Still the Sexiest Profession Alive...

In a week when People magazine announced its annual “Sexiest Man Alive,” I can’t help recalling an HBR article Tom Davenport and I published last year that was titled along similar lines. We called it “Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.”

The headline got some laughs, but no one seriously debated the point once they understood how we were defining “hot.” Data scientists are very much in demand as companies grapple with the challenge of making valuable discoveries from Big Data. They’re often exotic, coming from data-oriented scientific backgrounds rather than MBA programs. And they tend to be mavericks, moving between business and IT colleagues and challenging the perspectives of both.

But a year has now passed. Do they still, as a group, deserve the honor?

First, let’s be clear—data science is still sexy. There continues to be a huge appetite on the part of businesses to find the treasure in large, unstructured datasets, and a widespread understanding that not just anyone can do it. The qualities we outlined in the original article are still very much part of the profession. Great data scientists are not only adept at coding but have creative intelligence, and a knack for storytelling, both verbally and visually.

But, as when any profession is declared the next “hot job,” the composition of the group is changing fast. As the field grows and evolves, the first generation of highly trained, highly passionate young data scientists is being joined by others who hopped on the bandwagon as a simple career move, responding to market demand and hoping for steady employment. It’s turning into a mixed bag.

Of course it’s a good thing to see the growing availability of data science programs in academia. As recently as 2011, there were next to no formal training programs. Now, there are solid data science or advanced analytics programs in place at Columbia’s Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering; UC Berkeley’s iSchool; Carnegie Mellon University; Illinois Institute of Technology; Imperial College, London; North Carolina State; Syracuse University; and the University of Tennessee.

Meanwhile, companies like IBM are partnering with universities to close the Big Data skills gap. And there are pioneers from early data science groups at Yahoo! and LinkedIn now scattered throughout the tech world, dedicating themselves to training and inspiring the next generation of data scientists. The Insight Data Science Fellowship Program started by Jake Klamka is a prime example. Insight is an intensive six-week postdoctoral training fellowship bridging the gap between academia and a career in data science and data analytics. It takes 20 Ph.D.s, trains them, and places them into the top companies. Competition is fierce. For each class there have been over 200 applicants, and 100 percent of the fellows have been placed into organizations (the majority after receiving multiple offers).

All of these efforts are exciting. It’s fantastic that academia and big business are teaming up to offer coursework and training to budding data scientists. (Meanwhile, looking at the gap from the other side, I have also tried to address the shortage by drawing up specific descriptions of what hiring managers should look for in recruits as they build their data science teams.)

The question, though, is how to preserve the excitement of the field and continue to attract the best and brightest to its fascinating questions even as we bring more structure and standardized training to the profession.

What really matters, in my opinion, is that we don’t lose sight of a basic truth: that the most important qualities of a great data scientist aren’t capabilities that can be taught in a classroom. They are traits that are part of a person’s makeup, and may even be innate. Appropriately, as individuals decide to enter the field, and as businesses choose among candidates, they should look beyond the obvious data points.

It will pay to remember that no matter what the setting, the difference between sufficient and sexy isn’t competence as much as curiosity. And what makes someone hot isn’t professionalism. It’s passion.

I'm on Twitter too at @dpatil.

This is a cross post with Harvard Business Review