Certification and Continuing Ed

If you’re into birdwatching, shorebirds are among the most difficult to identify, not unlike analytics professionals. But one way to stand out from the flock and make yourself easy to identify is by becoming a Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®).

Before the recent INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in Huntington Beach, Calif., I rented a bike to ride to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve for birdwatching. Birders know that juveniles (called fledglings) present an identification challenge, because they can change feather lengths, colors and markings in just days. To make identification of “fledgling” entrants to the field of analytics easier, INFORMS has announced a new certification, the Associate Certified Analytics Professional (aCAP).

While the associate certification requires that candidates have an advanced degree in a related program and pass the CAP exam, it does not require work experience. These analytics “fledglings” have learned everything Mom and Dad taught them and are ready to leave the nest; they just don’t yet have experience on their own and some parts may still be growing. If you hire well-educated fledglings, they will learn fast on the job while their bills and feathers grow in fully. Look for this new program to launch by the fall.

My favorite bird I saw was the Long-Billed Curlew, whose range doesn’t extend east. Because there were whole flocks of shorebirds hopping around this wetland, to differentiate I had to look for field marks, which are characteristics useful for species identification, such as pink at the base of a curlew’s bill. This field mark helps differentiate between a curlew, a whimbrel and a marbled godwit, all of which are largish, long-legged sandpipers with long bills and brown mottled feathers. What field marks exist in analytics?

LinkedIn named statistical analysis and data mining its 2014 “hottest skill,” so even more people are flocking to analytics. One executive said all the resumes he sees now are “full of analytics.” If you’re hiring, how can you spot those who really “do” analytics versus those who just say they can? And if you’re a jobseeker, how can you make your resume stand out from the flock, since a 2012 study by The Ladders revealed that recruiters spend just six seconds looking at each one? For analytics professionals the CAP (and soon the new aCAP) is a clear field mark that calls attention to a validated set of skills in analytics.

The CAP exam tests the knowledge and skills of analytics professionals according to the Job Task Analysis, which was defined by a group of 12 subject matter experts and further corroborated through a national survey. Their work delineated seven key domains – business problem/question framing, analytics problem framing, data, methodology/approach selection, model building, deployment and model lifecycle management. Having CAP on a résumé provides greater certainty that this is a curlew who has demonstrated competence across each of these areas. While CAP alone isn’t sufficient for identification – a thorough interview process will be necessary to verify all the “field marks” you require in your position – it can be a great way to find strong candidates quickly and make your own resume stand out from the flock.

Roster of designated CAPs continues to grow

The following individuals were added to the growing roster of Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®) during the first quarter of 2015:

Parijat Sinha, The DEI Group; Ali Alqahtani, Saudi Aramco; Richard Anderson, Puget Sound Inst. (UWA); Mitchell Steffen, Xerox; Chai Wah Wu, IBM; Luke Wilder, U.S. Army; Stefan Schuurman, ORTEC; Scott Mongeau, Sark7; Craig Steven Myers, Regency Centers; Kalyan Pasupathy, Mayo Clinic; Jose Antonio Carbajal Orozco, Turner Broadcasting System.

Others included: Ka Chun Ma, CASH Axiom Capital, Ltd.; Laura K. Whitney, BAH; Kenneth Yip, Queen Mary Hospital Authority; Richard Ball, Allan Gray; Jesus-Fabian Lopez, SINTEC; Robert A. Bennetto, OPSI Systems; David Kalasky, JP Morgan Chase; Robert D. Richardson, Sports Authority; Matthew Lanham, Advance Auto Parts; Sean Osis, Running Injury Clinic; Jessica Weaver, Analytic Services; David Kessler, USCG, Office Performance Management & Assessment; Kumar Saurabh Singh, Gannett Company.

Continuing education: two upcoming courses

INFORMS Continuing Education courses are designed for today’s analytics professionals. The course “Introduction to Monte Carlo and Discrete-Event Simulation” will be offered May 28-29 in Washington, D.C. The “Data Exploration & Visualization” course will be offered June 12-13 in Montreal prior to the CORS/INFORMS 2015 Joint International Meeting.

The “Data Exploration & Visualization” course provides attendees with hands-on training that focuses on the critical steps in the process of analyzing data: accessing and extracting data, cleaning and preparing data, and exploring and visualizing data. The course will use several of the most popular software tools and provide an overview of the range of software options.

The “Introduction to Monte Carlo and Discrete-Event Simulation” course uses hands-on interactive sessions where participants will investigate the use of Monte Carlo simulation in decision-making and the use of discrete-event simulation to solve mathematically intractable problems in stochastic modeling. During the course, both open-source and state-of-the-art simulation software will be used, incorporating software written by the instructors. This is not a software training course nor does the course focus on one particular simulation language.

Don’t miss these intensive hands-on courses that provide attendees with real take-away value. For detailed course information and to register visit www.informs.org/continuinged.