Hiring Data Analysts

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You can easily evaluate all your Data Analyst candidates with a Data Analyst test on Alooba. Contact us here to get started now.

Why are Data Analysts needed in an organization?

Data Analysts are essential to modern organizations because they help them make rational, data-informed decisions. This ultimately helps the organization perform better, be more productive, and make more money.

Where do we find great Data Analyst candidates?

Struggling to source great Data Analysts? Feel free to reach out to us here to discuss your options. Alooba Match is an end-to-end hiring service specifically for data-related roles.

How do we test Data Analyst candidates?

Testing data analysts can be tricky. One option is to create your own test from scratch. This tends to be a lot of work to create, and even more work to administer and grade. Another option is to leverage a product custom-built to evaluate Data Analysts, like Alooba Assess. This article deep dives on the difference between creating your own tests or using Alooba Assess.

How do we interview Data Analyst candidates?

When interviewing Data Analysts, make sure your interviews are structured. Unstructured interviews can provide very inaccurate results, are potentially biased, and often exacerbate existing inequalities. By moving to structured interviews, you can help reduce bias, and ultimately improve your chances of hiring the best candidate for the role.

What should be the hiring process for a Data Analyst?

A good hiring process should be designed to be fast, accurate, cost-effective & fair. As a benchmark, aim for 2 weeks from start to finish (that’s from application received to offer signed). Slower than 2 weeks, and you’ll be losing candidates to your competition.

The process should be focused on measurable criteria, rather than subjective criteria like ‘cultural fit’, which tends to be biased.

Try to avoid relying on CVs as a screening tool, and instead opt for skills-based screening which is more objective, fair, and scalable.

At the interview stage, ensure experts are conducting the interviews and practice structured interviews. Structured interviews help ensure that every candidate is treated the same and is given the same opportunity. This ultimately reduces bias and improves your hiring accuracy.

What interview questions should we NOT ask a Data Analyst?

It’s very easy to come up with interview questions to stump or fool a candidate. Any candidate, no matter how qualified, can be made to look silly by a pointless interview question.

Bad interview questions have no right answer and do not help you evaluate any criteria you have for the role.

Here’s some categories of questions you should avoid asking a Data Analyst candidate:

• Are discriminatory against the candidate (e.g. ‘How old are you?’)
• Are irrelevant (e.g. ‘Take me through an example of how you’ve used C# as a Data Analyst?’
• Are stupid (e.g. ‘If you were an animal, which animal would you be?’)
• Are close-ended (e.g. ‘Is it better to use a median or mean in calculating this metric?’)
• Are needlessly stress-inducing (e.g. ‘You’ve got 20 seconds to come up with 3 ways to improve our analytics process. Go!’

What are the most common mistakes organizations make when hiring Data Analysts?

Organizations still struggle to hire Data Analysts effectively. There’s some really common recurring problems that organizations make when trying to hire Data Analysts:

• Disconnect between hiring process & goals
• Lack of planning & thought about the hiring process
• Terrible communication - No feedback
• Relying purely on feelings & subjective decisions
• Longwinded processes with too many steps
• Screening out the best candidates

How can I get a personality profile of my Data Analyst candidates?

The leading personality model is called the Big 5 model. You might also have heard this called the OCEAN model, as it spells out the 5 dimensions along which personalities are measured: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

You can establish all your Data Analyst candidates’ personalities using Alooba.

What should we look for on a Data Analyst CV?

We’d discourage the use of CVs in the hiring process, because they open up discrimination, increase the time-to-hire, increase the hiring costs, and reduce diversity. CV screening is very subjective, and relying on CV screening means you’re missing out on the best talent.

How can I test my Data Analyst candidates’ intelligence?

You can assess your Data Analysts’ intelligence using IQ tests on Alooba Assess. Intelligence is evaluated through cognitive abilities tests, such as inductive reasoning, logical reasoning, verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning.

Intelligence tests are one of the best predictors of on-the-job-performance, along with skills assessments and structured interviews.

How can I assess the cultural fit of our Data Analyst candidates?

Talent teams have been a bit drunk on the ‘cultural fit’ concept for the last few years. We’d urge caution when evaluating candidates for cultural fit because cultural fit tends to have a few issues:

• It conflicts with diversity goals. If the process is designed to make sure candidates ‘fit in’ with your culture, then you’ll of course exclude people who are different from what you currently have.
• It’s highly subjective and open to bias. How do you measure cultural fit? If it’s not measurable, then it’s best to leave it out of the hiring process. This way, you can ensure your hiring process is objective and selects the best candidate.

How can I ensure Data Analysts share the values of our organization?

You can assess candidates’ alignment with your company values through an interview. Design interview questions that require the candidate to demonstrate their alignment with the values.

Make sure that you run structured interviews that ensure each candidate is treated the same, which minimizes the chance of bias.

What is the hardest thing about hiring a Data Analyst?

Data Analysts can be tricky to hire, especially if you aren’t an analytics expert. After a while, all those CVs tend to look pretty much the same! We find companies struggle the most with the screening stage, and that’s where the biggest improvement comes. After all, 99% of candidates are rejected at the screening stage, and with traditional methods like manual CV screening, this 99% normally includes the best candidates. By adopting a skills-based screening approach, you can ensure that candidates get to the interview stage based on merit.

How do we prevent discrimination when hiring a Data Analyst?

Reducing hiring discrimination when hiring Data Analysts is essential. Traditional hiring processes are unfortunately rife with discrimination and potential for bias. With more and more organizations facing class action lawsuits for unfair hiring practices, it’s essential to weed this out in your organization.

Ultimately, to prevent discrimination and falling foul of the law, hiring practices need to be designed to ensure that the best candidates get hired for the role. This means that you’ll want to ensure your process is:

• Objective, not subjective
• Aligned with the job requirements
• Actively prevents the potential for discrimination

How do I reduce bias when interviewing a Data Analyst?

You can reduce bias when hiring a Data Analyst in the same way as you reduce discrimination when hiring.

Some quick wins on reducing bias are:

• Replace manual CV screening with objective skills-based screening
• Replace manually graded take-home tests with automatically graded skills tests
• Replace unstructured interviews with structured interviews
• Ensure the hiring process is aligned with the requirements of the role
• No moving the goalposts and adding requirements midway through the process

Who should interview a Data Analyst?

It’s important that any interviewer is able to properly evaluate the answers of the Data Analyst candidates. Normally this will be future peers (e.g. Senior Data Analysts), and the hiring manager (e.g. a Head of Data Analytics). They’ll be able to form questions, dig into the candidate’s answers in more detail, and really understand the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses in detail. This will then allow them to measure the candidate’s skills in the areas investigated.

It’s common for talent acquisition and recruiters to conduct earlier screening interviews with candidates. If this is the case in your organization We’d recommend avoiding screening out candidates at this stage for anything skill-related. It’s unlikely Alooba customers often find that once proper skills-based screening is in place, there’s no requirement for a screening interview, and candidates can jump straight to an interview with the team. This is a great way to reduce the time-to-hire and reduce hiring costs.

Which Alooba tests are suitable for a Data Analyst?

Alooba has a wide range of tests, designed by analytics experts specifically to evaluate Data Analysts.

The Data Analyst screening test helps you to easily & fairly screen 100% of your data analytics candidates quickly and easily.

The Data Analyst in-depth test is a great replacement for your own take-home tests. Here’s a more detailed comparison of running your own tests vs using Alooba Assess.

How can I hire a Data Analyst easily?

Hiring a Data Analyst doesn’t have to be a pain-in-the-neck, but it certainly can if you rely on traditional hiring approaches like manual CV screening, manual case studies, and unstructured interviews.

To easily hire a Data Analyst, try these quick wins:

• Define your hiring goals ahead of time
• Create a simple & clear process that’s aligned with your hiring goals
• Automate screening with skills quizzes
• Replace any manual tests with automated skills tests
• Make sure any interviews are structured, not unstructured
• Provide 100% of candidates with prompt feedback

These changes will help you catch up with the competition and hire a Data Analyst easily & quickly.