The Impact of Big Data on Career Development
Big data is huge! In fact, our global data volume is projected to exceed 200 zettabytes by 2025.
To understand just how massive this is, if you were to measure internet traffic, a single zettabyte would equate to more than 250 billion hours of streaming videos in 4K.
When utilized effectively, big data can largely impact career growth and development. You can use it to identify new opportunities, address industry challenges, and tailor training programs.
In this article, we’ll discuss the impact of big data on career development. We’ll do this by understanding how you can use big data-generated reports to make critical career decisions, identify opportunities for growth, and more.
Before we dive into all that, let’s understand what big data really is.
What Is Big Data?
The term big data refers to extremely huge volumes of data and datasets that are collected and mined by organizations.
These datasets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software can’t effectively manage, process, or analyze them.
Big data can be in either structured (like databases) or unstructured (like texts from social media posts) form.
Usually, big data is characterized by 4 V’s:
- Volume: This is the sheer amount of data being generated. It’s usually measured in petabytes or terabytes.
- Velocity: It’s the specific speed at which data is being generated and collected.
- Variety: This entails the various types of data being collected. It includes structured data (e.g. databases) and unstructured data (e.g. sensor data and social media posts).
- Veracity: This is the overall quality and reliability of the data collected, since big data may also have inconsistencies.
Today, businesses can greatly benefit from big data, especially when used effectively. Its uses span from developing an effective social media strategy to improving customer understanding and implementing personalized marketing.
However, the impact of big data extends beyond business operations.
Let’s see how in the next section.
The Impact of Big Data on Career Development
Let’s dive deeper into the impact of big data on career development.
1. Resume Building
Only around 8% of job applicants are invited to interviews. Candidates need to grab a recruiter’s attention as soon as possible to be considered.
To do so, the candidate will need to know exactly what the employer is looking for and tailor their digital resume to those requirements. Doing this will also help them stand out among other applicants.
Fortunately, you can leverage big data and analytics to know more about the company and its culture. This will help you build your resume according to your findings.
You can also utilize job application trackers. These trackers can come in handy during your job search in a couple of ways.
For instance, they:
- Analyze huge amounts of data from other applicants’ profiles, job postings, and hiring trends to determine patterns and preferences among employers.
- Reveal popular keywords and phrases that often appear in job postings within a specific industry or niche.
- Offer important feedback on the effectiveness of your resume, such as the number of clicks, views, and responses received.
By gaining these insights, you’ll be able to improve your resume, stand out among the competition, and ultimately advance in your career.
2. Effective Upskilling of Employees
Organizations and HR leaders can leverage big data to obtain valuable information relating to their employees’ skills.
Predictive models and AI tools can help identify potential skill gaps, maximize skill crossover opportunities, and discover development opportunities.
With this, it becomes easier to equip employees with the relevant skills they need to excel in their roles and be more efficient.
Big data analytics can also help the HR department with better leveraging the current skills and strengths of employees in the organization.
It also helps in identifying which skills can be improved to benefit both the company and the employees. It helps to identify skill gaps where additional training or development may be beneficial.
Examples of such targeted workforce learning programs include seminars, workshops, and online courses.
For online courses, platforms like Masterclass, Kajabi, Thinkific offer several big data courses that employees can conveniently take anytime, anywhere. You can also check several other online course platforms in this guide by Attrock that offers 30+ similar options.
Upskilling helps with effective career planning. It ultimately improves employee performance, increases productivity, and results in better job satisfaction.
However, it’s important to note that when leveraging big data for effective upskilling practices, organizations must prioritize data protection to safeguard their employees’ sensitive information from misuse or unauthorized access.
3. Streamlined Hiring Process
Hiring talent is one of the vital responsibilities of the HR department. Finding the right candidate can be challenging and time-consuming.
With the advent of big data, the process has become more streamlined and time-saving.
HR managers can now use software applications like applicant tracking systems (ATS) that use algorithms to rank higher on search results and screen candidates based on particular criteria.
This streamlined process helps the HR department to collect, store, and evaluate hundreds of resumes in record time, significantly lessening the time it takes to hire someone for a role.
Another important way that big data is affecting the hiring process is by leveraging AI tools to ensure a fast and fair process.
These AI tools use huge amounts of data to automate different aspects of recruitment, from sourcing candidates to assessing their suitability for a certain position.
Through deeper analysis of factors like job descriptions, work experiences, candidate profiles, and even social media activity, these AI tools can help identify top candidates more efficiently.
4. Increased Job Opportunities
Nowadays, so many organizations use social media to establish a strong online presence and position themselves as experts in their industries. This, in return, has earned them customer loyalty, increased sales, and improved productivity.
Organizations that leverage big data will need people who can make sense of the huge datasets they generate.
As a result, there’s a surge in demand for big data engineers, experienced data scientists, and analysts.
In fact, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the demand for data scientists is expected to grow to 35% by 2031. This is a much faster growth rate than the average for all occupations.
As businesses continue to recognize the transformative potential of big data, the demand for these professionals will only continue to rise.
5. Career Growth Opportunities
The impact of big data on career development can be observed through the many opportunities for career growth.
Big data tracking tools can help monitor an employee’s performance, identify emerging trends, and discover potential areas for growth within their specific industry.
As they analyze these huge datasets, professionals gain insights into new technologies, industry shifts, and evolving customer preferences. This, in turn, allows them to position themselves strategically for career growth.
For example, professionals in the marketing industry can use big data to keep up with new trends in digital advertising, such as influencer marketing, in-feed shopping, and programmatic ad exchanges.
With this information, they can stay ahead of the competition and capitalize on lucrative career opportunities.
6. Improved Employee Engagement Rate
One of the major impacts of big data on career development is increased employee engagement rates.
Big data can help analyze real-time information and then condense it into performance data. With this, organizational leaders can make decisions based on empirical evidence collected by this analysis so they can improve employee engagement.
Also, big data can help identify employees facing performance challenges or those losing motivation.
This can be done by analyzing data on areas, such as target achievement, key performance indicators, and absences or leaves. This data can then be used to advise leaders and business owners on where their employees and staff can be supported, developed, and engaged.
7. Significant Salary Growth
There’s no doubt that dabbling in big data makes for a lucrative career. Experts on big data are commanding higher salaries than ever before.
According to Talent.com, the average salary for big data professionals per US region are as follows:
Image via Talent.com
This salary is directly proportional to factors, such as:
- Skills earned
- Level of education
- Experience in a particular domain
- Technological knowledge
Various industries, including healthcare, finance, education, and technology are willing to provide attractive compensation packages to attract and retain top big data scientists.
In the education sector, for instance, higher education marketing departments seek for expert big data analysts to optimize their recruitment process, enhance retention rates, and improve student engagement.
By using advanced analytics tools and techniques, these big data professionals can uncover important insights into student behaviors, demographics, and preferences.
As a result, higher education institutions can implement highly effective and customized marketing strategies.
Wrapping Up
The impact of big data on career development is unquestionable. It has transformed the way organizations approach employee growth.
HR teams and employees can enjoy the many benefits that big data has to offer, from higher job satisfaction levels to increased employee retention and improved engagement rates. The use of big data has allowed organizations to create a more dynamic and interactive workplace environment.
In a world where decisions are mostly data-driven, not using the insights offered by big data could mean missing out on opportunities for growth and improvement.
Don’t get left behind. It’s time to position your organization at the forefront of innovation. Witness the huge impact of big data on career development for your organization and employees.
Author Bio - Reena Aggarwal
Reena is Director of Operations and Sales at Attrock, a result-driven digital marketing company. With 10+ years of sales and operations experience in the field of e-commerce and digital marketing, she is quite an industry expert. She is a people person and considers the human resources as the most valuable asset of a company. In her free time, you would find her spending quality time with her brilliant, almost teenage daughter and watching her grow in this digital, fast-paced era.
