Egnaging millennials should be a priority of every manager and employer. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The reason many employers struggle to recruit, retain, and engage millennials is because they don’t focus on educating and training managers on how to better engage with millennials.

In fact, a Gallup Poll titled Millennials: The job-hopping generation, found that 29% of millennials are engaged at work, 16% are actively disengaged, and 55% are not engaged.

That should be troubling for employers. After all, according to Pew Research Center analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau data, more than one-in-three American workers today are millennials (adults ages 18 to 34 in 2015). And in 2015 millennials surpassed Generation X (born between 1965 and 1984) to become the largest share of the American workforce.

So employers listen up – now, more than ever, is the time to find a way to ensure managers engage millennials. According to the Forbes article, nine tips for managing millennials, millennials want a job that provides these key factors: Continue Reading

College Recruiter regularly produces white papers that address challenges to the talent acquisition community, especially professionals hiring entry-level. Below you’ll find our archives. Enjoy!

Winning the talent acquisition war in 2017: There has been a shift in tools and techniques used by employers to attract talent in light of advances in technology and business needs. An effective recruitment strategy should not only align with workforce plans, but also attract top performers. Employers need to respond to key trends when it comes to acquiring talent. This white paper addresses diversifying the workforce, use of analytics, hiring millennials, leveraging mobile technology and responding to the gig economy.

Predictive analytics, bias and interviewing: For centuries, crystal ball gazers and fortune tellers promised to be able to predict the future. They played on our biases and gullibility, and counted on us attributing chance occurrences to their predictive powers. But predictive analytics gives us the ability to reduce uncertainty by applying statistics and determining the probabilities that future patterns will emerge in the behavior of people and systems. This white paper addresses privacy invasion, biases that impede truth, and what to do about bias.

Don’t pass on game changer candidates who are still rookies: Game changers are high-impact hires who, soon after joining a team, end up completely transforming it. They quickly move beyond being just top performers because they can be further described using words like stunning, remarkable, exceptional, or extraordinary. Unfortunately, I frequently see recruiters and hiring managers pass over these extraordinary rookies. This white paper addresses identifying rookie game changer candidates.

How employers evaluate career services, job boards and other sources (And how mobile recruiting changes everything): When College Recruiter began using technology to track candidates who clicked “apply” in 1998, within months, one of the world’s largest hospitality companies was paying us $0.05 per click to drive thousands of students and grads to their career site. And yet today, few employers seem to properly track the sources of candidates who visit their career sites, let alone those who apply, are interviewed and get hired. This white paper addresses flawed assumptions about evaluating sources, and the solution.

Employers can take a number of steps to inspire and motivate new hires who are struggling. Photo from Eviled/Shutterstock.com

It’s a rewarding feeling for employers, HR professionals, and recruiters to attract that rock star entry-level employee. But it’s also as equally deflating when that recent college grad or other new hire isn’t working out. Many questions arise. Why isn’t this entry-level employee working out? What went wrong? There could be many reasons – a poor onboarding program, communication gaps, unidentified skills gaps, or a culture clash could be among the many potential reasons new employees struggle.

But before an employer considers terminating a struggling new hire – resulting in a costly hiring mistake – there are a number of steps that should take place, to help this entry-level employee improve, and eventually, make an impact.

Performance improvement strategies

Continue Reading

There are more men named John and David who run big companies than all the women who run big companies.

College Recruiter CEO Faith Rothberg has a problem with this, and made a point of offering solutions at this year’s National Association of Colleges and Employers conference. In the video below, Rothberg highlights eight organizations who are leveraging diversity to impact their customer numbers, workplace culture and profitability.

Watch Rothberg’s presentation, and find links to her examples below, along with major takeaways.

Study after study prove the business case for gender diversity. Increased gender diversity positively impacts productivity, innovation, decision-making, and employee retention and satisfaction. In fact, companies with the highest rates of gender diversity make more than 13 times average sales revenue than companies with the lowest gender diversity. Similarly, those gender diverse companies pull in an average of 15,000 more customers.

The amount of gender diversity varies by industry and role. Medical and health services managers, for example, are actually more likely to be women than men, as are human resources or social service managers. But only 36% of management occupations are filled with 50% women. That includes marketing and sales, operations, transportation, information systems and much more.

Here are eight companies leading the way to increase gender diversity

1. Aramark became a Catalyst partner of Women’s Foodservice Forum.
2. Bank of America has invested in LEAD for Women, an employee resource group dedicated to women’s professional development. About half of managers and executive management team are women.
3. Enterprise Rent-A-Car named Pamela Nicholson as CEO in 2013. She joined the company 32 years ago as a recent grad.
4. Ernst & Young opens up dialogue between men and women via Inclusiveness Steering Committees, encouraging candid discussions about critical issues and experiences, and establishing mentoring and sponsorship initiatives. They’ve increased the number of women in top management by 20%.
5. (Two orgs here): Goldman Sachs and U.S. Department of State partner to leverage the expertise of the public and private sectors to encourage inclusive economic growth in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
6. IBM developed task forces that focus on understanding differences and finding ways to appeal to more employees and customers. Revenues from small and midsize businesses dominated by minority and female buyers increased from $10 million to $300 million.
7. Quicken Loans routinely ranks among the best U.S. companies for both diversity and overall company culture. Women fill 45% of all jobs and 43% of management jobs.

Takeaways from Rothberg:

1. Diversity and inclusion goes beyond race. It includes ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, generation, disability, personality type, thinking style, and gender.
2. Leverage that diversity to produce better products and services.
3. Use variety of practices including mentoring, employee resource groups, multicultural talent management, strategic partnership development, and e-learning.
4. Senior leaders must seek diversity, create inclusion, and drive accountability.
5. Promote cognitive diversity. Embrace differing perspectives, interpretations. Overcome unconscious bias and culture that inhibits the sharing of different opinions.

Download Rothberg’s PowerPoint slides here.

Keep informed of recruiting best practices by staying connected with College Recruiter on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Hiring soon? Would it make sense to have a brief conversation about your hiring needs? Consider College Recruiter’s advertising solutions, or email [email protected]

Online job search scams can damage an employers reputation. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Employers beware: Job seekers aren’t the only targets of hackers, scammers, and thieves.

Thieves are also conducting sophisticated job search scams targeting HR professionals, recruiters, and hiring managers. The goal of these malicious attacks is to steal identity, personal information, financial information, data, and to disrupt business. Below we list five kinds of scams that HR professionals should know about.

“Job hunters aren’t the only ones who are vulnerable to recruitment scams,” says cybersecurity journalist Maria Korolov, of TheBestVPN.com. “Companies looking for new staff could also lose money, or suffer  reputational damage, if they’re not careful.” Continue Reading

Pre-hire assessments are becoming increasingly more common in the recruiting world — but that might not necessarily be a great idea for the HR space.

The rise of pre-hire assessments

Traditional hiring processes involved an HR-led screen of candidates, followed by phone screens, then in-person interviews, perhaps full-team meetings, and ultimately candidate selection.

As recruiting increasingly became digital, though, there was a bit of a supply-demand problem here. For example, in 2012 7 million people applied for 260,000 British call center jobs. Companies in multiple industries began seeing a need for lower-cost, less-time-consuming hiring processes that yielded quality results. (Additionally, some statistics indicate 50% or more of candidates — it varies by country — embellish their resumes and reflect skills they don’t have.) Continue Reading

Young office worker in modern office. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Recent college grads seeking the opportunity to develop a wide variety of job related skills can do so by pursuing entry-level assistant jobs.

That’s what Amanda Ponzar did in her first job as an administrative assistant.

“It taught me business skills, computer skills, organization, project management, and how to work with others,” said Ponzar, who is now the Chief Marketing Officer of Community Health Charities, an Alexandria, VA-based non-profit federation that raises awareness and funds through workplace campaigns and strategic partnerships.

From that job, Ponzar moved to a marketing assistant role with the Franklin Mint, a worldwide provider of fine art and collectibles.

“I learned about marketing and advertising, and demonstrated curiosity, competence, dependability, and initiative, so I was soon asked to edit management letters and collateral marketing materials, and then was recommended by my colleagues for a copywriter job at The Franklin Mint’s in-house ad agency,” said Ponzar.

That is when Ponzar’s career took off. She moved into advertising copywriter and marketing management roles, went back to school to earn a Master’s Degree in advertising and marketing, and is now a CMO of a non-profit.

She credits her varied experiences as an assistant for her career growth and success.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without those first entry-level jobs as an assistant that helped me define my career path,” said Ponzar.

College students, and recent college grads should consider assistant jobs as a way to get their foot in a door at a company they would like to work with, or to build important job skills. While most college grads don’t get a degree aspiring to be an assistant, think long-term. Assistant jobs help provide a paycheck to start paying off school loans or debt (and help achieve financial independence to not live at home), and/or provide real world experience and a chance to build important job skills. In addition, it’s a great opportunity for the recent college grad considering grad school to gain work experience before taking the next step of their career. Many assistants could also work with companies as they pursue advanced educational opportunities – and maybe the employer will also help pay for it through tuition reimbursement programs. Building a variety of marketable skills is important, and assistant jobs provide a great opportunity to do just that.

Assistants have unique opportunities to be exposed to all facets of a business, says Brandi Britton, District President of OfficeTeam, a leader in the placement of highly skilled office and administrative professionals into administrative assistant and front office jobs. Assistant jobs are in demand at small and large companies, non-profits, startups, Fortune 500 and Silicon Valley firms. Companies like Google, Facebook, and other leading tech firms all succeed because of good assistants.

“Entry-level assistant can learn valuable technology skills from constant exposure to Microsoft Office, enterprise resource planning, database management and customer relationship management software,” says Britton. “You may even build experience with social media tools since administrative staff are often tasked with monitoring and managing their company’s accounts.”

Recent college grads seeking assistant jobs, whether it be an administrative assistant, marketing assistant, office assistant, personal assistant or executive assistant (which often do take more advanced skills), can also learn these important career skills, says Britton:

• Time and project management: Assistants often have to keep on top of executives’ schedules as well as project timelines. Let’s not forget that assignments come their way from every direction. That’s why assistants are masters of time and project management, organization, multitasking and adaptability.
• Continual learning opportunities: You become well-rounded because you’re able to work on a variety of tasks – everything from event coordination to presentation decks. Once you figure out the types of projects you like most, you can hone your skills and consider moving on to a more specialized role in the organization.
• Budget and negotiation: When you frequently speak with vendors and make purchases on behalf of the company, you quickly become skilled at budgeting and negotiation.
• Verbal and written communication skills: Assistants are in constant contact with any number of internal and external contacts. If you’re in the role long enough, you’ll develop strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Specialized skills based on organization/industry: Being an assistant in a specific department or industry exposes you to the day-to-day operations and provides insight into that area’s lingo, processes and technology.
• Inside company knowledge: You gain knowledge into colleagues’ work styles and the corporate culture, which gives you an advantage at the company if you hope to advance there.

Alissa Carpenter founded Everything’s Not Ok and That’s OK Coaching after over a decade in higher education. She has advised Millennials and GenZ students at institutions such as The Wharton School and Penn State.

“As a recent graduate, being a personal assistant can be beneficial to your long term career goals,” says Carpenter. “You have the unique opportunity to work on numerous tasks and learn transferrable skills. You are often on the front line and are able to build relationships and rapport that can provide valuable connections.”

The three skills organizations believe millennials are lacking can be developed in a personal assistant role, says Carpenter, including:

• Interpersonal skills: You will be working with people from various levels both in and outside of your organization. You will learn to ask appropriate questions to find the most effective way to complete your tasks at hand and build strategic working relationships.
• Teamwork: In one of the key positions that is crucial to putting events and tasks together, you will learn how to delegate and how to work with people with varying personalities.
• Communication skills: As a key point of contact you will quickly learn the most effective ways to communicate with individuals and how people like to receive communications.

Utilizing a role as an assistant to get where you want to be later in one’s career can really be a asset to entry-level jobs seekers, says Lori Williams, Recruiting Coordinator for College Nannies, Sitters, and Tutors of Edmond, Oklahoma.

“Not only does it help build credibility and experience on your resume, but the people you often meet in that role can be sourced as references in the future,” says Williams. “You can develop many skills in this role, including project management, event planning, client relations, and administrative duties. All of these skills are transferable into future roles in just about any industry. Being able to develop these skills on the ground floor will help you add a good section to your resume entitled skills or career highlights and you can translate these into the job description for future career goals.”

Said Ponzar: “Never underestimate an assistant job as a way to get your foot in the door and show what you can do, learn about the company, develop relationships, and new skills.”

Look for assistant jobs right now on College Recruiter! Want more tips and advice on how to build career and job skills? Then stay connected to College Recruiter by visiting our blog, and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Last week, College Recruiter co-organized an in-person and live stream event, “Eye Opening Tactics for Better Diversity Recruiting,” alongside WCN and Stinson Leonard Street. Presenters spoke about four topics: why and how diversity matters, combating bias, big data, and non-discrimination employment law. This blog post shares what Ann Jenrette-Thomas,  Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer of Stinson Leonard, presented in part 2: combating bias in the hiring process.

Scroll down to watch the presentation and download Ann’s slide deck.

Implicit bias: slow brain vs fast brain

Implicit bias is the underlying thing that ends up creating problems in the hiring process. Another term for this is unconscious bias. Think of it as shortcuts in your brain. We use mental processes to quickly categorize information so that our brains can function optimally.

We receive over a million pieces of information per second. This is information we gather from all of our senses. Our brains are detecting so much, but in order to function well, we can’t focus on a million pieces of information. The prefrontal cortex in the front of the brain is the slow brain. And it’s the slow brain that actually is necessary for critical thinking.

If you repeat a slow-brain activity enough, it gets buried into the reptilian brain, otherwise known as the fast brain or the unconscious brain. Because these processes happen so rapidly, your conscious mind can’t even detect when something unconscious is happening. Take breathing—unless you make an effort to focus on it, you are not thinking about breathing. Another example if how we all learn to drive. When you first started to drive, you focused on putting your hands at ten and two o’clock. As experienced drivers, we’ve all had the experience of getting in the car, somehow arriving home and not even remembering the trip. When you learn to drive, you use your slow brain. When you’ve gotten to the point where it’s automatic, that’s your fast brain.

This has everything to do with hiring. Some of the things that are embedded in the unconscious part—the fast brain—are cultural norms. Different cultures place value on different styles, of for example, leadership. When Americans think of leadership, we often think of someone who is decisive and confident. Herein lies a challenge for many international employees of multinational corporations that are headquartered in the U.S. In order to advance in the company, many international employees do a stint in the U.S. so that they can have the right qualifications and move up the corporate ladder.

In Asia, they call that stint the “killing field”. Because in many Asian cultures, a valued leader is someone who is collaborative and who builds consensus, often someone with a much quieter leadership style and different type of confidence. This looks vastly different than an American version of “leadership”. So these particular employees are in a double bind. They have to come here in order to advance their careers. But once they come here, their leadership style prevents them from climbing the corporate ladder.

There is more to how the unconscious mind affects hiring. We process everything from body language to eye contact, in order to assess whether someone is a good hire.

Various types of bias in the hiring process

• Affinity bias means we tend to gravitate toward people who we perceive as similar to ourselves.
• Confirmation bias is when you magnify things that confirm what you already thinking. Or, you minimize things that contradict what you already think.
• Attribution bias is when you give a more favorable assessment to somebody that is in your ‘in-group’. Now, what defines an in-group could be a variety of things, and that’s where individuality comes into play.
• Availability bias describes how we prefer the quick and easy. When we mine for information, we grab what is readily available. Quick: imagine a fire fighter. It’s unlikely you had the image of a woman in your head. The readily available image of a firefighter is a man.
• Groupthink is very similar to affinity bias. The notion of groupthink is where people are not willing to go against the brain of the homogeneous group.

Combating bias starts with you

It’s time to get to get to action and it all starts with you. If you don’t know your own biases or the fact that we are prone to them, then you’re not going to be able to help the system at all. And you have to also educate the people around you in the hiring process. Here are some suggestions for moving forward:

1. Take the Implicit Association Test. There’s a variety of tests out there: go to projectimplicit.org. It’s free. This just gives you a baseline of where you are on these issues.

2. Take some time to become socially confident. Learn about any particular cultures with which you are working, for example what leadership looks like.

3. Assess your hiring process with the assumption that implicit bias is there. Why? Because statistically speaking, it’s there. It could be present where you post your jobs, how the descriptions are actually written, who and how the resumes are reviewed, how the interviews are conducted and who conducts the interviews.

4. Review your job descriptions for bias. There are certain words and phrases in a job description that could lead to fewer diverse applicants because they will self-select out. For example, women are less likely to apply for a job where there are masculine coded language, like “aggressive” or “adventurous.” Interestingly, men are negligibly affected when it they read feminine coded language, like “collaborative”. When diverse candidates read job descriptions that are more neutral, they are less likely to scrub out any identifying information, for example clubs and organizations that might be specific to an ethnicity. You want to make sure that your job descriptions only include information that is absolutely necessary to perform the job well.

5. Get used to operating outside your comfort zone. This is ultimately a relationship game. Recruit from a broader circle, go to different places. Ensure that you are also posting on sites that cater to a diverse community. Make sure you understand what other comparable programs are out there beside your core recruiting schools.

6. Evaluate every resume the exact same way. There are programs out there that can strip demographic information from resume, so that’s one way to try to make things anonymous. It’s also important to develop a standard evaluation form with detailed metrics so that everybody is evaluated on the same criteria.

7. Identify what you want before the interview begins. If you are clear about the skills, qualities, credentials, etc. that best suit the position, then you can craft questions that speak to those specific skills, credentials, etc. You can develop a checklist of these factors and give them to the interviewers beforehand so that everybody is clear. Prepare the interviewers. Make sure they are aware of the potential for bias. Use a diverse panel of interviewers.

Finally, don’t get overwhelmed by the challenge of combating bias. Your unconscious biases are going to pop up. It takes effort and time to keep trying to change these things. Be patient, keep at it, and know that you’ll get there.

Keep informed of recruiting best practices by staying connected with College Recruiter on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Hiring soon? Would it make sense to have a brief conversation about your hiring needs? Consider College Recruiter’s advertising solutions, or email [email protected]

Download the slides from this presentation here.

Watch the presentation of this content by Ann Jenrette-Thomas at Stinson Leonard Street from “Eye-Opening Tactics for Better Diversity Recruiting”:

The skills gap has been well researched, particularly surrounding tech skills. Most employers, however, don’t need researchers to tell them that their recruiting strategies still aren’t attracting the skills they need for their future workforce. As the gap threatens to get wider, employers must consider big recruiting solutions. EY decided to face this challenge head on.

College Recruiter recently spoke with Natasha Stough, Americas Director of Campus Recruiting at EY. EY was facing this very challenge, and they wanted to help prepare entry-level hires right out of college so that they would be able to succeed in a fast-changing industry. Employers with a need to increase the skills of their new hires entering the workforce can learn from EY’s solution.

Through the Ernst & Young Foundation, EY created an Academic Resource Center (ARC), which now serves as their one-stop shop for college faculty in accounting and related disciplines across the country. With collaboration of university faculty, it provides access to relevant and timely curricula materials on cutting edge topics that are developed specifically for use in university classrooms, helping to prepare students in skills like analytics.

Scroll down to watch the video of our discussion with Natasha and hear her account of EY’s success in creating the Academic Resource Center. 

Changes in workforce demands requires a big solution

EY developed the ARC when the organization was advocating the adoption of a single global set of accounting standards, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). According to Natasha Stough, EY “immediately started hearing directly from faculty around their concerns that there weren’t a lot of textbooks and information around IFRS to help prepare their students for when they join the workforce.” The Foundation created the EY ARC as a one-stop-shop to offer free curriculua materials in response to faculty’s needs, particularly given the highly regulated public accounting environment in which EY operates, allowing them to “upskill their students and help better prepare them for the fast pace of change in the global marketplace.”

Colleges and universities may not know what skills are required in practice, until employers help them. Schools want to advance their programs but as the cost of college goes up, they must evolve and stay relevant, or their program will just die off.

The ARC relies on relationships. EY’s approach is to share timely information about what is happening in practice with EY leaders, who often sit on advisory boards of business schools. It’s important for faculty to approve the curriculum, and in turn, information comes back to EY about the needs of the schools. EY gathers these insights and develops materials on topics where there is the most need.

“For the good of the profession”–demonstrating the ROI of a faculty resource center

Building a center like EY’s ARC is a significant investment, especially when you consider the collaboration needed—with faculty and with the experienced professionals—that requires an enormous amount of time and financial support.

First, Stough says that EY can track who uses the ARC and how much. It is only open to faculty from non-profit, higher education institutions. In addition to being able to the number of users, EY can also measure which materials are used the most, and from which schools across the country.

In addition, however, EY gets direct feedback that supports the ROI. Stough says, “We hear constantly from faculty about the value the materials bring to them to help enrich the experience they’re providing to their students in the classroom to ensure they are learning the most current and relevant knowledge. We also hear how helpful it is for students to be able to gain insights into the pace of change in the accounting profession.”

The obvious benefit is that faculty improve their understanding of where employers hold the bar in their field. Ultimately, says Stough, “We want to help them develop future employees. It’s for the good of the profession.” The brand building is not insignificant either. By providing meaningful resources, EY knows they are positioning themselves to faculty as a thought leader.

Given how technology like AI and robotics changes the workforce and education, “we have to help,” says Stough. The technology skills that students learn in year one of college will change in four years; employers need students who will be life-long learners.

A good resource center has a variety of materials

EY provides a lot of different content in the ARC. There are user guides, lecture notes, presentations, data sets, analytic workbooks, webcasts, how-to videos, cases, and homework assignments for students. EY even offers to bring their own professionals into their classroom.

One key in creating good content is to keep the dialogue open. Faculty should provide feedback about the materials available, and what might be missing, considering leading-edge topics and technology. Stough says, “Our goal is to make it real. We want to give good examples and bring this content to life through these different formats.”

That’s key too: bringing it to life. Without making the content easy to find and navigate, users will likely disengage. EY decided to even color-code some of its content and provide competency frameworks as well. That way, says Stough, “faculty can use chunks of content, or the entire thing, and understand how the material correlates to competencies they want to focus on.”

It’s no secret that employers demand soft skills, and public accounting firms are no different, so EY has made sure to include non-accounting skill sets in the ARC. “We consider leading-edge topics to enhance life skills, of soft skills, for the future of the profession. We recently built materials around an Analytics Mindset, that is critical for frankly anyone,” says Stough.

EY’s Academic Resource Center is an overall recruiting solution

While an employer can track employee performance, “at the end of the day,”Stough says, you may not be able to draw a direct correlation between one individual’s performance and their association with the resource center. Students take so many classes, and building a resource center must stay focused on engaging faculty to understand the future skills needed. However, Stough does say that she’s seeing a change in the students she meets. Two major areas of EY’s focus have been soft skills and the importance of analyzing and interpreting data. “We’re now seeing more students come in knowing the difference between communicating via email or text.” Additionally, her team is “starting to see a diversification in the skills that students are bringing to the world of where we’re at, like concepts like an analytics mindset and the importance of data.

Addressing the challenges of a resource center

Developing a resource center full of relevant materials won’t stay relevant for long. The biggest challenge for EY, says Stough, is remaining current. She says they must ensure that they continue to integrate new content. “We want to make sure we’re meeting the needs of faculty. We are not going to tell them what they need to teach but we will provide resource that we believe to be valuable.”

To achieve this, Stough stresses the need to maintain strong relationships with faculty, because they provide critical feedback. They want to know how useful their center is, and other topics where “faculty may be looking to gain more information.”

They also keep doing outreach to build and maintain relationships. They engage with the American Accounting Association and many of their sub groups. As people like Stough travel to college campuses, they make sure to spend time with faculty, deans and department chairs, highlighting the ARC as a resource for them.

“We want to be at the forefront,” says Stough. “Because it is our job to partner and support the universities to help them drive the curriculum so that their students are ready to join the workforce.”

Watch our discussion below with EY’s Natasha Stough to hear about how their Academic Resource Center is preparing students for a future workforce:

Keep informed of recruiting best practices by staying connected with College Recruiter on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Hiring soon? Would it make sense to have a brief conversation about your hiring needs? Consider College Recruiter’s advertising solutions, or email [email protected]

Do employers truly understand their own dire need for data analytics, or more broadly, data science and analytics skills? A new report says that by 2020, new job postings that require these skills will hit 2.72 million. There is a concerning gap between the expectations of educators and the expectations of business executives when it comes to getting students ready for the job market. That is according to a study released by the Business-Higher Education Forum and PwC.

If you are like most employers, in the next several years you will prefer job candidates with data science and analytics skills. And yet, only 23 percent of educators believe their graduates will possess those skills.

The report makes concrete suggestions for both employers and higher education. Here, we will highlight the recommendations for employers who need to harness skills in data science and analytics.

What exactly are data science and analytics skills?

According to the report, “The term analytics refers to the synthesis of knowledge from information. It’s one of the steps in the data life cycle: collection of raw data, preparation of information, analytics, visualization, and access. Data science is the extraction of actionable knowledge directly from data through either a process of discovery, or hypothesis formulation and hypothesis testing.”

People who need to make data-driven decisions include directors in Human Resources, Marketing, IT, and the C-suite. Data science jobs include systems analysts, data administrators, business intelligence analysts, data engineers and much more.

This skills gap affects much more than just data scientists. Jobs from the C-suite to the frontlines are increasingly affected by the need for analytics. According to the report, this is a revolution. “As with the revolution in work brought on by the personal computer (PC) 30 years ago, data science and analytics, hand in hand with machine intelligence and automation, are creating a new revolution in work.”

Businesses who do not attract and retain talent in data science and analytics will eventually be outcompeted.

What does a business do to attract and retain skills in data science and analytics?

The report details four recommendations to employers:

1. Look beyond the diploma and hire for skills, too.

It’s time to admit that a degree is only a proxy for skill sets. While recruiters can argue the effectiveness of using proxies, it just doesn’t work with DSA skills. The market for these skills is full of disconnected dots. STEM grads are not necessarily prepared to use DSA in business, and business grads are not necessarily taught DSA skills. There is a growing number of DSA degrees, but they haven’t been around long enough for many recruiters to trust their viability, let alone assume they will make the list of annual campus visits.

Where does this leave us? According to the report, “It is left to hiring managers and recruiters to determine how candidates meet skill requirements in this changing environment. To do that they need two things: 1) a common nomenclature to trade in DSA competencies and skills; and 2) a closer, more collaborative relationship with higher education aimed at creating programs that will provide job candidates with the skills they need.”

Researchers have identified skills common to data science jobs across broad skill groups. Those are:

• Applied domain skills (research or business)
• Data analytics and machine learning
• Data management and curation
• Data science engineering
• Scientific or research methods
• Personal and interpersonal communication skills

Employers shouldn’t expect to find all of the above skills in one individual. Rather, they should use these skill groups as a guide to forming teams whose members collectively have a full skill set.

These skills fall into three categories that employers should assess: data analysis, decision-making and problem-framing: Continue Reading