If you are a young business professional who wishes to have an edge over your peers, Big Data could be your ticket to lucrative salaries and fast-track advancement in the corporate ladder.

What every young professional needs to know about big data

In March 2017, a top executive at Google told finance news network CNBC that Big Data analytics is the most pressing skill that young professionals should be acquiring.

Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg are billionaire Google executives who serve as top advisers to CEO Larry Page.

These two tech leaders recently collaborated in updating the best-seller book How Google Works, which now features a section on Big Data. 

Mr. Rosenberg went as far as calling Big Data a “sword of the 21st century”  to be mastered by data scientists. The new samurai class of the corporate world

Rosenberg and Schmidt have been bullish on Big Data since the inauguration of former President Barack Obama in 2009.

In 2017, Big Data is truly beginning to shape the future of business. This means that young professionals should become familiar with this new business process and choose a career path to follow.

What you should know about big data

By the year 2020, the average internet user will create 2.7 GB of information per day.

Analysts who study the field of Big Data believe that up to 50 percent of the digital information generated by each internet user could be analyzed in a productive manner.

Data analysis as a business process is hardly a new concept. However, the magnitude of modern data sets calls for advanced software tools to capture, manage, analyze, and implement decisions on a real-time basis.

Most business enterprises tap into the power of Big Data by means of small data. One example of this would be an e-commerce manager who makes decisions based on Google Analytics recommendations.

The demographics contained in the audience reports are culled from Big Data sets but are presented in accessible charts and visualizations.

So, if you were the aforementioned e-commerce manager, you should understand where the demographics come from.

you should also know how to implement strategies ased on this analysis

Data science careers

If you are just getting started in higher education, you should focus on data science. At this time, there are more masters than bachelor’s degree programs for data science.

However, to become a data scientist you can study statistics, applied mathematics, database programming and computer science.

Specialization is far more important for budding data scientists than college degrees

Someone who is proficient at Hadoop reporting, for example, would have an easier time getting a job as a data scientist than someone who just completed her MBA.

Big data is the new business intelligence

Young professionals really need to “go big” when they approach Big Data jobs because this is the new term for business intelligence.

There was a time when business executives ordered top managers to read and interpret printouts filled with data.

This practice was replaced by hiring business analysts who knew how to run macros and pivot tables in Microsoft Excel.

These days, executives hire a data scientist who knows her way around a Hadoop cluster and gets along with a mathematician.

In the end, there are two main avenues of approach that you can take to forge your future on big data.

On one hand, you can train to become a business analyst who easily querys massive data sets on multiple servers.

On the other hand, you can train to become a data scientist who actually sets up and maintains clusters for real-time data capture.

How do you apply big data in your career? Are you considering becoming a data scientist? Share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment below.

For more business tips, check our entrepreneurship section and subscribe to our weekly newsletters.