
Ask HN: What are the best ways to hire a data scientist? - adamgamble
We&#x27;re sitting on mounds of data and we need someone to help us analyze and make this data useful.<p>We aren&#x27;t even sure where to start when describing the qualifications of a great data scientist. What are the common tools used? Is data scientist even the correct term? Can anyone provide examples of great job descriptions for data scientists?
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uptownfunk
As someone who has been doing this in the consulting setting for the nation's
top insurance carriers for the last 2 years, and then for an investment bank
for another 2 years before that, you're really looking for a very dynamic
individual for the role to be really successful.

1\. Someone with an understanding / ability / passion to understand your
business process. This helps you orient the DS in such a way that their
analyses will be conditioned to be useful to the business (vs. randomly
analyzing the data to satisfy some intellectual curiosity..)

2\. Someone who can take what they've learned about the business, and use that
to think critically about the data. What is the problem that would help the
business to solve? How can we use the data to answer it? What are some
hypotheses/potential drivers that influence the problem at hand? What is it
worth to the business to analyze / answer the business question?

3\. How to convert this analysis/brainstorming into an actual plan. Create a
list of analyses and begin executing on them by _writing code_ in either
SQL/python/R/etc. They should be able to then tell the story with their
analyses as well as visualize what it is they are trying to convey.

4\. Translation of results to the business. How to effectively communicate the
results of your analysis in such a way that the business can actually make use
of your analysis. This is where a lot of DS's suffer because they're so used
to nerding out over data it can be hard to actually speak anything a normal
person would understand.

I think if you can find someone who ticks the above boxes, you'll be at a good
starting point for an effective DS. It also might be good to break down these
roles into a team of DS's depending on what size team you're going for. Happy
to chat about this stuff anytime. Thanks.

