How To Hire a Data Scientist
Complete with job descriptions, skill profiles, and interview templates. Use this Data Scientist hiring guide to help you make the right decisions, fast.
Data Scientist Recruitment Guide
What does a Data Scientist do?
Data Scientists use modelling, data science, mathematics, computer science and analytics to solve organizational problems to help make decisions. They help businesses make decisions from data including growth, how to optimize current offerings, uncovering issues, and product development.
Day to day tasks of a Data Scientist
- Gathering and analyzing data
- Creating code to assist with data analysis
- Create meaningful reports based off the data that was analysed
- Spotting patterns from the data
- Providing suggestions and insights to the business for direction based on data
Data Scientist definition
A data scientist is a highly trained individual. Data scientists are required to interpret a lot of complex data. To do this, they employ techniques like machine learning, algorithms, and various types of modelling to identify patterns in the data. Once they have identified patterns in both structured and unstructured data sets, they are required to action such data in ways that help the business.
HIRING PROCESS
Data Scientist Hiring Process
Build the Ideal Candidate Profile
Write A Job Description Based On Skills
Selecting The Ideal Candidate
Interview Top Performers
Making An Offer
Build the ideal candidate profile
Skills needed for a Data Scientist
Data scientists must be great communicators with a high level of programming expertise. They must have strong skills in manipulating and interpreting data. Data scientists need to be proactive and good learners so they’re able to stay on top of evolving technologies.
- Communication
- Tensorflow
- Machine Learning
- Python
Pro Tip
Ensure you clearly outline the responsibilities, area of business and industry for the data scientist role you’re recruiting for. This will increase the chances you find candidates that take interest into the problems that your organisation faces and through their passion you will achieve a high level of results which benefit the company for its long term performance.
WRITE A JOB DESCRIPTION BASED ON SKILLS
How to write a Data Scientist job description
Once you’ve determined the skills required for the role, you can write the job description to advertise for your position. Here’s what to include in your Data Scientist job description:
Job Title: What position are you hiring for?
Summary: What makes your company unique? What would it be like to work for you?
Responsibilities: An overview of the role’s day-to-day activities, and how the position contributes to the organization
Requirements: Skills a candidate must have to perform the job successfully
Benefits: Details of compensation, benefits, and any perks on offer
Pro Tip
In building your candidate profile, remember you’ve already identified what skills are needed to succeed in the role. Here’s where to list your “must-have” skills and maybe a couple of “nice-to-have” skills. For example, a Data Scientist must have a fundamental understanding of business so they’re able to craft their work around the direction an organisation wants to go as they can help facilitate this.
SELECTING THE IDEAL CANDIDATE
Sample skill tests for a Data Scientist
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Question 1
Machine Learning
Question Type: Multiple Choice
As a part of your machine learning project, you need to transform the data in such a way that the mean will be located at zero. Which approach would you select?
Question 2
Python
Question Type: Code
You were asked to perform some operations using numpy before going through the machine learning model. One of them is to get the product of two vectors. Assuming the two vectors are v and w below, How will you do that? Please find the unknown line.
Question 3
Communication
Question Type: Audio
You are working with a colleague on a project. They want to hand-pick certain customers who have achieved great results with the product to research validity for future funding. In a short audio recording, outline what selection bias is and how it could impact the results of the research.
INTERVIEW TOP PERFORMERS
How to interview a Data Scientist
Once your Vervoe skills assessment has surfaced the most qualified people for your open role, you can focus on interviewing these candidates. The interview should focus on any skills that require development that were highlighted from the skills assessment.
Now you know that candidates can do the job, the interview becomes more of a relationship building exercise where you can get to know the candidate on a more personal level, understand their motivations, and how they would fit in with the team.
Making An Offer
How much does it cost to hire a Data Scientist?
In the USA Data scientists are remunerated an extremely high rate compared to some other professions, it is reported by Payscale that the median base salary is $96,00, whereas on Indeed.com the salary is reported as $93,786 and Glassdoor USA has the average base salary at high $115,116 per year.
Data Scientist Salary United States
Data Scientist salaries in the United States range from $67,000 – $135,000 (USD). Data scientist salaries in the U.S vary a lot depending on the industry and the nature of the work they’re conducting.
Data Scientist Salary United Kingdom
Data scientist salaries in the United Kingdom range from £21,000 – £49,000 (GBP). Data scientist salaries in the UK vary largely based on the skills on the seniority of the position, location and industry of the company.
Data Scientist Salary Australia
Data scientist salaries in Australia range from $79,000 – $147,000 (AUD). Data scientists salaries usually depend on the data they’re analyzing which boils down to the industry and scale of the data that needs to be manipulated.