by Angela Guess
Brent Dykes recently wrote in Forbes, “Once your business has started collecting and combining all kinds of data, the next elusive step is to extract value from it… As data becomes increasingly ubiquitous, companies are desperately searching for talent with these data skills. LinkedIn recently reported data analysis is one of the hottest skill categories over the past two years for recruiters, and it was the only category that consistently ranked in the top 4 across all of the countries they analyzed. Interestingly, much of the current hiring emphasis has centered on the data preparation and analysis skills—not the ‘last mile’ skills that help convert insights into actions. Many of the heavily-recruited individuals with advanced degrees in economics, mathematics, or statistics struggle with communicating their insights to others effectively—essentially, telling the story of their numbers.”
Dykes goes on, “The need for more data storytellers is only going to increase in the future. With the shift towards more self-service capabilities in analytics and business intelligence, the pool of people generating insights will expand beyond just analysts and data scientists. This new breed of data tools will make it easier for people across business functions to access and explore the data on their own. As a result, we’re going to see an unprecedented number of insights being generated within companies than ever before. However, unless we can improve the communication of these insights we will also see a poorer insight-to-value conversion rate. If an insight isn’t understood and isn’t compelling, no one will act on it and no change will occur.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ mmockingbird