Do you speak data?

(Photo credit @kmuza)

Do you speak data?

As you consider or advance a career in tech, you need to sharpen your data literacy and analytics skills.

• Understand your fluency level with data manipulation.

• Figure out if you are a data translator as they help bridge the gap between data scientists and executive decision-makers.

• Check out these 6 rules from Google for great data design.

• Mastering these skills is critical before progressing to the next level Data/AI skills required for ‘Jobs of Tomorrow,’ according to the World Economic Forum.

Does your team speak data?

You should evaluate the digital dexterity and the data literacy skills of the team/business unit/company that you are joining.

• Don’t assume that your team is data literate simply because it’s a tech firm. You’d be surprised how often everyone needs to build and refresh those skills, mainly because data availability and the tools to manipulate it keep changing!

• Here are two great guides (one from HBR and another from Gartner) on how to boost your team’s data literacy skills. It’s crucial that you understand how tech-literate your team is to help you when launching new initiatives.

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Data Literacy

(Photo credit @anniespratt)

I try to share interesting perspectives and relevant tips to help you connect tech trends to career growth. The theme this week is Data Literacy.

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#TECHTOPIC

Data is what drives decisions in tech companies. The challenge is that for both tech and non-tech companies, the current data gathering approach seems to be to collect ALL THE DATA (and figure out later what to do with it). This blanketed approach to data collection
leaves teams overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data they need to understand, analyze and act upon -- and at the extreme, it helped lead to the recent indictments for the Chinese miliary’s role in the 2017 Equifax breach. Amassing data “for data’s sake” and without a data-driven strategy is dangerous for consumers and businesses alike.

One of the main reasons that companies take this broad-brush approach is that there is a dearth of data literacy skills among their employees. According to Gartner, “in 2020, 50% of organizations will lack sufficient AI and data literacy skills to achieve business value.”

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