'It's difficult to find data scientists when you're not in London,' says National Trust head of data science
Swindon-based National Trust finding way around challenge by internally training data scientists, Dean Jones tells Computing
Hiring data scientists in Britain when your organisation isn't located in London is a difficult challenge, Dean Jones, head of data science at the National Trust, has told Computing.
The charity, which works to preserve and protect historic places and spaces, has a central office located in Swindon where Jones currently leads a team of nine data scientists.
He's currently looking to expand the data science team by two, but believes that the non-metropolitan location of the National Trust's headquarters is adding to the difficulty in making hires.
"It is the case that it is difficult, especially as we're not based in London; we're based in Swindon, so there's a different challenge there," Jones explained, going on to cite "a much bigger pot" of data scientists in London.
"A lot of the opportunities you see are obviously where the business is," he added.
While the National Trust is struggling to hire from the outside, it's successfully developing its own data scientist team by transferring personnel across from other departments.
"We've found a lot of our recruitment has happened internally, because we had a lot of these people who were sitting in different teams," Jones explained.
"People who had a lot of experience with producing visualisations, a lot of experience with targeting for marketing campaigns, people who had data analytical skills but elsewhere in the organisation," he said, describing The National Trust as "very happy" with what it has.
The organisation uses Alteryx data blending and advanced analytics software - along with visualition tools from Tableau - in order to provide data scientists with extra insight. Alteryx has greatly benefited the National Trust's data science team, Jones said.
"We have a good cross-section of skills across the team and that's one of the areas where Alteryx has helped us out," he explained.
"Because some people are more from a SAS background, they're happy with a pointing-and-clicking visual environment while other people in the team are happy with a scripting language like R," Jones continued.
"Alteryx allows both of those kinds of data analysts to use those skills and abilities. There's a very visual environment but also the ability to dive into the details and pull hard scripts," he added.
Jones is not alone in finding it hard to recruit data scientists. Even in London, Nigel Faulkner, who was until this month the CIO of Credit Suisse investment bank, suggested that finding somebody with data science skills and experience in the financial services field is near impossible.