We can’t keep qualified data talent…What should we do? Chisel Analytics

A few months after you hire a data scientist or engineer for your team, they come to you and give you their two-week notice. They tell you that they received a better offer from a more prominent company. You accept the notice and wonder why this happened.

Statistics on data scientists retention show that data wranglers, business analysts, and report developers stay at their current jobs for one to two years. These professionals receive messages from external recruiters about new job opportunities once a week. You can better the odds of these folks sticking around if you tweak your management style a little. Here are some ideas you can employ.

Onboarding

An excellent approach is a 30-day and 90-day onboarding plan. This plan gives the new hire a chance to learn their way around. Creating 30-day goals will prevent them from feeling stupefied. Goals could include:

• Having coffee with everyone on the team
• Collaborating with a colleague on some bug tickets.
• Giving a quick presentation on a data science topic at a team meeting.

When you include a 90-day plan, you can check the new hire’s performance. It will also help you see signs of trouble.

Employee Engagement

There are a few things you can do to improve employee engagement. Here they are.

Brown Bag Meetings

A brown bag meeting is an informal meeting where your team reads and discusses industry news and trends over lunch. Your new hire could give a presentation or co-present with a mentor on your team. It’s also a great way to encourage a data culture, especially if these include people outside the IT department, giving greater visibility to the broader organization.

Time to Hack

If you give each team member a designated week to work on something novel or speculative, or dedicated time throughout the week, new products or ideas beneficial to the company can emerge. It should have a little planning. A hack “friend” can check on the progress. Then have the member prepare a presentation of their work.

Attend Conferences

Allowing team members to attend conferences is excellent for career growth and learning new perspectives. When your team talks with other professionals about your projects and hears the experiences of others, they could realize how common the challenges they face are.

Create Clear Career Paths

The next thing you could do is establish healthy career paths. You can set up this career path during onboarding. If your interviewing process went well, you should have a good idea which tracks your new hire fits. They might fit on an individual contributor path or a management path. At the same time, don’t lock people into one track. As they gain experience or work on different projects or reach different stages in their lives, their goals and self-confidence might change.

Individual Contributor Path

This path is for the data scientists who like a journey with technical and professional growth that does not lead to management.

Management Path

A management path should include technical development at the early stages, then introduce the management element later on the track.

How Can an Analytics Talent Partner Help You Find Talent Who Will Stick With Your Company

A data analytics talent company establishes relationships with data professionals across the data science spectrum. They know who are the individual contributor types and who is looking to follow the management path. Also, being industry experts, this talent partner will help you find candidates who want to engage fully with your company.

Chisel Analytics can find the right data science and analytics talent to help you grow a robust analytics team. Chisel vets top talent with our proprietary skill assessments across six key elements to ensure you hire the most qualified analyst for your critical needs. We consider fit for your mission, culture, and strategy before making a recommendation to you. As a result, you cut the time and effort to find qualified candidates, resulting in data professionals who will stick with your company and meet your short-term or long-term needs.