By 2021, organizations will increase the number of jobs requiring Data Analysis skills, say 59 percent of respondents to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
As a result, recruiting will be much harder for companies seeking professionals skilled in Data Analysis.
Hitting even closer to home: More than half—54 percent—of organizations now require data analysis skills in the HR department.
Nearly 400 HR professionals from a randomly selected sample of SHRM's membership were surveyed for the Jobs of the Future: Data Analysis Skillsreport, sponsored by the American Statistical Association.
Today, according to the report, 53 percent of HR departments use big data to help make strategic decisions; 71 percent use it for the sourcing, recruitment or selection of candidates; 63 percent use it to identify the causes of turnover and for employee retention strategies or trends; and 61 percent use it to manage talent and performance. The study points out that 51 percent of organizations say they don't use big data because of a lack of knowledge or expertise and 30 percent said there wasn't enough data collected or available.
Two percent of organizations say they expect to create positions requiring data analysis skills in 2016. "Publicly owned for-profit organizations were more likely than privately owned for-profit organizations to have data analysis positions," the study reveals.
While the demand for these skills is great, it's not easy to find qualified candidates: 78 percent of those polled say that within the last 12 months they've had a hard time recruiting candidates with data analysis skills for jobs such as data analyst, data scientist, statistician, market research analyst, financial analyst and research manager.
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