Advice for a data-analysis transition (science --> business)

[jccf2003]

Hi everyone,

I’m interested in transitioning from my current career (which involves statistical analysis/predictive modelling in the sciences) to a career that uses statistical analysis/predictive modelling for business purposes (financial, economics, marketing etc). I have 10 years experience in data analysis since my PhD. My current job (which is very specialised / niche area) is likely to be let go in the next few months to a year, and while I know I’d find a job in the US I don’t want to leave Ireland. There are ZERO jobs advertised in my speciality at the moment in Ireland, and I haven’t seen any in the last couple of years either.

My main reason for wanting to change is for future career stability:
(1) it seems to me that there are more quantitative jobs in the business area than in the sciences and
(2) in the sciences they tend to hire mainly younger people, and in 10 years I will probably be out of luck if I need to find a new job!


So, a few questions:

• Do you think I’m right to make the transition from sciences? Am I right in thinking there are jobs out there in the business area?
• Will I need to do a degree to make this type of change?
• The Smurfit MSc in Business Analytics looks ideal for me – does anyone have any feedback about ACTUAL prospects out of that degree? I’ve seen the older posts about it but there isn’t much info from anyone who’s actually gone through it
• If I were to try to make a change without doing a course, how would I do that?

I could make a move to a different quant area within the sciences, but that would also involve re-training & I think I would still end up with poor job prospects in a few years. I’m not interested in moving to a business-type job that doesn’t involve data, so please don’t recommend an MBA!!!

Thanks all J

 

[ardmacha]

Businesses are increasingly collecting large amounts of data and lack the people to make good use of it. The UCD course is the main one in this area.

This seems to be a new Irish initiative
http://www.analyticsinstitute.org/

There have been a few threads on the UCD MSc in Business Analytics over on Boards.ie, have you done a search there?