A Guide to Hiring Data Scientists

Data science is an emerging field, and roles, as well as qualifications, aren't clear-cut at the moment. Given the murkiness surrounding the field and the potential lack of analytics expertise at companies seeking to hire a data scientist or team of data scientists, the task of building an analytics team or hiring a company's first data scientist can be daunting. However, with a brief overview of data scientist types and example questions to assess each type, hiring managers can provide recruiters with a more tailored profile and better assess candidates on skills likely needed to fill the role. Data scientists typically have skills in 3 main areas: mathematics/statistics/machine learning, coding/software engineering, and expertise in the industry in which they seek employment (see chart below). Most mature data scientists have a strong skills in 2 of these 3 areas, yielding software/math folks (who are typically found in tech companies or production roles), math/domain folks (more of a traditional statistician or scientific researcher), or software/domain (less common but often involved in data pipelines and business intelligence roles).