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1. The Who: Promising Start-ups and New Industries
Reports state small businesses and startups are hiring keeping the future of their existence and progress in mind. Cost reduction through getting rid of expensive equipment and using Cloud technologies to their benefit, automating functions and hiring millennial data scientists seem to be few of their strategies. Moreover, consumers expect more from startups and demand flawless services. They simply love the predictive technologies, which can only be put into action with the help of data scientists, who deliver business insights aiding in strategizing the next big move. According to recent reports, high growth startups in New York City are hiring data scientists with completely futuristic targets in mind. As far new industries are concerned, for e.g., transportation and healthcare, data science is used to create personalized services like real time updates for traffic and weather. The use of data science has not yet reached a mature level in the new industries segment. However, we are sure of the fact that there is a lot more application waiting to be seen, somewhat securing the future job market for data scientists.
2. The What – Big Three Technologies of Big Data, Internet of Things and Cloud
The Big Three technologies, as we would like to call it, are all about creating and storing data in large volumes and variety. By 2021, IOT will have a capacity to capture 209 billion RFID tags and the Big Data industry will grow to US$54.3 billion by 2017. Every minute Big Data is being created through IOT, mobile devices, systems and sensors. The role of a data scientist will therefore be significant in extracting valuable insights from all the data mined and collected. Systematic organization of data to add value to business and predict future trends using distributed computing, predictive modeling, visualizing including statistics and machine learning skills – these skills unique to data scientists will help them in creative utilization of data and plan analytics programs to meet business needs. As a data scientist, your responsibility will be part storyteller, part business analyst and part data engineer, something that sets you apart and makes you coveted. Only data scientists can perform data insights through exploration and thereby understanding a pattern (a technique used by Netflix) with their analytical creativity. Quantitative techniques like time series forecasting (Procter & Gamble), segmentation analysis, etc. are also gaining huge popularity. So, while the ‘Big Three’ runs the industries, data scientists provide the fuel for it!
3. The How: New Market Exploration
Google, Amazon, LinkedIN, Facebook, and Netflix – All of them are hiring and forming teams of data scientists to get into unexplored horizons. Investments for R&D and new market exploration have always been welcome by shareholders, and Data Science is proving to be one of those fields where dividends far outweigh the initial investments. Amazon, Netfllix and Spotify are typical examples of using data science to fuel the recommendation engine. LinkedIn’s page views and visits increased following its foray into data analytics. If all the biggies in the industry are turning to data science, is it a wonder that Harvard Business Review has graded the job of a data scientist as “sexiest job of the 21st century”?
Now that we’ve told you the who, what and how of the proverbial pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for being a Data Scientist, we’d also like to emphasize that Data science is a multi-disciplinary profession and the most important quality that you should definitely have to be a roaring success is a sharp and inquisitive mind to analyze information, patterns and outliers to put down meaningful insights from the plethora of data that we have today.