The emotional, social and cognitive competency profile of data scientist: An exploratory study

The advent of digital economy is deeply and rapidly changing not only our habits but also the practice of management. More and more business activities are digitized and a new profile of workers has emerged in the last few years, namely that of data scientist. If its technical skills are quite clear, the emotional, social, and cognitive (ESC) competences are still underexplored. This study addresses this void through an exploratory study on a sample of data scientists. In-depth empirical evidence collected through Behavioural Event Interview technique demonstrated that data scientists require a wide repertoire of behavioural competencies to attain successful performance and to face the challenge of the digital transformation. This study advances the research about Big Data and their impact on emerging jobs, identifying the most frequently ESC competencies activated by data scientist while performing their job and deriving implications in terms of the competency-based human resource management practices.