大數據時代上演的的人才爭奪戰大綱

For his Ph.D. in astrophysics, Chris Farrell spent five years mining data from a giant particle accelerator. Now, he spends his days analyzing ratings for Yelp Inc. YELP -0.90% 's onLine business-review site.
克里斯•法雷爾(Chris Farrell)在攻讀天體物理學博士的五年期間從事巨型粒子加速器數據研究工作。如今，他的工作是分析商業點評網站Yelp上的點評。

Mr. Farrell, 28 years old, is a data scientist, a job title that barely existed three years ago but since has become one of the hottest corners of the high-tech labor market. Retailers, banks, heavy-equipment makers and matchmakers all want specialists to extract and interpret the explosion of data from Internet clicks, machines and smartphones, setting off a scramble to find or train them.
現年28歲的法雷爾是一名數據科學家。三年前，“數據科學家”這個職業頭銜幾乎還不存在，但後來逐漸成爲高科技勞動力市場上最熱門的職位之一。面對互聯網點擊、機器和智能手機產生的數據爆炸，零售商、銀行、重型設備製造商以及媒介公司都想讓專業人士來提取、解讀大數據。這掀起了一場尋找或培訓這方面人才的爭奪戰。

'People call them unicorns' because the combination of skills required is so rare, said Jonathan Goldman, who ran LinkedIn Corp.'s LNKD +0.66% data-science team that in 2007 developed the 'People You May Know' button, which five years later drove more than half of the invitations on the professional-networking platform.
LinkedIn Corp.數據科學團隊的負責人喬納森•戈德曼(Jonathan Goldman)說，人們把他們稱作“獨角獸”，因爲這個職位所需要的綜合技能是如此獨特。該團隊在2007年開發了“你可能認識的人”功能。在此後的五年裏，LinkedIn這個人才網絡平臺上半數以上的“邀請”都是由該功能發起的。

Employers say the ideal candidate must have more than traditional market-research skills: the ability to find patterns in millions of pieces of data streaming in from different sources, to infer from those patterns how customers behave and to write statistical models that pinpoint behavioral triggers.
企業僱主們稱，該職位的理想候選人不僅要擁有傳統的市場調研技能，還需要具備以下能力：有能力從來自不同來源的上百萬塊數據中找出模式，然後通過這些模式來推斷客戶行爲，找準消費行爲的觸發點並寫出相關的統計模型。

At e-commerce site operator Etsy Inc., for instance, a biostatistics Ph.D. who spent years mining medical records for early signs of breast cancer now writes statistical models to figure out the terms people use when they search Etsy for a new fashion they saw on the street.
以在電子商務網站Etsy Inc.供職的數據科學家爲例，一名生物統計學博士過去幾年裏通過挖掘醫療記錄來研究乳腺癌的初期徵兆，現在這名人員爲Etsy編寫統計模型，推斷人們在Etsy上用什麼樣的詞條來搜索自己在大街上看到的時尚新品。

At mobile-payments startup Square Inc., a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology who wrote statistical models to examine how people change their political beliefs now looks for behavioral patterns that would identify which merchants are more likely to have clients demand their money back.
在移動支付初創公司Square Inc.，一位編寫統計模型、研究人們政治信仰如何變化的認知心理學博士，現在專門研究人們的行爲模式，從而判斷哪些零售商更有可能遇到顧客要求退貨。

Another 28-year-old at Yelp, with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, turned his dissertation research on genome mapping into a product used by the company's advertising team. The same genome-mapping algorithm is now used to measure the effect on consumers when multiple small changes are made to online ads.
Yelp另一名28歲的應用數學博士把他的研究方向從基因圖譜轉向了該公司廣告團隊所用的一款產品。同一種基因演算法現在被用於估測對在線廣告進行多項細微調整會給消費者帶來什麼樣的影響。

'Academia is slow and only a few people see your work,' said Scott Clark, who designed the genome-mapping algorithm. 'At Yelp, I can be pushing out experiments that affect hundreds of millions of people. When I make a small change to the Yelp website, I have a bigger impact.'
這種基因演算法的設計者克拉克(Scott Clark)表示，做學術的過程很漫長，只有少數一些人能看到你的成果。他說：“在Yelp，我推進的實驗可以影響上億人。我對Yelp網站做一些小改動，影響卻是巨大的。”

Some such experiments have raised alarms. Facebook Inc. FB -0.15% was recently in the spotlight for an experiment in which its data-science team sought to manipulate people's emotions by altering the content of their news feeds.
這類實驗中也有一部分引發了擔憂。Facebook Inc.近期就備受關注，因爲其數據科學團隊進行的一項實驗試圖通過修改信息流的內容來操控人們的情緒。

Christian Rudder, president of IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s OkCupid dating site, recently disclosed in a blog post that the site manipulated its feeds by inflating the likelihood that any two people were a match, to encourage them to use the service more.
IAC/InterActiveCorp.旗下約會網站OkCupid的總裁拉德(Christian Rudder)近期在一篇博客中披露，該網站通過誇大兩位用戶的匹配度來操控信息流，以此鼓勵用戶更多地使用其服務。

Mr. Goldman, who now heads a new data-science group at Intuit Inc., INTU +0.67% said employers go to great lengths to land top talent. They must be ready to extend an offer at a moment's notice, often within a day or two of interviewing a candidate, and be prepared to meet candidates at any hour of the day or night.
目前在財捷集團(Intuit Inc., INTU)帶領一個新的數據科學團隊的戈德曼說，僱主都在不遺餘力地招募頂尖人才。他們必須準備好隨時發出錄用通知，通常是在面試一位候選人之後的一兩天內，而且還要準備在白天或晚上的任何時候面見候選人。

While a six-figure starting salary might be common for someone coming straight out of a doctoral program, data scientists with just two years' experience can earn between $200,000 and $300,000 a year, according to recruiters.
招聘者說，對於一個剛獲得博士學位的人來說，六位數的起薪可能很平常，同時只有兩年工作經驗的數據科學家就可以賺到20萬至30萬美元的年薪。

Anyone with 'data science' in his or her job title on a LinkedIn page is going to get '100 recruiter emails a day,' said Josh Sullivan, who leads a 500-person data-science group at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. BAH +0.86% To woo candidates, Mr. Sullivan goes for a personal touch: sending handwritten letters and flying across the country to meet potential employees' spouses. He also sends care packages filled with chocolate, as well as books on academic topics such as statistics and computer science that he knows the recruit is interested in.
博思艾倫諮詢控股公司(Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp.)的沙利文(Josh Sullivan)說，任何人，只要其LinkedIn頁面上的職務名稱有“數據科學”的字眼，每天將會收到100位招聘者的電子郵件。沙利文目前在博思艾倫率領一個500人的數據科學團隊。爲了吸引候選人，沙利文會使用私人接觸的方式：發出手寫信件，乘飛機與潛在僱員的配偶見面。他還會寄送裝滿巧克力的愛心包裹以及學術書籍，比如他知道受聘者感興趣的統計和計算機科學方面的書籍。