I recently overheard someone say, “We just want a data scientist to make dashboards.” There are several reasons a company would want to add a data scientist: the desire to gain knowledge from their data, the recent rise to prominence of data science, the accessibility of analytics tools, or having gobs of data to explore. Hopefully the reason is to better understand their organization, answer questions, or provide possible solutions using data. But I have never heard of hiring one solely to construct dashboards.
At the same time, if you want to hire a data scientist to make infographics. Hire one. Hire a really great data scientist with loads of experience and the ability to make impressive and informative plots. Then invite them to meetings. Specifically meetings where you hear, “If only we had this piece of information.” or “How does this collection of information relate to each other and other parts of our business?” After the meetings ask the data scientist what company information they might need to answer these questions. Allow the data scientist unfettered access to this data and more. Finally, sit back and let the data scientist do what they do best. Use data to answer your questions.
At the same time, if you want to hire a data scientist to make infographics. Hire one. Hire a really great data scientist with loads of experience and the ability to make impressive and informative plots. Then invite them to meetings. Specifically meetings where you hear, “If only we had this piece of information.” or “How does this collection of information relate to each other and other parts of our business?” After the meetings ask the data scientist what company information they might need to answer these questions. Allow the data scientist unfettered access to this data and more. Finally, sit back and let the data scientist do what they do best. Use data to answer your questions.
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