Want a career with meaning, impact and rapid growth? consider People Analytics

Marc Andreessen famously said a decade ago that software is eating the world. It has probably digested most corporate disciplines and if the VC frenzy is anything to go by, HR is next.

HR is following the same path marketing did over the last few decades. There was a time not too long ago when excellence in Marketing was largely based on empathy and creativity. For me the Carousel clip from Mad men captures it the best. Who doesn’t want to be Don Draper in that clip? But put yourself in the shoes of the clients. Their choices were largely based on gut feeling. Many people would call it ‘judgement’, I’d call it guessing. Fast forward to today and marketers have far more precise insights before they make the investments. That’s because technology has consumed marketing. It has helped marketers create sensors that help measure the impact of every little decision they can make. Analytics has been used to carefully craft experiments and generate data that can be mined for insights. Not just insights that feel right in your gut; but insights that you can bet the bank on. If you were a talented marketer who embraced analytics and technology a couple of decades ago, you would experience a meteoric rise, the likes of which would be challenging to replicate for those entering the field today. The key is to spot the transformation and get in early.

Are you on the right path or is it time to consider change?

People Analytics offers that opportunity today. It can provide deep meaning, the opportunity to make a massive impact at a global level and to get handsomely rewarded.

1. Meaning: Steve Jobs famously asked John Scully ‘You want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?. Have you ever talked to someone about how to find great talent? What questions should be asked in the interview? Does corporate training work? what should we do to reduce attrition on our team or improve engagement? how should we improve inclusion on our team? How to design a good performance management system? and so on. I find that when I talk to people about these topics they have a lot of ideas and they have even more unanswered questions. But above all I see their eyes light up, there is great energy about the conversation because these topics go deep with people. If your eyes don’t light up talking about your current role, I’ll just say that you don’t have to keep selling ‘sugar water’, instead you can change the world.
2. Impact: Impact is a combination of how much does something matter at a base level and how much can you improve it. Human Capital is one of the biggest drivers of variation in GDP. The room for improvement is enormous because while we have some best practices around what can help productivity and sustainability; there is a dearth of precise and accurate insights. In marketing for example we have known for a long time that increasing price would reduce demand but with the introduction of technology analytics we can find the optimal price because we precisely understand the nature of the relationship. Similarly we can know precisely how much a particular message or a particular packaging would impact demand. We even know how the day and time of outreach can impact demand. Now compare that to the insights you have around increasing productivity, reducing burnout, improving psychological safety etc. on your team. Today managers have access to hundreds of articles on these topics which provide a laundry list of best practices but we don’t have the time or capacity to implement all of them and we don’t have precise insights on how much something works specifically for our situation. In it’s absence we are largely leveraging intuition or in other words, we are guessing. Lack of precision not only results in suboptimal results but can also introduce bias. If you are an expert in technology, product, psychology or analytics, there may not be another field that would offer a bigger opportunity for you to make an impact.
3. Reward: The meaning in this role is a reward unto itself but there is more. There is a constant feeling of being on the frontier because this field is in its nascency. You find yourself spending time thinking through the right questions to ask. You notice that most important questions are unanswered. For example no one has figured out a good way to measure productivity of knowledge workers. Imagine the size of the opportunity we have for improvement, given the size of contribution that knowledge workers make in today’s economy. Such important unanswered questions create a greater potential for discovery and invention than other fields. Most major companies have started investing in this space and soon that would be true for every company. You could be the one to solve one of these major open questions. It’s not a stretch to say that 10 years from now anyone in this field today has the opportunity to be a world renowned expert, even if you are just getting started.

Your career is a precious investment so if your current role doesn’t provide you with meaning, opportunity for impact and for rewards, I’d encourage you to consider People Analytics. For what it’s worth, I took a leap of faith switching to People Analytics a year ago. My predominant feeling has been that of a kid in a candy shop brimming with excitement about possibilities in front of me. It is interlaced with moments of deep joy that come from finding insights that help fulfill my purpose of reducing guesswork and bias from people decisions at work. I hope more people join the cause and share in the joy this field has brought me.