If you go outside the relatively small world of the WAA and web analytics conferences, you find there are a lot of companies that have invested in web analytics and are not getting value back from those investments. It's not a good sign for our industry there is this much failure, because we know in the right hands, web analytics can drive enormous financial benefit.

Why does this failure happen? Most often, it’s a hiring problem, whether it be in-house employees or contractors who lack the proper skills. But it’s not easy to hire people with the right skills if the company has no experience with great web analysts, so these companies never learn how to interview properly for the job. You get a self-fulfilling negative cycle and too many companies are just “giving up” on web analytics.

I think to counteract this trend, those companies with an important place in the industry need to take a leadership stance, we need to provide through our actions some guidance to those people hiring analysts, who may be looking at our job descriptions and hiring practices for clues to success.

For the web analytics group at Microsoft, this means we will be including the phrase:

Certified Web Analyst™ (CWA) preferred

in the Qualifications section of all job descriptions that involve interaction with web analytics.

I encourage your company to do the same, both to attract and screen for the highest quality candidates and to spread the word about this program, inside and more importantly outside the web analytics community.

Peter Sanborn
Group Manager, Web Analytics, Microsoft Corporation
WAA President

Comments

[Claudia]

So true, hiring is often an issue. How can a manager hire someone for a position he doesn't understand?

It's important to educate those in positions to hire experts, otherwise they'll continue to hire inexperienced individuals who talk a good game and can't find their way around a problem.

[munaz]

WAA curriculum will soon need revision because web analytics has gone beyond we. Its more of accessing information through various online channels.

[Derek Monteverdi]

Certification does not guarantee expertise. Companies with little experience in web analytics should consider working with reputable analytics staffing agencies or outsourcing the work to agencies that specialize in analytics. Hiring managers should do the potentially hard work of speaking with their peers who may have more experience with analytics rather than relying on shortcuts.

[Jim Novo]

Derek, there is more than one way to ensure the hiring of qualified analysts, to be sure, and WAA endorses the use of reputable analytics staffing agencies - have you see our interviews with IQWorkforce on Certification?

http://bit.ly/aoDVjM

http://bit.ly/9c5n4L

But I feel the need to again clarify the WAA Certification is designed to prove a person passing the test is capable of going beyond running reports and can turn data into knowledge, and knowledge in insight. That is the skill typically missing in the "mis-hire" scenario, it's the most difficult to ascertain, and that's why the test focuses on this area rather than on technical skills. It's not a test of "what you know", it's a test of "what you can do".

Munaz, the WAA curriculum as you probably know was intentionally designed to be tool agnostic. Since it teaches how to think about solving analytical challenges on the web rather than specifying "rules" or "practices", it can survive a good deal of change in the environment.

That said, we completed a review of all the material this summer (2010) and will be publishing the updates for fall sessions.

Claudia, it sure is important to educate hiring managers, but the reality is the market has not caught up yet, and may not for quite some time. So the WAA Certification provides a level of confidence to hiring folks unfamiliar with WA that a person has been "vetted" for analytical skills and the ability to make a solid contribution to the business.

We have to remember there is a business world outside the core WA community that is not following #measure, does not go to eMetrics, etc. But they want to make good hires too, and it's in the best long-term interest of the WA profession to help them do that.