The Data Scientist Job in Italy: What Companies Require.

In recent years, experts have considered the job of data scientists as the sexiest of 21st century. However, people skilled with data scientist’s expertise seem to be rare. This probably happens for the complex set of com- petences that this profession requires. In this paper, we deal with companies that are searching for data scientists to expand their workforce. Scraping data from the business-networking website LinkedIn, as for companies, we collected dimensions, sectors, kinds of employment, contract forms, working functions, and required skills. Our findings suggest that data scientist profession extends to several sectors but it is not yet consolidated. This condition intensifies the misconception about the skills required. Based on all this, we think that the role of higher institutions becomes fundamental, on the one hand to define data science as a discipline, and on the other to train young people for acquiring the set of skills needed.