For the last months, ThinkR has been involved (with Mango, Procogia and the Linux Foundation) in a working group for an RConsortium R Certification.
Why this Working Group (WG)?
No doubt the demand for R (and for Data Science) has been increasing over the past few years — Data Scientist became the sexiest job of the century according to Harvard Business Review, and Glassdoor listed it as the “Best Job in America” in 2016, 2017 and 2018. No need to argue on that point: data science is now one of the top skills to have on the market.
With the growth in interest came a growth of demands both from employers and people looking to improve their skills. To support this, several channels of training have been made available.
But even with that, it’s still complex today for the three parties involved in the field:
- students (in a broad sense), who do not know where to start, and if self-taught don’t know how to “officially” validate their skills
- teachers and trainers, who have to face a constantly innovating field, and might not be able to identify the skills needed on the market
- recruiters, who might find it hard to identify key skills, diplomas, and certifications
Today, there is no “official R certification” to assess one’s skills when it comes to R. Hence this RConsortium WG, working to establish some ground rules for a possible certification.
Towards a certification
This certification could be useful for two key things:
- It would allow professionals and students to acquire practical, industry-driven skills in R
- It would help recruiter to identify the skills of potential recruits
As it is crucial for this possible certification to be industry & community-driven, we are currently conducting a little survey to get an overview of the current state of the sector, worldwide, and try to know if this certification would be worth it.
It would definitely help us a lot if you could take 3 minutes to answer this one 🙂
