Lead Recruitment Data Analyst @ Newcastle United

Newcastle United are hiring a Lead Recruitment Data Analyst -> https://careers.newcastleunited.com/job/lead-recruitment-data-analyst-5932188 <- and this role is clearly scoped as sitting within the recruitment department.

Reading through it this is classic Decision Science. You'll be producing reporting and insights on transfer market trends, building and managing recruitment dashboards in Tableau I imagine, collaborating with the data team, filtering and ranking player targets and delivering evaluations and evidence based recommendations to key stakeholders. It's written as a support function for the recruitment department and as such the language is fairly passive throughout. There isn't much sense of you owning anything data-focussed independently in that you're working with existing models rather than building them. That's presumably why this role has the title 'Analyst' rather than 'Scientist'.

On the other hand there is an emphasis on pushback. Working closely with the Lead Video Analyst to challenge key analysis areas and ensure data insights are rigorously validated against video is exactly how Patrick Ward, R&D Lead at the Seattle Seahawks, spoke about his best work at Field of Play. He said the most valuable analysis he'd done was in that interaction between data and video, where one teaches the other. It's really good to see it framed explicitly here.

Technical requirements are basically zero. Tableau or Power BI are essential and that's more or less it. No modelling or programming requirements. This is very much a role for someone with strong football knowledge, good people skills and the ability to translate data into decisions. A pure Decision Scientist in other words.

There's also a line management element with responsibility for a Recruitment Data Analyst which is worth knowing. Based in Newcastle and closing date is the 24th of June.