The Situation:
Our client, a major engineering company was seeking a Chief Data Scientist located in its Irish HQ. The primary focus of the role was to unite the engineering and technology department in developing a market ready software package. To date, the company struggled to align competing interests between both departments and needed an experienced industry leader.
If the product failed to succeed internally, the company stood no hope of breaking new markets and would not be able to compete with established competitor systems.
The Challenge:
To find a business leader with an engineering background that could navigate the technological “chasm” that existed between the engineering and technology departments, thereby aligning product and business goals to deliver on the bottom line.
Company growth was hampered by competing interests of the company’s two biggest departments. The engineering team, the mainstay of the company and core revenue earner, and the technology team, a new innovative department that promised to revolutionize the company’s fortunes as a market disruptor creating new growth areas and revenue.
To gain mainstream customers for their software product, the company needed evidence of ROI and with the company’s own engineering department unwilling to use their own software, market projections were particularly bleak.
The Solution:
Using our customized talent mapping matrix, Hunter Executive Search set about preparing a list of criteria for what the company needed in a Chief Data Scientist. Here are some of the highlighted requirements:
- An individual with a credible engineering background that would be recognised as an industry leader.
- Adept at leading inter-departmental teams with large scale project deliveries.
- Experienced data scientist, that can grasp target-customer characterisation technique to tap into the team’s informed intuition to create multiple use-case scenarios.
We are an executive search firm that has a 100% success rate on retained assignments and armed with a thorough grasp of the role requirements we can look beyond the surface to find the perfect fit.
The potential new hire for this role needed to possess significant industry experience. Our talent mapping process included some of the world’s largest engineering and technology companies.
During our international recruitment campaign, we found a former COO at one of the world’s largest (Fortune 500 listed) energy producers.
This individual had taken the opportunity to invest in a master’s degree, specialising in “Big Data” at Harvard University. He was the perfect blend of experience, knowledge and leadership.
Within months of being hired, he had taken the company across the “Technological Chasm,” bridging the knowledge gap between two distinct audiences, refocused the products end user capabilities by amalgamating the two departments with a singular focus – product alignment. The outcome led to a complete overhaul of engineering legacy systems with the latest company software that was more focused on client needs.
After successful internal implementation, this led to the development of a complete project blueprint that evolved into a consulting service with new supplier/client services, creating a ten-fold increase in business revenue by year end.
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