Today I saw @cjpberry ask on Twitter, “Why can’t I have both quality and quantity talent in web analytics?” This led me to the following realization.
Do you remember the computer science landscape before the dot-com growth? Candidates with the experience were hard to find and were easily demanding high salaries. It was the good life. Fast-forward to the height of the dot-com era and they were a dime a dozen. Fast-forward to now and many are jobless.
We have always understood that web analytics was an afterthought of the internet. It was the hip thing to throw money at, then executives finally saw money drying up and started asking questions…deep business questions.
So here’s my prediction – Web Analytics jobs will imitate the path that Computer Science jobs took.
We’re seeing it already. Everyone wants web analysts now and they’re not cheap. I couldn’t have planned a better career strategy to stave off this economy. And as Christopher Berry pointed out, there isn’t exactly a glut of quality web analysts.
However, in five years (or less), this will shift. There will be as many web analysts as there are corporate websites. Just a few years beyond that, there will be twice as many web analysts as there are corporate websites. Small businesses will be able to afford full-time web analysts. I’m not even going to approach how that will level the playing field for them.
From my viewpoint, there are only two ways to get a good web analyst right now:
- If you can afford them, pay for them.
- If you can’t afford them, find someone that you can trust that at least has some experience and will learn quickly.
Understand that with option #2 you will eventually have to pay them like option #1. However, they will have earned it and made it possible for you to afford it. Hey,Maybe they’ll even make it fiscally possible for you to hire more web analysts.
So that’s my take on the future of web analytics careers. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
