What technology, skills and abilities will non-technical HR pros need to get into “analytics”.
This is a situation many HR professionals find themselves in. Many want to update their skills to remain competitive; others want to avoid being obsolete. Yet, others keep hearing about this “analytics” buzzword and wonder what all the fuss is about.
Some may wonder, “what technology skills do I need to transition into analytics?”
This post will provide one overlooked way for thinking about the new People Analytics (aka HR/Workforce/Talent Analytics) movement based on a database of occupations that has been around for decades.
We’re going to purposely avoid the hype and take a cold hard look at exactly what technology skills, skills and abilities are needed. That way, you can objectively assess any skills gap you need to fill.
Occupational Information Network
Also known as O*NET, is a free online database that contains hundreds of occupational definitions to help students, job seekers and human resource professionals understand the world of work. The database is a product of collaboration between many industrial psychologists and database designers to classify all “jobs” in the U.S. by personal requirements, experience requirements, tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities and other competencies and activities required by any job (KSAOs).
Of interest for us is the scientific approach of job analysis that has been cross validated by many industrial psychologists over the years. It takes a very systematic and detailed look at exactly what skills are needed.
Because People Analytics (and even Data Scientists) are fairly new titles, they are not present in the O*NET.
However, just because a job has a new “title” doesn’t mean that core knowledge, skills and abilities are all that new. In fact, I believe we can get a good sense for People Analytics by combining pre-existing roles together.
I entered “human resource analytics” into the database and a list of occupations were returned:
The two occupations that came closest to what we know to be People Analytics appeared to be a cross between Human Resource Specialist (aka HR Analyst) and Statistician.
To keep things simple, we’re going to analyze these two occupations to get a better understanding of the “analytics” skills needed for People Analytics roles.
Technology
First, I surveyed technology required for both HR Specialist and Statistician. These are derived from careful job analyses by researchers going out into the field and asking people who currently occupy these roles what technologies they use on the job.
Here’s the list. In parentheses are specific software tools and other technology requirements frequently included in employer job posting:
- Analytical or scientific software (SPSS, SAS)
- Business intelligence and data analysis software (Qlik Tech Qlik View; Tableau)
- Data base management system software (Teradata, Apache Hadoop)
- Data base user interface and query software (Microsoft SQL Server, SQL, Microsoft Access)
- Data mining software
- Development environment software (Microsoft Visual Basic)
- Enterprise application integration software (XML, SAS/CONNECT)
- Enterprise resource planning ERP software (SAP; Oracle Peoplesoft Human Capital Management)
- Object or component oriented development software (Python, R)
- Office suite software (Microsoft Office)
- Operating system software
- Presentation software
- Spreadsheet software (Microsoft Excel)
- Word processing software
This corroborates a previous post informally surveying people analytics job postings on glassdoor.com. In that post, the top five tools (in descending order) include: SQL, Tableau, Excel and then R or Python.
This list of technologies corroborates that post but goes beyond to include database management, querying, data mining and enterprise resource planning software that will likely come into play for People Analytics roles (particularly in companies with larger datasets).
By systematically analyzing Technologies required, the non-technical HR professional can get a sense for what is needed to transition into more analytical roles.
In the next post, we’ll dig into actual People Analytics job descriptions and highlight what employers are generally looking for.
If you’re interested to follow along, I’ll be creating a pathway of recommended resources for HR professionals to transition into analytical work. Subscribe at GetWyze.com.
