Schweitzer: “I like to see a candidate who has worked in business, since we do business consulting. I think, personally, the thing about coming right out of school is that it takes a little while to adjust and to understand what it means to work, and how you interact with people in the workplace is part of getting up to speed when you first start. So, sometimes if you get someone who has already had that experience, then it allows them to really hit the ground running when they get to you.

“At entry level, I’m looking for time management. How do you juggle multiple deadlines? How do you juggle projects? With more experience, I’m looking for the ability to work with staff to get things done and also to develop the staff so that they can continue to progress in their own careers. I’m also looking for the ability to learn new things [at all levels]. For someone who has worked on the job, how did they get up to speed on a new project? How did they learn new software? I’m looking to see how they learned those new tasks.

“In addition, as you get more experience, you do less hands-on and start taking on more big-picture work.”

Tanenbaum asked, “What is big-picture work?”

Schweitzer: “How do I answer the client’s question? What analysis is appropriate to answer their question? What’s the right way to answer this problem? Then, the ‘how to do’ this analysis is left to lower-level staff.”

Statisticians also have struggles in the consulting world.

Schweitzer: “[At the management level,] I think that a lot of statisticians shy away from working with clients. I actually had someone tell me that they went into statistics because they didn’t want to deal with clients. So, finding someone who not only can be accomplished in statistics, but they also can communicate their work in a way that a client can understand, is very important.

“Another thing I see that is missing is statisticians finding the business purpose of the analysis. So, I think that most statisticians need a little bit more business training, which is why we tend to hire people with work experience. Statisticians often know how to do an analysis, but don’t know how that analysis will actually help the client solve their problems. In addition, I think that a consulting environment can be very stressful, so I ask how people handle themselves under stress. Some people like to do the same thing every single day and others like to have a little variety. Figuring out what type of position the candidate is looking for is really important.”

Batcher: “One transition that is often hard for statisticians is to give up the technical work and do more and more project management and people management. So, that is something that I want to at least talk to people about. ‘Are you aware that as you become a manager, most of the work should be done by people with lower billing rates and a lot of the heavy lifting technically on projects gets pushed down to the staff and senior level because their billing rates are not so high?’

“I think it’s important that they be made aware that as you move into management, your technical abilities are used less and less as [they are] replaced with the role of the guide. I think this is true almost anywhere you work. Since this way of thinking is a change for people, the question becomes will they still be happy with the new role.

“There are a lot of statisticians out there who are very comfortable doing ‘neat’ analyses. For them, making that transition to all these other things [is] not nearly as rewarding, yet they need to find ways to make nontechnical tasks rewarding. And that is often with helping more junior people get where they need to go. There is a lot of discomfort out there as people know they are very good, that they can do it the best way, the correct way, and then they have to let someone else do it while they only review it and give the others guidance. Letting go is sometimes a difficult transition.”

Master’s vs. PhD

It became clear to Tanenbaum that the choice of degree is completely personal, as both are an asset in consulting. Batcher and Schweitzer’s teams are both staffed predominately with master’s degree holders.

Batcher: “[With a master’s degree,] I like to see a focus on applied statistics and real-world applications. Often times, they have gone for a master’s instead of a PhD because it gets them very quickly into the real world and real-world problems. We consciously have a mix of master’s and PhDs in our group.

“In our world, a person’s degree matters as much for credentials as it does for anything else. Because we sell our credentials, it is nice in a litigation setting if you can say this person has a PhD and a great deal of experience in a particular area. Then, it’s an easier sell. Not that this is the bulk of our work, by any means. In our world, the funny thing is our master’s candidates have been more experienced. So, they have been the managers and the PhDs have been the new people.”

Schweitzer: “The master’s [candidates] are usually more applied. When I look at a PhD candidate, I often take for granted that they have the technical skills, so I’m often seeing if they can translate the theory into the business. [PhDs] often get caught up in the theory. Since we are working with real-world data, it is not always going to follow all of the assumptions that the theory will follow, but we still have to give a result to the client. Sometimes, I think that PhDs are more rigid in following those rules. Not to say that theory is not important. Still, how you work with real-life data in real-world situations is a theoretical problem.”

So, as you prepare for your next job, start thinking about the interviewer’s point of view. In the end, a job search is about finding the right match—interviewers are trying to find someone with specific qualities and employees are trying to find a rewarding career. Determining the qualities to emphasize in a résumé or interview may make landing your next job that much easier.