Tech companies recruit social scientists
Matt Wallaert is not a software engineer. Nor is he a programmer or developer.
Still, it's not unusual for him to get calls regularly from tech companies looking to recruit him.
Wallaert is a social scientist - a behavioural scientist who has done undergraduate and graduate work in psychology.
Wallaert, who also has experience at tech startups, now works at Microsoft Corp with the Bing team, figuring out ways to make it easier for Bing users to make decisions and take actions, as well as ways to wean people off the habit of automatically going to Google for their web searches.
While the idea of social scientists working at tech companies is not new, "There's been a shift in the industry," Wallaert said. "They used to shuffle these people into marketing: 'How do we get them to help sell us more things?' Now, they've shifted us into product: 'How do we actually make the thing better?'"
Tech companies are showing increased interest in the skills social scientists offer, especially with the rising importance of social networking and big data to businesses.
Their roles have become more integrated with specific product groups within companies, rather than segregated to marketing or research.
In the past few years, with the rise of social computing and social media, tech companies have come to understand that "it's not enough to understand the individual user," said Donald Farmer, a Seattle-based vice president of product management at QlikTech, a software company. "You have to understand them in a social context."
"There really is no business anymore that sells directly to one consumer.
"Every enterprise is now a social enterprise."