Summary Top 10 Recommendations

Our study reveals data scientists’ attitude toward their work, their ideal employment environment, and how you can recruit them. Based on our findings, we recommend these top 10 strategies.

1. Ensure your data scientists are doing data science, not making dashboards, cleaning data, or doing IT work.
2. Create an environment where learning is prioritized, celebrated, and evangelized.
3. Centralize your team under a strong data science leader, and matrix data scientists into projects.
4. Integrate your data scientists into your AI ethics program. Ask them to evaluate the potential ethical issues and risks associated with their work.
5. Communicate how the work can impact your company and the world.
6. Invest in the data and infrastructure your data scientists need to succeed.
7. Pay competitively and optimize your environment for candidates who can further your mission and learn new skills.
8. Write job descriptions that convey the experience and understanding of your hiring manager.
9. Optimize your recruiting process for candidates who are curious and are good communicators. Evaluate hard skills based on past work.
10. Create a non-management career path for your data scientists. Advertise it in your job descriptions.