Analytics and Insight: The Challenges and Changes in 2018

Having recently branched into the Analytics Recruitment industry, we asked our Senior Analytics Recruitment Consultant, Leif Radford, to discuss the challenges that the sector has experienced in 2018 and to offer our readers advice on how to secure a successful analytics career in 2019.

What can your department offer?
Our new department can offer the same high standard of service and level of expertise we’ve always provided in marketing candidates, within the emerging sector of data, analytics and insight. By putting our candidates at the heart everything we do and ensuring they get the highest level of service, we’ve built up a reputation that means we’re able to work with some of the best and brightest people in the sector, which means our client then benefit from the top talent in the region.

Tell us more about the Analytics Recruitment Team and the types of roles that you have been working on.
The Data, Analytics and Insight team is headed up by myself, Leif. I’ve been with the candidate for almost 2 years and have gradually transitioned from my hands-on marketing background, into the “new oil” world of analytics. I’m supported by Felix Peach (Recruitment Executive) who’s been brought in to my team to help service the growing demand we’re seeing from both our existing clients and new, for DAI candidates. Our core roles currently are:

What sort of business’ are you currently working with?
Over the past year, we’ve worked with two main types of businesses. The first is our many ecommerce clients who are looking to bring analytics in-house to work with their CRO, UX and Marketing teams to provide actionable insight for business performance optimisation. The second has been businesses undergoing digital transformations with a need to bring in data-driven candidates on board to help steer and manage the process by analysing how is best to proceed. There are also various other niche business’ who are looking for analysts, researchers and consultants to help collect, interpret and report the masses of data being generated by their business operations.

What challenges have you seen within the industry this past year?

One of the main challenges we’ve faced in the past year stems from the rift between the huge demand for analytical talent versus the number of candidates that are on the market. Having a candidate short market invariably leads to inflated wages as the biggest businesses try to attract the best talent. As a result, the smaller businesses find their salary brackets become out of touch with the going rate for the talent they need, which means it becomes difficult for us to deliver the right quality of candidates to those with more rigid salary brackets.

Top 5 Tips for someone to have a successful Analytics Marketing career?

1. Make sure you stay on top of any new software/programmes that are being developed and try to get exposure to as many of them as possible – the more strings you can add to your bow, the more versatile you become, which is always attractive to potential employers.
2. Follow influencers in the world of data, analytics and insight on social media, blogs and newsletters, as these people are likely to be talking about topics which are going to be relevant to your long-term career.
3. Indicate on your CV which projects you were involved in at each business you’ve worked for, and how you contributed to these projects – especially if you’ve worked contracts!
4. Attend industry-relevant events and speak to people to grow your network in the North West landscape, you never know how a potential connection will potentially be able to help you in the future.
5. Be interested and passionate about what you do; if you’re not engaged with your work it’s going to be difficult to build a long and successful career.

Leif and Felix are working on some very exciting roles at the moment, so if you’re looking to secure a new job in the new year, get in touch with them today! Email your CV to [email protected] or call us on 0161 833 1044.

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