How is the BI Sector?

eu-solutions was interviewed by Bleent – France’s leading online forum for the BI community – on the state of the BI’s market. 

Following an eventful year, what is the impact of the financial crisis on recruitment in the BI sector?

Business Intelligence is an essential part of any successful business. Though many of the European markets that eu-solutions operates in - France, Switzerland, BENELUX and the UK – are experiencing depression and a lack of confidence in the general economy,  the appetite for BI solutions remains strong.

Many organisations are going through significant cost reductions and restructuring, but they are all – without exception - recognising the importance in enhanced reporting; more in-depth analysis; and improved data management. Currently, we are providing specialised BI resources on many multi-million euro BI projects, that are expected to not only deliver competitive business advantages, but more importantly (in the current tough economic climate), significant cost savings in the future.  

The Business Intelligence function is increasingly considered an integrated core business function with a broader range of stakeholders.  As result, when resourcing on large scale BI transformation projects, we have become more involved with the office of CFO, than just the CIO.        

Which BI sectors are enjoying the most amount of recruitment?

We currently recruit for 3 of the world’s top 5 largest banks and all have major MI transformation projects, which in one case is in excess of a billion euros in scale.  In part this is a reaction to the financial and current eurozone crisis and to address GRC (Govt Risk and Compliance issues), which has driven many BI and MI projects.  The impact of Basel 3 and Solvency 2 is also being felt and this is being reflected in the need for greater transparency.  This is not just limited to the banking sector, but we have experienced big demand for MI solutions in pharma, oil and gas, as well as retail, where the focus has been on long range planning and analytics.

In terms of specific roles, the demand for reporting specialists has dropped as this process becomes more automated within BI systems. While data integration specialists and data warehouse experts do seem to have become more important to a BI environment.   I believe this is a result of BI becoming a more integrated solution together with ERP and enterprise performance management systems, plus there is a great desire of businesses to have more unified and better quality data to query and report on.

Do you systematically use google to learn more about your candidates?

eu-solutions does not use Google systematically to learn about our candidates. Social networking sites (Viadeo, XING, Linked-In) are more useful to generate candidate information, however it still only has a small part to play: Only by meeting or talking to candidates can you truly understand a candidate’s skills or ambitions, and as a result be able to successfully represent them to future employers.       

What are the key for a successful interview?

It is a bit of a cliché, but the best employers recruit for attitude and not for skill. So when preparing for an interview, its very important to consider your personal attributes as well as your technical relevance for a role. As a candidate, if you have reached the interview stage, you can assume that you have most of the core skills required for the vacancy.   Though it’s important to demonstrate those core competencies in an interview, whether you succeed or fail at the interview stage is likely to depend on other factors – specifically your attitude.  Attributes such as enthusiasm, drive, openness, honesty and pride in your work can overcome any skills gaps that you may have and make you more attractive than a more experienced candidate.