Here at IBM, we have over 100 openings for Business Analytics and Optimization jobs.  Some of these are associated with our Public Sector Practice, consulting to Federal, State, and Local Governments or developing data-intensive, analytics solutions to help them perform their mission.

Why are there so many jobs in this field?  Businesses and governments today must figure out how to do more with less.  Organizations can analyze data coming from their business processes to develop new approaches to streamlining or even optimizing their business.  In the past, many decisions involved in running an organization were based on “gut instinct.”  Today, it is not longer defensible to make decisions in this way when it is possible to make “fact-based” decisions using hard data.  Data stored in a Business Intelligence system can be used by every level of an organization to help staff understand their business better, detect problems, and develop solutions that will allow them to accomplish their mission better, cheaper and faster.   Sophisticated analysis can be done on the data to predict what will happen if the current trends continue, determine how to achieve the best outcome, and study the impact of external uncertainties such as the economy or the weather.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in their 2010-2011 Occupational Outlook Handbook,  the employment of operations research analysts is expected to grow 22 percent over the 2008-18 period.   While not all analytics jobs require an operations research degree, this gives a good indication of the long term trend.   We know that technology is continuing to improve both in terms of raw compute power and in the design of efficient algorithms to analyze and optimize solutions.  This increasing capability will drive the demand to add “smarts” to many more systems and processes, and will drive the need for analysts who can apply the technology.   So analytics isn’t just a good short term career choice, but a good target for long-term career growth. 

To do these jobs, though, requires in-depth skills and knowledge.  Skills in operations research (OR) techniques, data mining, optimization, decision theory, and data analysis are needed, along with some background in IT systems.  The ideal candidate will also have some domain knowledge about government or business functional areas since it is very hard to apply the mathematical techniques in abstraction.  

How to Find Analytics Jobs

Most Analytics jobs aren’t listed under “analytics” and many won’t even come up under that keyword.   Use search terms like ‘business intelligence,” “performance management,” “optimization,”  and “operations research.”  If you have experience with actual analytics software such as Cognos, SPSS, Intelligent Miner, or ILOG, both Monster and IBM’s website return hits on those keywords. 

Want to learn more about jobs at IBM in Business Analytics?

Go to www.ibm.com/employment and click on the “Search for Jobs at IBM” link

You may also write me at ASCdc@us.ibm.com