Why I rejected a senior HR position for an internship in HR Data Analytics Published on May 1, 2021
By | David Rene Tay | Business Intelligence Analyst, People Analytics at JLL
“Crazy!”, “Don’t be stupid!”. A close 10 out of 10 of my peers rejected the idea of me turning down senior generalist and specialist HR roles for an internship in HR Data Analytics which may or may not land me a job in this field.
Sure enough, there were certain barriers of entry which served as obstacles in my journey entering the People Analytics industry. Think about it, I come from a Human Resource / Business Management educational background, and my previous work experiences include being a HR generalist and a consultant for Payroll / HRIS systems.
To give you a better understanding of what I meant, I’ve searched for jobs in “HR Data Analytics” and here are the top 3 results:
I would like to point out that I had zero experience with SQL, programming languages, Tableau/PowerBI and advanced statistics. It’s no wonder why there are not many ex-HR professionals in the field.
Wait, isn’t HR Analyst and HR Data Analyst practically the same thing?
Trust me, I’d asked myself the same question when I’d just learnt about the role and googling didn’t helped much. After extensive research, talking to people in the industry, I wouldn’t say I have the perfect answer but here’s what I got: