Career advice of the month — riding the wave of data
Those who are part of the wave of professionals looking to make a job change face a once in a lifetime opportunity — forecasts suggest that data will be a $103billion dollar industry globally by 2027, and there are reports of 234,000 estimated job vacancies that require hard data skills in the UK alone. Who would be able to grab onto those opportunities? Would it be you, an experienced person already in the job market looking for a fresh start or would it be a recent graduate who only has a shiny diploma to show?
Why data?
As part of The Bright Initiative, we have been supporting the UK government with the country's National Data Strategy (NDS). A recurring theme are reports of an acute shortage of skilled data scientists and analysts across many industries. In addition to that, in our frequent online sessions with leading universities and academic institutes (most recently with King’s College London,? Royal Holloway University and Oxford University), we also learned about possible nation-wide faculty member future shortages to train the next generation of skilled data analysts and scientists to meet the growing demand for data experts in public administration and the private market.
Short supply, high demand...sounds familiar, right!? This situation leads to only one logical conclusion — there is a bright future in data!
Therefore, if you already have a strong foundation of data skills to propel you onwards to your next position, seize the moment and make sure recruiters are aware of that. Highlight those skills and related achievements in your resume. Even if your day to day doesn't involve much data and analytics-related tasks, you can always look to start a side project voluntarily that will help you gain more hands-on experience you can later demonstrate and showcase.
Use E-learning to sharpen your data skills
Either way, we urge you to consider using this time when most of us are still working from home to seek online education opportunities (Udemy, Coursera etc.) to bring your data literacy up to par (up to speed) to become eligible for the lucrative job offers out there.
National Online Learning Day is?September 15. It celebrates the wide array of E-learning resources that are available to students online.
Examples of courses that may come in handy:
Of course we are not suggesting you take these courses on company time ??. Working from home saves you commute times and allows you more control of your daily schedule — take a week or two to study your work patterns and other activities and you are sure to find a few vacancies for getting in a few lessons per week.?
And as a last resort, cutting off social media and tv streaming for a few weeks won't do any harm.
Going forward
We will continue meeting with universities and students to help raise awareness to the many benefits of the world of web data and responsible standards and guidelines we believe need to be held in common by companies that practice them. In the meantime, the data market is exploding and it needs good people NOW.