With many universities putting the entire 2020/21 academic year onto a virtual footing with remote tuition, the usual pathways for recruitment appear blocked. Although data and analytics hiring might also be on hold in many places, this could lead to challenges down the line with a more limited talent pool that is already over-fished.
So, what strategies can Leaders adopt to ensure they continue to bring in fresh talent? Is the answer to look outside of universities or to double-down on academic relationships?
A roundtable held in October 2020 explored whether conventional approaches to building talent at the top of the funnel are still relevant. Given the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, it also looked at what issues are being created for retention and career development of incumbent practitioners.
The data office needs to retrain HR
A recurring theme during the roundtable – and across other Leaders discussions – is that conventional HR views of how to recruit the right profile of candidate are not suited to this sector’s needs. For example, it was pointed out that one UK broadcaster has an apprenticeship scheme, a step-into-tech programme and always attends Silicon Milkroundabout, as well as other relevant job fairs. However, historically these activities have focused on recruiting for production and engineering roles – only recently has the corporation started to use these events for its data family of roles.
Major organisations tend to have well-established graduate programmes. Recently, some of these have adapted to new skills requirements, such as the data science graduate scheme at a global bank which is now in its second year and offers a combination of experience across customer science, machine learning and data engineering. It still runs the broader graduate programme which sees selected candidates rotate through credit, lending, operations, engineering and also data and analytics. Notably, the Leader member from the bank said the mix of skills and profiles across this scheme was welcome for its impact on diversity and inclusion.
Elsewhere, an international media organisation has needed to retrain its HR colleagues to understand that classic graduate recruitment does not yield the right candidates for a global data team. The former mindset saw data as a subset of IT which could be fed from the same stream of human capital. Shifting these attitudes and approaches can take time, however – in several instances, getting the right talent acquisition in place for data and analytics has taken two years.
One common problem has been how to deal with the volume of applications that are made – it is not unusual to receive several hundred CVs for each open position. A global facilities management company is working with specialist recruitment platform Curious Thing to manage this via its AI-driven pre-interview solution that provides feedback on each candidate compared to the available role in order to filter the funnel down to manageable levels.
Tell the right story
For legacy organisations, one of the toughest graduate recruitment challenges is the need to compete to be seen as exciting places to work against digital platforms and start-ups. Internal branding can play a part, such as with Aviva Quantum to distinguish its global data and analytics practice from the corporate organisation and culture.
One advantage in this scenario that was pointed out by several Leaders members is the ability for graduates to work on both digital systems and data at scale, something start-ups are unable to offer. Also, data and analytics teams in legacy organisations have more opportunities to make an impact than within global digital platforms, where the focus is more often on optimisation of specific, existing processes than on identifying new opportunities and breakthroughs.
It is also the case that not every graduate wants to work in those global or start-up environments. At one law firm, part of its pitch to recruit PhDs has been the challenge of transforming the huge amounts of data it holds on dispute resolution in paper and electronic documents into codified and machine readable data sets that can be used to automate processes.
Similarly, location has long been a problem for many organisations based outside of London when competing for scarce skills. A digital financial services platform is headquartered in the Midlands, with a technology centre in London. It has used an emphasis on the upsides of living outside of the capital to appeal to candidates who might have young families or are seeking a different work-life balance. One of the most powerful forms of story-telling for its recruitment has been word of mouth – referrals from incumbent practitioners who love the culture of the organisation are yielding some of the best results.
Gamification of skills and attainments
Up-skllling has become more important across all sectors to reflect both the need to retain existing practitioners and also to sustain capabilities during hiring freezes. This is also being extended across organisations to allow non-data colleagues to acquire the skills required to transfer into the department.
The member from the global bank pointed out that it is not only top-level roles that can benefit from internal training programmes – they should be available at every level, including to support practitioners who want to remain subject matter experts, rather than moving into leadership positions.
To drive engagement with whatever skills support is available, a number of organisations have gamified their programmes, giving practitioners badges for each module they complete, running league tables and inter-team contests. The value of these as “bragging rights” is an important feature of ensuring completion and is best supported using a badge platform such as Credly.
Leverage third-party events
Visibility via speaking opportunities at external events – including those run by DataIQ – was identified as an important opportunity to be seen by potential recruits. While often accepted ad-hoc, it was noted that these can be particularly effective if a programme of activity gets built around the event – the global facilities management company has been using its involvement with vendor events by Tableau, Alteryx and Snowflake to help grow its data team to 110 practitioners working in seven countries.
Internships, apprenticeships and knowledge transfer partnerships
Internships are becoming more common inside data and analytics departments, especially those with the scale to support the required level of support. As ever more students recognise the career potential offered, it has become easier to bring in these individuals on industrial placements.
One challenge to internships has been the risk of excluding talent who may not be able to afford unpaid placements. A number of strategies are being used to manage this, from ensuring travel costs are covered to providing accommodation. At the international media organisation, both current interns are from under-represented groups, proving that the nature of this activity does not have to have any bias baked-in.
Apprenticeships are starting to mature as a recruitment channel, especially to attract individuals who do not want to go to university. The available standards and training partners are getting better, not least through wider engagement by industry sectors beyond the foundational pathfinders who made the original data analyst and data science schemes more limiting in appeal.
A next-level approach to this is by engaging with academia via a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP). This is a government-backed scheme that sees researchers being given live briefs and problems to solve by industry. Relationships with universities can be leveraged to give PhDs exposure to real-world problems which often leads to employment offers being made at the end.
Conclusion
There is no shortage of different ways for data and analytics departments to reach into the recruitment pool, both within universities and colleges, ranging from traditional job fairs to KTPs via internships and meet-ups. Ideally, each of these will involve formal support from HR to ensure appropriate language, balance, profile and roles are being offered. All of them do require a significant investment of time by the data leader.
While 2020 has been very different for talent management because of the choking-off from hiring in some sectors and the removal of face-to-face channels, many of the approaches outlined here are still practicable. The one open question remains what long-term impact this year’s disrupted experience of studying might have on the next few years’ intact. It could be that there is a lowered appetite for university, which could make apprenticeships more appealing. For organisations who have developed their schemes, this may prove to be a highly fruitful and worthwhile talent funnel.
