[cosmie]

Pretty much. At my last company, I managed a data and analytics team. The vast majority of applicants were over-credentialed individuals trying to break into data science (even though we didn't brand the positions as such). While I applaud their achievements in and of themselves[1], very few were able to articulate why their advanced degree would apply or be beneficial for the roles I was attempting to fill or justify the salary requirements they'd request.

My two best performing and best paid employees on that team were exact opposites - one had just finished a masters in math and the other had an incomplete bachelors. But both were able to articulate why they had made the choices they made and demonstrated the ability to make deliberate, pragmatic, and calculated decisions. Which is an invaluable skill to have on your team.

[1] I'm a terrible academic. I focused more on working and making money while in school, and gave the bare minimum amount of attention to my classes to get by. So I do truly have appreciation for people that can dedicate themselves to school enough to achieve an advanced degree. But that appreciation is separate from them being able to derive work value from that degree.

[plaidfuji]

It’s very common for PhDs in technical fields to pivot to data science once they hit a wall in their career from the oversupply problem. I’ve had a couple of friends make this jump - but they either came from a computational background or devoted at least a year to learning the necessary programming skills and math. Out of curiosity, did the overcredentialed people you interviewed have any actual experience applying analytic techniques, or were they just people with advanced degrees blindly trying to move into a hot field?