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Download my hiring cheat sheet at the end end of the article.

Your company and your needs are unique to you – and so the right analyst for your first hire might very well be quite different than the analyst for the company across the street. However, here are a few essential questions to ask prior to posting your job or selecting your top candidate. The answers to these questions will help you in this exciting step forward for your new analytic team. 

Crafting the Job Description 

Before you can seek candidates for a job, you need to know what the job is.  

• Where in your org structure will this analyst sit? 
  • If he or she is the only data person in the whole org, you have the option of creating a new department or embedding him or her into an existing department.  
  • If the analyst will only be working on projects related to a particular department, and you have no plans in the near term to expand that, embedding into that department may make sense 
  • However, if you hope to expand analytic capabilities in the future or if your analyst will be supporting the work of multiple teams, you may want to consider the “center of excellence” approach and create an analytic department that can server all other depts. 
    • You’ll still have to decide who the analyst should report up to. Many orgs choose the Director of Finance or CFO to oversee analytics. Ultimately you may wish to create a director or executive lead of analytics – perhaps this analyst can grow into that position down the road.  
• What are the tasks and data products that you would like this new analyst to own and produce?  
  • In a perfect world, these objectives will be guided by the strategic goals of the organization 
  • Make as detailed a list as possible 
  • You may not know the exact steps if you’re developing analytic processes for the first time. However, you should know what the desired outcomes are, so start there. 
• Of that list, which are essential priorities and which are nice to have? 
• Of the priority tasks and products, what are the specific skills that will be required? 
  • If you don’t know what platform will be used for a task or product, you can list it generally 
• Check: are you asking too much of one role? 
  • This is an important question to ask for 1) the success of your new analyst, 2) the likelihood of finding someone with everything you want, and 3) the salary a prospective analyst for that position will expect and demand. Speaking of salary… 
• What salary are you willing to pay this new analyst? 
  • Keep in mind that the more skills you’ve asked for, the higher the salary you will likely need to offer to successfully recruit a suitable candidate. Tech skills are in high demand, and each distinct platform or language takes resources to develop. 

Reviewing the Candidates  

Once you’ve crafted the perfect job posting, you’ll have to sort through your applicants. Here are some questions that you can ask them to help identify the best fit for your org and goals. 

• Can you share examples of analytic work you have done?  
  • Specify examples that pertain to the work you’d like this person to do – e.g. ask for visualization examples if you want him or her to build dashboards for you, or ask for coding examples if you’re planning on using that skill. 
• Can you present an analytic finding from a past project, with a focus on what the data revealed and how it could influence related decisions? 
  • As the sole (at least to start with) analytic person in your team or org, this person will have to be able to communicate easily with non-technical folks. Asking for an example presentation will help you assess how well the candidate can do that. 
• Walk us through your process for completing a brand new analytic project from start to finish. 
  • Again, since the new analyst will likely not have much external support, he or she will be required to carry out most or all of the steps of an analytic project. Overall, you’ll want to hear that the candidate has experience and knowledge about the whole process, including working directly with business roles to identity, design, and iterate on a project. Specifically, it’s important to listen for: 
    • how the candidate acquires business information to develop the analytic project 
      • Does s/he mention talking to end users? IDing and interviewing stakeholders? Aligning business and strategic goals with the data process in question? 
      • How the metrics or products are arrived at and defined 
    • how well he or she defines the iteration process  
      • Does s/he speak to the need to get feedback continually through the process from stakeholders? 
    • How is “success” defined for a project? 
      • How does the candidate track or measure that success? 
      • Still aligning with business and strategic goals? 
• What are the factors most likely to cause an analytic project to fail? 
  • There are both human and technical factors that can doom an analytic project. Listen to see if your candidate identifies some of each, or focuses too much on one side. 
• What are your preferred analytic tools? Are there any new analytic tools you have learned recently? 
  • Learning a new tool recently is not required, but it is a good sign of growth and adaptability. 
  • Knowing what platforms the candidate prefers can help you know if s/he will like working with the ones you are planning to use, or help you decide on tools if you haven’t selected any yet. 
• What makes a “good” analytic question when it comes to your industry? 
  • There’s not a “right” answer to this question, because “good” is a bit of a trick question! It’s more important to see how s/he thinks through this response, and what values and processes come to the surface.  
  • You also want this answer to align with what you’re looking for from your analytics. For example, if you’re hoping that analytics will have a high ROI, then listen to see if financial return for analytic questions comes up from the candidate.  
  • If you get a vague answer, or if the candidate (wisely!) asks you to define “good,” make sure you have an explanation of what the overarching goal for bringing in an analyst is for the organization. Then ask how the candidate would seek out suitable questions to achieve that goal, and even if s/he has any suggestions for good questions right there.  

I hope that gets you started on your way to finding your first analyst. Congrats on taking this big step towards developing your team’s data capabilities. Don’t forget to download my cheat sheet that covers the tips in this article for your reference.

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