Huge supply gap in data science talent, says survey

NEW DELHI: Around 92 per cent of hiring managers interviewed pointed out a huge supply gap in data science talent in the country, according to a study. Of all the hiring managers and leaders surveyed for this study, 92 per cent confirmed that they have witnessed a wide demand and supply gap between data science talents in India, the study on hiring trends in analytics and data science domains conducted by ed-tech company Great Learning stated.

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Around 57 per cent believed that the gap between supply and demand exists at the entry level while 27 per cent believed that the talent gap exists in the mid-level roles of Team Lead and Project Management. The biggest skills lacuna was identified in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) by 15 per cent of the hiring managers followed by Artificial Intelligence (12 per cent), Automation (11 per cent), Computer Vision (10 per cent), Analytics (9 per cent) and Machine Learning (7 per cent), it added. The study is based on a survey of HR leaders of more than 100 companies across sectors BFSI, retail, IT and ITeS, telecom, e-commerce, manufacturing among others.

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"With every industry undergoing digital transformation, the demand for Data Science functions like NLP, AIML, big data, and automation are at an all-time high. The need of the hour is to raise our education standards and upskill our workforce to grab these new opportunities," Great Learning co-founder Hari Krishnan Nair said. According to the study, Bengaluru has once again taken the pole position as the leading city for hiring talent in Data Science, with 54 per cent hiring and recruiting managers selecting it as the preferred destination for hiring Data Science professionals. It is followed by Hyderabad, the emerging cyber hub, with 15 per cent hiring managers reposing their faith in the city, it added.

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The BPO and KPO hubs of Delhi NCR and Pune were preferred by 9 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively, followed by Mumbai and Chennai, which were preferred by 5 per cent each, it stated. The large gap between Bengaluru and the rest of the cities signifies the superiority of the ecosystem that consists of a skilled talent pool, cutting edge application of Data Science both at corporates and start-ups and the opportunities to work on consulting projects, and carry out extensive research in the field, the study added.