Hadoop Jobs: 9 Ways To Get Hired
IT recruiters share expert advice and creative tips for landing the Hadoop job or big data gig you want.
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You keep your skills sharp. You've built a fine professional network. You've buffed and shined your LinkedIn profile until it screams "HIRE ME!" And not a day goes by when you don't encounter another stat or sound bite telling you the demand for big data talent is white hot.
So why aren't you getting the big data job you want?
It could be any number of factors, including some that aren't visible or in your control whatsoever. But when it comes to the things you can control, are you doing everything possible to land the job that will supersize your big data career? Jobseekers in just about any career field know the agonizing purgatory that is The Hunt, not just for a job but the right job. There can be a whole lot of hair-pulling between the earliest stages of a search and an offer letter. Finding positions working with Hadoop and other emerging big data platforms is no exception.
We turned to several IT recruiters for help. What advice do they give IT pros -- whether newly minted graduates, well-credentialed veterans looking to make a career move, or people somewhere in between -- on landing not just an interview but an offer? Again, the idea is to find not just a job, but a great one.
You'll notice some themes here. First, strategic employers want well-rounded people for their big data initiatives. How's your Nietzschean philosophy these days? One senior recruiter told us that the best big data candidates he's encountered have a strong understanding of philosophy to pair with their technical backgrounds. Whether you're working with Hadoop clusters or Hive or Pig or YARN or any other technology, technical wizardry will take you only part of the way toward your goals. On the other hand, companies eagerly snap up people who can match that wizardry with the ability to identify and apply big data to real business challenges -- and translate the results for execs and stakeholders who don't dream in code.
Another theme: IT pros who take time to understand not just the data but the users or customers generating big chunks of that data will have a leg up on their peers. If you really want a particular position, don't just learn the ins and outs of the technologies you'll be using -- learn how and why you'd be using them for this particular company in this particular industry.
More than one of the recruiters we spoke with brought up the critical importance of being able to tell a story with data in terms of securing the job you want. Tom Hart, VP of marketing with the IT recruitment firm Eliassen Group, stresses the positive impact of pairing technology talent with the ability to communicate, narrate, and translate.
"If you really want to get a big data job, ideally, if you knew something about storing, retrieving and interpreting data, and something more about representing that information in a meaningful way with the use of dashboards and business intelligence tools, and you could convey your knowledge of both of these things in an interview with a hiring manager, your chances of employment would be materially enhanced," he says.
In other words, even in a jobseekers' labor market, tech chops will take you only to a certain point -- and that might not be exactly where you want to go unless you add storytelling prowess and other success factors. Read on for nine tips on landing the big data job you actually want.
What's worked for you in your own career? Share it with us in the comments.
(Image source: Intel Free Press)
Did you sleep through Introduction to Philosophy in college? It's time to dust off the required reading list, says Jeff Remis, branch manager of the national IT practice at Addison Group. "The best big data candidates I have worked with have a background in philosophy. Some even majored in it rather than computer science," Remis says. "Having the background in big data helps you find the patterns hidden in the chaos, but to understand the patterns takes someone with a trained philosophical mind. Philosophers are curious people who use logic and theory to tell a story with the data, which is what companies are looking for from analytics teams."
Don't believe him? Consider Plato: the student of Socrates and one of the best-known philosophers of all-time was also really, really good at math.
(Image source: mararie)
Tom Hart of Eliassen Group advises big data jobseekers to put themselves in the mindset of their prospective employer and reflect on what they need from the person doing the job they're after. "If you have a sense of what the employer is up to, you materially increase your chances of gaining employment with them. Looking at the problem strategically, we are probably dealing with a [company] that has tons of data, both structured and unstructured, and they're trying to figure out what to do with it," he says. "Typically, companies are first trying to figure out where and how to store this much data; second, how to make it accessible to the leaders of the company; and finally, how to best represent it in a dashboard fashion that 'tells a story' and helps the company to achieve a specific business objective, like identifying buyer patterns, interpreting data into meaningful chunks of information, et cetera."
In a sense, it's the big data version of age-old advice for jobseekers in any field: Show the company how much you want this job, not a job. No one wants to hire someone who appears indifferent or ill-informed about the company, its industry, or its customers.
(Image source: Institute of Network Cultures / Sebastiaan ter Burg)
Another tip for younger jobseekers or veteran IT pros hoping to shift into a big data role: Don't be bashful about highlighting relevant skills that may be indicators of probable success in the big data world. Perhaps you don't have a ton of hands-on experience with Hadoop, for example, but you do have Very Large Database (VLDB) and relational database management system (RDBMS) chops. That might suit a hiring manager just fine in a tight labor market, Stillman says, "as long as the candidate can demonstrate strong theoretical knowledge in the area of big data." Experience with R and other machine-learning languages is another good example.
(Image source: The R Foundation)
Big data, like a lot of trendy technologies, is awash in its own vocabulary of buzzwords, technical jargon, and keywords. In other words, big data enables big B.S., on resumes, social media profiles, cover letters, interviews, and other job-hunt collateral. Steer clear. As Think Big Analytics CEO Ron Bodkin told us recently, overselling your qualifications is a quick way to harm your job candidacy. In fact, employers might be turned off by someone who believes they already have all of the answers -- if that was possible, the firm wouldn't be hiring a big data team. Sell yourself with substance, not hype.
(Image source: Gavin Llewellyn)
As the Hadoop ecosystem -- and its corresponding enterprise adoption -- continues to grow, remember: it's open source. As with Linux and other open source platforms, that enables opportunities to get involved with the project and surrounding community. This helps develop skills and professional contacts. It also shows hiring managers you're serious about big data rather than a dabbler with a short attention span -- the latter being a problem with "hot" technologies like big data.
One challenge for big data jobseekers, according to Riviera Partners lead technical recruiter Darin Matuzic, is simply navigating the fast-changing landscape of potential employers. You can't land the job you want if you don't know what you want in the first place -- or if you're not being honest with yourself. Chasing jobs that aren't right for you is counterproductive. Worst of all, you might get the job -- and then end up like the guy in the photo above.
"Figuring out the best fit for you is difficult but not impossible, and if you narrow down your criteria you can be extremely targeted in your search which saves a lot of time and emotion," Matuzic says.
An example: Do you want to work for Twitter, or do you want to work for the next Twitter? The difference between the two work environments -- even if the job title is the same or similar -- could be massive. Things like family, risk tolerance, financial situation, and other criteria could become critical. Clearly define a mix of what you need and want from a job before you start looking.
(Image source: Yasser Alghofily)
There's likely to be more geographical equality in the US over time when it comes to big data jobs. The reason's fairly simple: As more and more companies begin to dig into their truckloads of bytes, they'll need to hire big data talent. The US is a big place. But at the moment, Hadoop and other big data-related jobs are over-weighted in www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-and-staffing/hadoop-jobs-where-to-find-them/d/d-id/1141620">California, with New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Texas rounding out the top five states, according to recent Dice.com data. If you're willing to relocate, you'll obviously increase your pool of prospective employers and thus your chances of finding a good one.
Don't be too quick to rule out your local area, though: There could be burgeoning tech scene closer than you think.
(Image source: Kevin Hutchinson)
There's likely to be more geographical equality in the US over time when it comes to big data jobs. The reason's fairly simple: As more and more companies begin to dig into their truckloads of bytes, they'll need to hire big data talent. The US is a big place. But at the moment, Hadoop and other big data-related jobs are over-weighted in www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-and-staffing/hadoop-jobs-where-to-find-them/d/d-id/1141620">California, with New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Texas rounding out the top five states, according to recent Dice.com data. If you're willing to relocate, you'll obviously increase your pool of prospective employers and thus your chances of finding a good one.
Don't be too quick to rule out your local area, though: There could be burgeoning tech scene closer than you think.
(Image source: Kevin Hutchinson)
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