Tableau courses tackle data analyst skills shortage
A partnership between Tableau Software, Lynda.com and Pluralsight aims to address the IT skills shortage by offering courses and training to students with no background in data analytics.
Elissa Fink, chief marketing officer at Tableau, says "These partnerships are a continuation of our mission to help people see and understand their data. Lynda.com and Pluralsight share our vision to empower everyone to learn valuable data analytics skills to help them be successful in their careers, no matter what role they have in the organisation.
While PluralSight will target those with no data analytics background and no prior experience, Lynda.com's courses will target data scientists and those entering data analytics from an IT background. A study from Burning Glass Technologies and General Assembly found that the demand for data science skills has tripled in the last five years.
Tableau is also working with online education provider Udacity to target experienced data scientists already in the industry with its Machine learning and Data Analyst Nanodegree programmes. Courses involve data infrastructure and data visualisations designed to train data engineers in specialised fields.
Tableau has partnered with General Assembly: Data Science Immersive to create a three-month course that will teach young data scientists about statistics, data modelling and programming. This is alongside Tableau's offerings of data visualisation, exploration and analysis. The course reports a 99% job placement rate for full-time graduates.
Jake Schwartz, General Assembly co-founder and CEO says he is optimistic about the new course.
"Data has become democratised – in part, by companies like Tableau – making it possible to obtain a data-driven role without a PhD in statistics. Students can feel confident about a curriculum that not only draws from the expertise of an industry leader like Tableau but also incorporates our global career services program, which will set students up for success outside of the classroom and on the job," Schwartz says.
