Hiring managers’ job descriptions are so technical

Hiring managers’ job descriptions are so technical, it’s hard to feel confident in finding good candidates. Help.

Job descriptions for analytics specialists are ever evolving and can seem inaccessible. Consequently, the specs for the needed work become a bottle neck in your way of recruiting the right data or analytics candidate. The way the hiring manager wrote the job posting puts you in a tight spot. You know it should be modified, but without being a data scientist yourself, what can you change without attracting the wrong candidate or delaying the process. Also, you lose confidence in your ability to find the right person. Here are some tips to help you translate your hiring manager’s requirements.

Communicate Frequently With Your Hiring Manager

You might already collaborate with your data team. However, you might discover that someone not in IT or on the data team writes the job requests. Use your rapport with IT to ask what they need. Try to ask them to describe it like you are six years old. For instance, if the hiring manager wants a junior data scientist, get a description of the role in simple language. If the requirements are not high for this role, the description might sound like, “We need someone to structure, explore and present data on current and forecasted performance. Also, they must have the ability to explain predictive models but not build them.” Sometimes hard skills are challenging to articulate, but if you work closely with the hiring manager, you can come up with more concise role requirements.

When discussing technical skills, be sure to ask:

• What tools will the applicant be required to know?
• How proficient should they be with these tools?
• What problems will they solve and with what techniques?
• What projects will they be assigned?

You might not have specific knowledge of the tools, but knowing the projects to be completed and problems to be solved helps to create a more precise job posting.

Also, as you would do for every candidate, list the needed soft skills. Including abilities such as “goal-driven, detail-oriented, and performs well under pressure” gives a potential candidate an idea of your company’s culture. As a result, the right sort of applicants will respond to the job posting.

Get Clarity

Try to get as much certainty about an open position and ask the hiring manager to itemize what a candidate must absolutely know. The knowledge base of a candidate could include:

• Programming talent
• Data engineering or data base management knowledge
• Familiarity with classification and regression
• Comprehension of clustered algorithms such as K-means, and K-nearest neighbors.
• Understand the difference between decision trees and random forest classifiers.

Now, the above may be jibberish to you, but including an inventory on your job post will give an applicant a good idea of your requirements.

The next list would be the expected deliverables. This could include abilities to:

• Analyze data to provide relevant insights about supply chain management.
• Ensure the insights you provide help business development or operations.
• Present data and findings in an intuitive and relevant manner that guides operational and logistical decisions.

These items give the applicant an idea of what problems they will be solving.

Listing specifically what will be required of a prospective analyst paints a clearer picture for them. The list could include:

• Statistics and analytics
• Collecting and structuring information
• Organizing and analyzing data inputs
• Drawing inferences from data and reports
• Artificial intelligence or machine learning

Itemizing your specs can prevent confusion and help avoid wasted time and effort, for you, the candidate and the hiring manager. The more granular the detail, the better qualified the candidate. Then, it becomes a matter of validating the level of skill of candidates and/or finding equivalent or easily upskilled candidates who can meet the core requirements, including budget.

Chisel understands how complicated filling data science and data analytics roles can get. We’re here to help clear up the confusion and match you with the right talent every time, from helping write the perfect job posting to selecting the best candidates for your organization.