What I learned recruiting young data scientists for our 500-year-old company

This week in Tech in Asia Jobs shares insights into how successful companies operate, hire, and more.

Photo credit: juliatim / 123RF Stock Photo.

Data scientists will often receive at least one new message a week from a recruiter about a potential new role for them, with the really good candidates receiving much more.

As a hiring manager, I was recently thinking about how I could make my job ads stand out. Should I add images and catchphrases? Should I use humor or flowery language? Should I add a lot of details or make it as short as possible? I doubted that any of these options would make any difference.

So I asked myself why any candidate would want to join my data science team when there are so many other opportunities out there. Having worked as a data scientist myself, I can think of four main reasons they’d want to join a company:

1. The opportunity to work for a company that has a great reputation among the data science community
2. The opportunity to work with amazing people you can learn from and be inspired by
3. The opportunity to work on exciting projects
4. The opportunity to use the latest tools and technologies

Therefore, a candidate will only consider joining my team if they are excited about one or more of these things, and I don’t believe it’s possible to create this excitement from a job ad.

Hence, a job ad is the least important part of my recruitment effort, so I shouldn’t focus much on it. Instead, I should focus most of my effort on a recruitment campaign that aims to excite the data science community about my company.

So how do we go about launching a great recruitment campaign? Here are some things I learned while launching a campaign to hire data scientists for our 500-year-old company.

Launching a recruitment campaign

Unless you work for the likes of Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Facebook, it’s unlikely that data scientists will come looking for you. You need to get your company name out there and create buzz around your company, people, projects, and tech stack. For this, you could:

• Publish articles such as the one I wrote about my company here
• Attend, speak at, and/or sponsor meetups, conferences, and other relevant events
• Organize events at your company and invite the data science community

These are just some examples of what I’ve done in the past. I’m sure much more can be done.

What is unique about your company?

Whether it’s brand new or 500 years old, every company is unique in some way or another. Potential candidates will want to know the story behind your company, as it is important for them to feel that their values are aligned with yours and that there is plenty of room for them to make a difference—not just for the company but for society in general.

For example, the company I work for is a logistics company that visits all addresses in the UK daily. We collect first-class mail around the country and deliver it the next day. We also collect and deliver second-class letters, parcels, and business mail. Some of these items need to be tracked and others need to be delivered before a specific time the next day.

How does your company treat data science and data scientists?

Who are the people working at your company?

What are the unique business problems that require a data science solution at your company?

What does your company’s tech stack look like?