The Problem with “Hit the Ground Running” (Hiring Series Part 4)
This is part of a series sharing what we've learned in more than 15 years of attracting and screening education data talent, and what it means in meeting the moment of today's hiring market.
Most ed agencies we talk to say they want data staff who can hit the ground running. What they often mean is someone who already knows their exact programming language and preferred tools. That instinct is understandable. Teams are busy. The work feels urgent. Organizations want someone who can get started yesterday. But when we screen too narrowly for specific technical skills, we systematically miss some of the strongest data talent we can hire.
In SDP's screening process, we look for something we call "analytic entrepreneurship." We have been using this phrase for more than a decade, and we are fairly sure we invented it, or at least the relationship is robust. Analytic entrepreneurship is not about launching side projects or chasing untested ideas. It is about meeting real problems head on and figuring out how to solve them within constraints, with imperfect data, and in collaboration with others. Like entrepreneurs in business, analytic entrepreneurs take limited resources and ambitious goals and build something useful and sound with the data they have.
This skill shows up less in what someone already knows and more in how they think. But how should you screen for it? Read on for the principles we use, along with a practical tool you can download at the end.