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Synopsis What if hiring wasn’t about flipping through endless CVs but instead focused solely on skills? In this episode of Making Data Simple, we sit down with Tim Freestone, founder of Alooba, the groundbreaking platform revolutionizing how businesses hire for analytics, data science, and engineering roles. Tim shares how Alooba eliminates bias, speeds up hiring, and ensures candidates are evaluated based on what really matters—their capabilities. From his journey as an economics teacher to leading data teams, Tim’s insights are a must-hear for anyone tackling hiring challenges in today’s competitive job market. Learn how Alooba’s data-driven approach is transforming recruitment and why the future of hiring might just leave resumes in the dust. Show Notes 4:46 – How do you go from economics teacher to head of business intelligence?7:53 – Do CV’s matter anymore?13:22 – What business problem is Alooba solving?16:05 – Do you have any data that supports your theory?19:01 – Why analytics, data science, data engineering?20:26 - What do you do that others don’t?23:50 – How does Alooba define success?25:42 – Who’s your target client base?32:40 –Is there a customer you can talk about?36:24 – What does Alooba mean?Alooba  Connect with the Team Executive Producer Kate Mayne - LinkedIn. Host Al Martin - LinkedIn and Twitter.  Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple? Reach out to us at [email protected] and tell us why you should be next. The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VP Technical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, business innovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun. Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple? Reach out to us at [email protected] and tell us why you should be next. The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VP Technical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, business innovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun.

Is the typical hiring and job search process broken? It is definitely full of bias. First, we get interested candidates to submit their resumes. Then someone (typically not the hiring manager) will pick out the resumes that look most interesting to them. Resumes that survive are typically carefully curated for someone to be able to form a positive opinion in just a few seconds. Then the hiring manager will pick their favourites out of that smaller pile. At this point, the lion’s share of candidates has been excluded purely based on resumes. Then comes the first interview. According to a study in the Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, 60% of interviewers make their decision in the first 15 minutes. What’s more, according to Hubspot, 85% of jobs are filled through networking. We prefer to hire someone we already know, because we think we have an idea of their ability. We are genetically designed to make quick decisions based on limited data points, which is at odds with very complex decisions such as hiring the right candidate. We try to deal with this through resumes, but these documents are also heavily biased. How do we limit our own biases and measure all candidates objectively? How do we identify the rising stars and unique talents who don’t yet have a long resume full of experience? I recently spoke to Tim Freestone to get an answer to these questions and many more relating to hiring the right data and analytics candidates. Tim is the founder of Alooba, the world’s first data and analytics assessment platform. Alooba’s tools help organisations around the world objectively assess the skills and capabilities of new candidates and existing team members alike. In this episode of Leaders of Analytics, we discuss: The biggest challenges for hiring managers in the data and analytics industry and how we can solve theseThe typical mistakes hiring managers and candidates make when they recruit and apply for roles respectivelyThe biggest opportunities to improve the hiring process for data and analytics professionalsWhat skillsets make data & analytics candidates stand out in today’s job marketMust-have skills that hiring managers should look for in their candidates, and much more.Tim Freestone on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-freestone-alooba/ Alooba's website: https://www.alooba.com/  

Summary Hiring data professionals is challenging for a multitude of reasons, and as with every interview process there is a potential for bias to creep in. Tim Freestone founded Alooba to provide a more stable reference point for evaluating candidates to ensure that you can make more informed comparisons based on their actual knowledge. In this episode he explains how Alooba got started, how it is being used in the interview process for data oriented roles, and how it can also provide visibility into your organizations overall data literacy. The whole process of hiring is an important organizational skill to cultivate and this is an interesting exploration of the specific challenges involved in finding data professionals.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management When you’re ready to build your next pipeline, or want to test out the projects you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so check out our friends at Linode. With their managed Kubernetes platform it’s now even easier to deploy and scale your workflows, or try out the latest Helm charts from tools like Pulsar and Pachyderm. With simple pricing, fast networking, object storage, and worldwide data centers, you’ve got everything you need to run a bulletproof data platform. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/linode today and get a $100 credit to try out a Kubernetes cluster of your own. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! Struggling with broken pipelines? Stale dashboards? Missing data? If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. Data engineers struggling with unreliable data need look no further than Monte Carlo, the world’s first end-to-end, fully automated Data Observability Platform! In the same way that application performance monitoring ensures reliable software and keeps application downtime at bay, Monte Carlo solves the costly problem of broken data pipelines. Monte Carlo monitors and alerts for data issues across your data warehouses, data lakes, ETL, and business intelligence, reducing time to detection and resolution from weeks or days to just minutes. Start trusting your data with Monte Carlo today! Visit dataengineeringpodcast.com/montecarlo to learn more. The first 10 people to request a personalized product tour will receive an exclusive Monte Carlo Swag box. Are you bored with writing scripts to move data into SaaS tools like Salesforce, Marketo, or Facebook Ads? Hightouch is the easiest way to sync data into the platforms that your business teams rely on. The data you’re looking for is already in your data warehouse and BI tools. Connect your warehouse to Hightouch, paste a SQL query, and use their visual mapper to specify how data should appear in your SaaS systems. No more scripts, just SQL. Supercharge your business teams with customer data using Hightouch for Reverse ETL today. Get started for free at dataengineeringpodcast.com/hightouch. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Tim Freestone about Alooba, an assessment platform for evaluating data and analytics candidates to improve hiring outcomes for data roles.

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you describe what Alooba is and the story behind it? What are the main goals that you are trying to achieve with Alooba? What are the main challenges that employers and candidates face when navigating their respective roles in the hiring process?

What are some of the difficulties that are specific to data oriented roles?

What are some of the complexities involved in designing a user experience that is positive and productive for both candidates and companies? What are some strategies that you have developed for establishing a fair and consistent baseline of skills to ensure consistent comparison across candidates? One of the problems that comes from test-based skills assessment is the implicit bias towa

Send us a text Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple? Reach out to us at [[email protected]] and tell us why you should be next.

Abstract Hosted by Al Martin, VP, IBM Expert Services Delivery, Making Data Simple provides the latest thinking on big data, A.I., and the implications for the enterprise from a range of experts. This week on Making Data Simple, we have Tim Freestone. Tim is the founder of Alooba. Alloba is a skills assessment platform for analytics, data science and data engineering. They help businesses identify the best candidates that apply for a role within its company. Show Notes 4:46 – How do you go from economics teacher to head of business intelligence? 7:53 – Do CV’s matter anymore? 13:22 – What business problem is Alooba solving? 16:05 – Do you have any data that supports your theory? 19:01 – Why analytics, data science, data engineering? 20:26 - What do you do that others don’t? 23:50 – How does Alooba define success? 25:42 – Who’s your target client base? 32:40 –Is there a customer you can talk about? 36:24 – What does Alooba mean? Alooba  Connect with the Team Producer Kate Brown - LinkedIn. Producer Steve Templeton - LinkedIn. Host Al Martin - LinkedIn and Twitter.  Want to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple? Reach out to us at [email protected] and tell us why you should be next. The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VP Technical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, business innovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun.