In Case You Missed It: Analytics Career Conference

In case you missed the NYU Analytics Career Conference, Ilya Zeldin, CEO of 2gno.me has got you covered!

Ilya Zeldin is the founder and CEO of 2gno.me (“to know me”), where his passion for humanity and technology converge to enable meaningful awareness and personalized professional development. With a global network of experts in Social Psychology, training and organizational behavior, the 2gno.me platform he created supports Human Capital leaders during critical HR functions of recruiting, retention and succession planning. Ilya holds an MBA from Georgetown University and previously managed the global service provider program for Dell Software. He lives with his family in New York City.

I was asked to share my experience from last week’s NYU Analytics Conference at the Wasserman Center for Career Development at the School of Professional Studies. My point of view is one of someone who is passionate about people, technology and data (big and small). And together with my colleague, Peter Janow, Director of Business Development & Global Sales at 2gno.me, we are also prospective employers, looking for skilled talent to expand our team.

Before I move on, let me express tremendous gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the Talent Trends: Future of HR Analytics panel with super smart peers and a group of students with unmistakable glare of curiosity and vision. The panel was skillfully moderated by NYUSPS Adjunct Professor Vincent Suppa. It was cool to be both a participant and an observer.

Two themes emerged from the panel. First, professional success in most careers of tomorrow will require you to have a “comfortable” baseline of programming languages and interfaces. One of the most important classes that I took in high school was typing because I learned how to express my thoughts without slowing down to look at the keyboard. Yesterday’s ability to type is today’s knowledge of HMTL, Python, Ruby and similar languages. You don’t need to be an expert or even a coder. But the world is using technology to formulate questions, design solutions and measure their effectiveness. And in this world, I think it’s vital to understand the “alphabet,” logic and possibilities of “speaking” this language.

The second theme, equally important, is that knowledge, even expertise, in these skills and functions is not enough. The evolving view is that functional skills can be taught to the right person who “fits” in. Soft skills are often THE glue that binds or destroys companies. Where functional skills stay with you from job to job, each company (and each new team) has a unique dynamic. In the “people economy,” big data is like a tsunami because, by the time you graduate, it will fundamentally improve critical HR processes because big data moves decision-making from the realm of subjective to objective. People that are aware of these dynamics will fair better than people who are oblivious to soft skills.

As a prospective employer, Pete and I came in with high expectations (it’s NYU!). We were met with smart and engaging questions during the panel and after during networking. I met with 9 people and ate 3 cookies. Within 72 hours, I received 3 thoughtful notes with CVs that show relevant and deep expertise, and 5 new LinkedIn connections – a great metric, in my humble opinion. We are looking at extending an internship this summer as a direct result of our attendance.