,000, up from $110,000 last year. Data integration/data warehousing salaries are even higher, at $97,000 for staff and $120,000 for managers, compared with 2011 salaries of $98,000 and $118,000, respectively.
The median looks nice, but who's at the top of the pay scale? The big push is to find people who can tell the CEO what's going to happen next, not what happened last week or last month. And with that demand, a generation gap is emerging within BI and information management workforce, says Stacy Blanchard, an executive at Accenture Analytics, a 20,000-plus-employee unit of the management consulting and technology services firm of the same name.
The next generation is driving forward-looking, predictive insights. "They're typically statisticians who are deep into data modeling, they're close to the technology, and they know the right algorithms to use with the data available," says Blanchard.
As available data grows in volume and variety, and gains in velocity, the top-dollar jobs go to those IM professionals who know how to use emerging big-data platforms such as Hadoop and NoSQL databases. They're helping organizations to put more and more information to work to provide deeper insights and more accurate predictive models, and that's leading to efficiencies and new services across industries and the public sector.
Manufacturers are studying demand data and supply chain information to cut product-development lead times and improve manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies. Procter & Gamble, for example, tells InformationWeek it's in the process of quadrupling its analytics expertise to help deliver data-driven decision-making dashboards to nearly 60,000 employees. Internet-based firms like AOL, comScore, and eHarmony are using clickstream and mobile big-data analyses to deliver valuable personalization and targeting services used to find best-fit customers, marketing partners, and potential mates.
Retailers from Starbucks to Walmart use data-intensive analyses to improve stocking, product selection, and pricing. Healthcare providers like Johns Hopkins and drug researchers like Harvard Medical School spot patterns in clinical data to improve diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.
In short, businesses and government agencies are putting their faith in data-driven decisions, and that's increasing demand for analytics and information management expertise.
Trend 1: Salaries And Compensation See Healthy Growth
BI, analytics, and information management professionals enjoy better-than-average salaries, but it gets even better--for managers in particular--when considering total compensation. BI managers are fourth on the total-compensation list, at $134,000, among 23 IT job categories we investigated in our full salary survey. BI staff tied for 10th (with telephony/unified communications staff ) at $96,000. Data integration/data warehousing managers rank sixth in total compensation, at $131,000, while staff are seventh, at $101,000.
Trend 2: Data-Driven Decision-Making Drives Demand
In the U.S. alone, a McKinsey Global Institute report predicts that demand for deep analytics experts and big data professionals will exceed the supply by up to 190,000 positions by 2018 if current trends continue. What's more, U.S. enterprises will need 1.5 million more managers and business analysts who can ask the right questions and consume the results of the analysis of big data.
"The United States--and other economies facing similar shortages--cannot fill this gap simply by changing graduate requirements and waiting for people to graduate with more skills or by importing talent," concludes the "Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity" report. "It will be necessary to retrain a significant amount of the talent in place."
Trend 3: Employers Turn To Outsourcing
In another indication of the demand for (and expense of ) BI, analytics and information management talent, our 660 survey respondents in these professions report higher-than-average levels of outsourcing of these jobs. Twenty-five percent say their organizations are outsourcing to firms in the United States and offshore, 17% say their employers are outsourcing to U.S. firms only, and 22% say their outsourcing partners are exclusively offshore. For the 13,880 IT professionals across our entire survey, those figures are 18%, 15% and 18%, respectively.
From big systems-integrators like Accenture and IBM Global Business Services to outsourcing specialists to software and platform vendors like SAS and Teradata, supporting consulting and industry-specific analytics services are likely to play a significant role in filling the analytics and big-data skills gap.
Trend 4: A Gap Emerges In The Talent Pool
A generation gap is emerging within the BI, analytics, and information management workforce, says Accenture Analytics executive Stacy Blanchard. The difference between "next-gen" and "old-gen" professionals isn't about age so much as attitude. Next-gen workers are more likely to be open to open source tools and cloud computing, and Accenture's research indicates they're also looking for different perks than their counterparts. "They want to be sure that they're using the latest, greatest technology and access to certifications and training that gets them up-to-speed with the market and more marketable," Blanchard says.
The potential downside for employers is that this new breed is less loyal to the corporation and they're sensitive about their working environment. "If they're not collaborating with like-minded colleagues and they don't see how the insights they're developing are actually having an impact on the business, you're going to lose them," she warns.
Trend 5: Data Professionals Demand More Training
BI, analytics, and IM staff and management alike cite technology-specific training, certification courses, and statistics/analytics training as their three most-valued training options out of 10 suggested choices. What's more, interest in business skills training (in areas such as finance and marketing) is much higher for this crowd than among the general IT population.
Trend 6: Data-Savvy Pros Lead Business Roles
BI, analytics and information management professionals are much more likely than their peers in the total survey to have non-IT responsibilities. Among our 660 respondents, 55% of managers and staff say they have previous experience outside of IT. This compares with 50% and 53% for all IT staff and managers, respectively. What's more, BI and information management staff and, in particular, managers have more responsibilities for business areas outside of IT--such as business development, research and development, finance and market/sales--than the average for all IT Salary Survey respondents.
Trend 7: Big-Data Practitioners Seek 'Data Scientists'
Ancestry.com, the popular genealogy website, is a big data shop looking to hire. Scott Sorensen, Ancestry.com's senior VP of engineering, says the company is looking to hire 80 new tech employees in Provo, Utah, and San Francisco. Most new hires will fill routine positions as Web developers, database administrators and the like, but the company is also looking for a dozen big-data-savvy professionals, including a handful of data scientists.
What exactly is a data scientist? It's tough to find an authoritative definition, but Sorensen says it's someone who is "skilled in taking a statistical approach to algorithm development. Many times they're statisticians, and they understand how to create statistical models that allow you to use massive amounts of data to develop algorithms."
Trend 8: Colleges And Universities Respond To The Talent Gap
To find employees who are hip to R statistical programming and MapReduce programming on Hadoop, Ancestry.com tries to recruit employees from the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, but it's also working with schools that have introduced course work or degree programs in machine learning. Scott Sorensen of Ancestry.com says institutions including Carnegie Mellon, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and the University of California at Berkeley are among many that have stepped up their machine-learning programs.
Trend 9: Data-Driven Jobs Offer Satisfaction, Challenge
BI, analytics and information management professionals are somewhat more satisfied and challenged in their careers than the general IT populace. It wasn't a dramatic gap, but then there are lots of other interesting and dynamic fields within IT. On overall satisfaction, 69% of BI and data integration/data warehousing staff are either "very satisfied" or "satisfied," whereas the corresponding figure for all staff is 62% (managers in both camps report the same level of satisfaction).
Asked if they feel they are being intellectually challenged in their jobs, 91% of BI/analytics/information management staff and 93% of managers say they are in fact challenged or somewhat challenged, whereas 87% of all IT staff and 91% of all IT managers feel the same way.
Trend 10: Data Professionals Embrace The Future
Times are changing and yesterday's historical query and reporting skills aren't enough. BI and information management veterans may already command high salaries, but they can boost their salaries and career longevity by embracing and building their familiarity and expertise with next-generation approaches and technologies. Big-data platforms, unstructured information-management techniques, text-analytics technologies and advanced analytics are emerging as keys to the future of business insight. Smart employers and smart employees will embrace the change.
Trend 10: Data Professionals Embrace The Future
Times are changing and yesterday's historical query and reporting skills aren't enough. BI and information management veterans may already command high salaries, but they can boost their salaries and career longevity by embracing and building their familiarity and expertise with next-generation approaches and technologies. Big-data platforms, unstructured information-management techniques, text-analytics technologies and advanced analytics are emerging as keys to the future of business insight. Smart employers and smart employees will embrace the change.
10 Career-Changing Analytics And Big-Data Job Trends
There's a war on to attract and retain business intelligence (BI) and information management (IM) professionals. That much is clear from the BI, analytics, and IM version of our annual InformationWeek IT Salary Survey, Big Data Widens Analytic Talent Gap.
For years, our salary surveys have reported BI and IM professionals to be at or near the top of the IT salary spectrum. Results are much the same in our 2012 survey, though the gap between management and staff salaries has widened. The median BI staff base salary is $90,000, up from $85,000 in 2011. The median BI management salary is $119,000, up from $110,000 last year. Data integration/data warehousing salaries are even higher, at $97,000 for staff and $120,000 for managers, compared with 2011 salaries of $98,000 and $118,000, respectively.
The median looks nice, but who's at the top of the pay scale? The big push is to find people who can tell the CEO what's going to happen next, not what happened last week or last month. And with that demand, a generation gap is emerging within BI and information management workforce, says Stacy Blanchard, an executive at Accenture Analytics, a 20,000-plus-employee unit of the management consulting and technology services firm of the same name.
The next generation is driving forward-looking, predictive insights. "They're typically statisticians who are deep into data modeling, they're close to the technology, and they know the right algorithms to use with the data available," says Blanchard.
As available data grows in volume and variety, and gains in velocity, the top-dollar jobs go to those IM professionals who know how to use emerging big-data platforms such as Hadoop and NoSQL databases. They're helping organizations to put more and more information to work to provide deeper insights and more accurate predictive models, and that's leading to efficiencies and new services across industries and the public sector.
Manufacturers are studying demand data and supply chain information to cut product-development lead times and improve manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies. Procter & Gamble, for example, tells InformationWeek it's in the process of quadrupling its analytics expertise to help deliver data-driven decision-making dashboards to nearly 60,000 employees. Internet-based firms like AOL, comScore, and eHarmony are using clickstream and mobile big-data analyses to deliver valuable personalization and targeting services used to find best-fit customers, marketing partners, and potential mates.
Retailers from Starbucks to Walmart use data-intensive analyses to improve stocking, product selection, and pricing. Healthcare providers like Johns Hopkins and drug researchers like Harvard Medical School spot patterns in clinical data to improve diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.
In short, businesses and government agencies are putting their faith in data-driven decisions, and that's increasing demand for analytics and information management expertise.
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