LONDON, Feb. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Willis Towers Watson (NASDAQ: WLTW), a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company, today announced a group hire of the entire team from Jobable, a Hong Kong-based human capital analytics and software company.

The team brings to Willis Towers Watson (WTW) its expertise in human capital data science and software development. Combining the capabilities of Jobable and WTW will enhance the companys leadership in helping organisations drive digital transformation and uncover the insights within their human capital data.

Former Jobable Chief Executive Officer, Richard Hanson, joins WTW as Global Head of Data Science for Talent & Rewards, along with his Jobable co-founder, Luke Byrne. In his new role, Hanson will continue to be based in Hong Kong, working to identify and capture global revenue opportunities, whilst actively contributing to WTW's thought leadership initiatives. Byrne, who is formerly Jobables Chief Operating Officer, will help drive the transition process.

Mark Reid, Global Leader, Work and Rewards at WTW said, Throughout our partnership with Jobable, we experienced first-hand, their capabilities across data science, software design and development. The Jobable team often provided a valuable point of differentiation to our clients work. Whilst we have already shared numerous commercial successes together, the prospect of building on this proven track record, discovering new synergies and fully leveraging on Richard and his teams expertise is truly a compelling one.

Welcoming the new colleagues, Shai Ganu, Global Leader, Executive Compensation, at WTW commented, With client demands evolving at speed and often with increasing complexity, the addition of Richard and his teams capabilities will sharpen our competitive edge. We are excited to be able to apply data science in all our Data-Software-Advisory offerings, and ultimately help our clients find solutions to critical and emerging people challenges.

For Byrne and Hanson, the team move marks the beginning of a new journey from founding their start-up to growing the business at an enterprise level now. Byrne remarked, We are tremendously proud of Jobables achievements over the past six years. Joining WTW is the perfect way for us to ensure that we can amplify the impact of our work going forward. We are truly excited to see how our combination of skill sets and experience can benefit WTWs clients and their people for years to come.

Bringing the Jobable team to WTW is the culmination of a successful multi-year global partnership between the two companies, marked by notable achievements such as the design and development of innovative skill-based compensation modelling software, SkillsVue, which was launched in 2019. In addition to that, WTW introduced WorkVue, the award-winning AI-driven job reinvention software in 2020 which was also developed by the Jobable team. Jobable has also consistently delivered their unique data analysis and insights to support WTWs advisory work with corporate clients and government agencies worldwide.

The Jobable team will add a wealth of expertise and capabilities to WTWs technology team, including Full Stack Software Development, Data Engineering, DevOps, Natural Language Processing, ETL, Topic Modeling, Word Embedding, Deep Learning, Predictive Analytics, Web Scraping, UX / UI Design and Rapid Prototyping.

About Willis Towers Watson

Willis Towers Watson (NASDAQ: WLTW) is a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company that helps clients around the world turn risk into a path for growth. With roots dating to 1828, Willis Towers Watson has 45,000 employees serving more than 140 countries and markets. We design and deliver solutions that manage risk, optimise benefits, cultivate talent, and expand the power of capital to protect and strengthen institutions and individuals. Our unique perspective allows us to see the critical intersections between talent, assets and ideas the dynamic formula that drives business performance. Together, we unlock potential. Learn more at willistowerswatson.com.

Media contact

Clara Goh: +65 6958 2542 | clara.goh@willistowerswatson.com

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Willis Towers Watson enhances its human capital data science capabilities globally with the addition of the Jobable team - GlobeNewswire

The future is shifting rapidly. Every sector has gone through a significant transformation. We have all witnessed a jarring change in the way different sectors conduct their businesses. The reason for this expeditious evolution is technology. Technology has been humankinds greatest invention. It has made life more comfortable and working in a job much faster.

Technology has encouraged people to live in harmony with machinery; this includes working with machines. With so many innovations insight, educational institutes accommodate these creations and introduce new courses. Now when you go for a college or postgraduate degree, there are numerous degrees you can pick. Through this blog, youll have a better understanding of your options and what career paths you can explore now.

The industries are shifting to accommodate technology. Pursuing a career in a tech-related field would only make sense for the future. There are now many fields to choose from, and most of them engage and stimulate you in more than one way. As you navigate through the many paths laid out for you, in no time, youll find your calling. As an AI professional, you will work with different software all about data and streamline many companies processes. As a cybersecurity professional, you will protect and work with data through intricate security details.

Moving to an RPA professional, you will shift every repetitive task into automatic data handling and have a good command of programming languages. As a data engineer, you will provide the groundwork for a data scientist to handle data. As a UX designer, you will make sure companies get representation through exciting and innovative web pages. Finally, as a mobile app developer, you will launch many apps for people to engage with and enjoy. All of this and more is available for you once you take your first step in the world of technology.

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Tech Careers: In-demand Courses to watch out for a Lucrative Future - Big Easy Magazine

About a decade ago, I remember having a conversation with a friend about big data. At the time, we both agreed that it was the purview of large companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Google, and not something most companies would have to worry about.

As it turned out, we were both wrong. Within a short time, everyone would be dealing with big data. In fact, it turns out that huge amounts of data are the fuel of machine learning applications, something my friend and I didnt foresee.

Frameworks were already emerging like Hadoop and Spark and concepts like the data warehouses were evolving. This was fine when it involved structured data like credit card info, but data warehouses werent designed for unstructured data you needed to build machine learning algorithms, and the concept of the data lake developed as a way to take unprocessed data and store until needed. It wasnt sitting neatly in shelves in warehouses all labeled and organized, it was more amorphous and raw.

Over time, this idea caught the attention of the cloud vendors like Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Whats more, it caught the attention of investors as companies like Snowflake and Databricks built substantial companies on the data lake concept.

Even as that was happening startup founders began to identify other adjacent problems to attack like moving data into the data lake, cleaning it, processing it and funneling to applications and algorithms that could actually make use of that data. As this was happening, data science advanced outside of academia and became more mainstream inside businesses.

At that point there was a whole new modern ecosystem and when something like that happens, ideas develop, companies are built and investors come. We spoke to nine investors about the data lake idea and why they are so intrigued by it, the role of the cloud companies in this space, how an investor finds new companies in a maturing market and where the opportunities and challenges are in this lucrative area.

To learn about all of this, we queried the following investors:

Caryn Marooney: The data market is very large, driven by the opportunity to unlock value through digital transformation. Both the data lake and data warehouse architectures will be important over the long term because they solve different needs.

For established companies (think big banks, large brands) with significant existing data infrastructure, moving all their data to a data warehouse can be expensive and time consuming. For these companies, the data lake can be a good solution because it enables optionality and federated queries across data sources.

Dharmesh Thakker: Databricks (which Battery has invested in) and Snowflake have certainly become household names in the data lake and warehouse markets, respectively. But technical requirements and business needs are constantly shifting in these markets and its important for both companies to continue to invest aggressively to maintain a competitive edge. They will have to keep innovating to continue to succeed.

Regardless of how this plays out, we feel excited about the ecosystem thats emerging around these players (and others) given the massive data sprawl thats occurring across cloud and on-premise workloads, and around a variety of data-storage vendors. We think there is a significant opportunity for vendors to continue to emerge as unification layers between data sources and different types of end users (including data scientists, data engineers, business analysts and others) in the form of integration middleware (cloud ELT vendors); real-time streaming and analytics; data governance and management; data security; and data monitoring. These markets shouldnt be underestimated.

Casey Aylward: There are a handful of big opportunities in the data lake space even with many established cloud infrastructure players in the space:

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9 investors discuss hurdles, opportunities and the impact of cloud vendors in enterprise data lakes - TechCrunch

The U.S. is inching closer to herd immunity almost two months into the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, with more than one million Americans getting vaccinated per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But with a large portion of the population still waiting to get vaccinated and questions around asymptomatic spread, immunized Americans wonder: Is it safe to leave the house and live a pre-pandemic lifestyle?

Not just yet, experts say.

Getting the vaccine is not a free pass to put aside all the public health measures officials have been reiterating since the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a CNN town hall in January.

We dont want people to think that just because theyre vaccinated that other public health recommendations just dont apply, said the nations leading infectious disease expert.

But, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Each vaccination gets the U.S. closer to herd immunity and closer to easing restrictions and returning to normal, health experts say. Until then, social gatherings and travel without protective measures could jeopardize how quickly that may happen.

Data shows small gatherings drive transmission as people tend to relax safety precautions such as masking and social distancing around close friends and family, said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Even when a person is vaccinated, it takes up to two weeks to reach maximum immunity and no shot offers total protection.

Recent data also shows the COVID-19 vaccines may be less effective against new coronavirus variants, specifically one that originated in South Africa. As of Wednesday, the U.S. reported 932 cases of the U.K. variant and nine cases of the South African variant, according to CDC data. The agency said the U.K. variant, called B.1.1.7, could become the dominant strain by March.

Colleges around the U.S. have canceled spring break to discourage students from traveling after celebrations around the same time last year led to a summer surge of coronavirus infections.

Traveling is one of the fastest ways to spread the coronavirus, experts say, and unfortunately, we still dont know if the COVID-19 vaccine protects against transmission.

While studies show the vaccines are effective against symptomatic disease, researchers are still learning its impact on asymptomatic infection. For this reason, health officials warn against non-essential travel even after getting vaccinated.

You can conceivably get infected, get no symptoms and still have virus in your nasal pharynx, Fauci said during the town hall. Its possible that while carrying that virus, someone can transmit it to other travelers, family or friends.

Were in a race between the vaccines and a race with the virus, and its a moment in time where theres a lot of unknowns, El-Sadr said.

While some states have already begun to lift COVID-19 restrictions on restaurants, weddings and even indoor entertainment, health experts say its too early to attend social gatherings without protection.

After a year of pandemic restrictions, Americans are eager to get out of the house, El-Sadr said. But she urges Americans to continue masking and social distancing.

Whatever you were doing the day before you got vaccinated, you continue to do the day after you get vaccinated, El-Sadr said.

If people have to get together, they should minimize risk by being outside, wearing a mask and social distancing, said Dr. Sarita Shah, associate professor of at the department of global health, epidemiology and infectious diseases at Emory University.

We can get together in these small groups using these safety steps that we all know work, she said.

While getting the COVID-19 vaccine doesnt mean a sudden return to pre-pandemic ways, it could mean less anxiety and more individual freedoms.

Experts disagree on exactly how much freedom, but Dr. Vinay Prasad, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, argues theres little risk in dining with a fellow vaccinated friend indoors or hugging fully immunized grandparents.

Nothing in this world comes with 0% risk, he adds, but one can drastically diminish risk by getting vaccinated. After that, its up to the individual to assess their own risk comfortability.

No one is chasing a zero-risk life. In fact, that is a mirage, Prasad said said in an op-ed on Medpage Today. Instead, we all want reasonable safety.

Spring travel may be possible if its done safely and travelers are mindful of where theyre going and who theyre seeing. People should avoid traveling to an area where infections are on the rise and visiting loved ones who are vulnerable to severe disease and not vaccinated.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order in his first days in office mandating masks in flights, trains and buses. The Transportation Security Administration announced last week that it will recommend fines ranging from $250 to $1,500 for people who do not abide by the new transportation mask order.

The CDC issued guidelines Wednesday recommending wearing a surgical mask underneath a cloth mask or knotting the surgical masks to prevent air seeping through the sides.

Shah doesnt expect coronavirus cases to increase dramatically like it did after the holidays as more Americans will be vaccinated and warmer weather will hopefully push people to host gatherings outside.

On Memorial Day, were going to have a different scenario, she said. The first and best thing is that its warmer and people will be outside. That reduces the risk a lot.

The Biden administration is on track to administer 100 million vaccine doses in 100 days. But even after accomplishing this goal, the U.S. will still be far from achieving herd immunity, said CDC director Rochelle Walensky.

Its going to take a while for us to feel like were back to a sense of normalcy, she said during the CNN town hall. After we vaccinate 100 million Americans, were going to have 200 million more to vaccinate.

Read more at usatoday.com

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Following the COVID science: what the data say about the vaccine, social gatherings and travel - Chicago Sun-Times

Originally published in Springboard Blog, Jan 22, 2021.

Data science might just be themost buzzed-about job in tech right now, but its pop culture sheen conceals some of the harsh realities of being a fresh graduate in the industry.

The jobtopped LinkedIns yearly Emerging Jobs Report from 2016 to 2019 consecutively (it isnow at #3). But when Springboard data science alum Kristen Colley started hunting for her first data science job in 2019, most companies were not interested in her data science credentials.When I started rebranding myself as a data analyst with the ability to handle machine learning problems, thats when the opportunities started coming in, she said.

Colleys experience is part of an emerging trend in the way companies hire data scientists. With the mainstreaming of automated machine learning (autoML) andDataRobot, an AI platform which can train and tune machine learning models, businesses dont necessarily need full-fledged data scientists who can perform end-to-end data processing, from exploratory data analysis to building ETL pipelinesat least not for junior roles.

If you want that high-paying data science job you signed up for, youre going to have to wait a few years, said Hobson Lane, aSpringboard data science mentorand co-founder ofTangible AI. Theyre moving up the skill level chain because they can now get much of what they need for data science from DataRobot and autoML.

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How Can We Fix the Data Science Talent Shortage? Machine Learning Times - The Predictive Analytics Times