One of the most engaged, productive and valuable data scientists that I know is someone who transitioned from a business analytics role to a data science role. This person is amazingly engaged in what they are doing, and full of great ideas and enthusiasm. I also saw them adding immense value to the business from day one, in applying analytics to a previously manual work-force planning process, and improving workforce planning forecasts immensely in the space of a couple of months. And in a short period of time, they have not only transitioned from business analytics to data science, but they are now in a management/mentoring role, on-boarding new staff members, and taking new starters on the same journey that they themselves have only recently embarked on.
I am therefore a strong advocate of taking people from within your own business, who really understand the day to day challenges, and training them up to apply data science to those challenges. Not only can they add more value from day one, but they are far more likely to choose to stay with the organisation than a person for whom the algorthms come first and the business second.
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