Libby Heeren
Data Science Leadership

People Analytics: Resources, stories, and teachings from our community

2025-10-17

As host (and longtime attendee!) of The Data Science Hangout, I’ve been privileged to meet so many amazing people analytics leaders. I wanted to gather their wisdom in one place so I could share it with you. Not just their experiences, either, but all the amazing books and podcasts they recommended, some of which were written by other Hangout guests! It’s a small data world.

People analysts can use data to help build better career paths for employee growth, improve mentorship opportunities and outcomes, and even show business leaders that they already have the talent they need in-house (just in the wrong departments). 

No matter your years of experience or industry, I’ve pulled together a mix of resources, use cases, and experiences from guests on The Hangout that I think will be really helpful. This blog post is part bookshelf, part inspiration board, and part nudge to get active in the community. If you’d like to meet a whole lot of fun data people and learn from leaders like the ones below, come join us live in the chat every Thursday at The Data Science Hangout.

 

Voices from The Hangout

 

Our community has hosted some incredible people analytics leaders over the years. I’ll share clips of each leader below, but you can always find all of our Hangouts on our Hangout YouTube channel playlist as well.

 

Josh VanderLeest

 

Josh is a Manager of Data Analytics in People Analytics at Progressive Insurance, and I’d really recommend watching his episode of the hangout as a starting point because his discussion is a great way to get familiar with what people analytics is and can be, if you’re curious. You can see him talk about his career transition from psychology into people analytics (Industrial-Organizational Psychology) and also get a glimpse into his team’s problem space, including attrition modeling, structural topic modeling for employee surveying, and navigating the ethical use of AI with human data. He recommended Keith McNulty’s regression book as a resource, and Keith happens to be next on this list, so keep an eye out for that link below!

The community asked Josh, “How can companies ensure that they’re being ethical when using AI models on human data?” This is a super important question. Check out his thoughtful answer below.

Keith McNulty

 

Yes, the same Keith who’s an Analytics Leader at McKinsey & Company and literally wrote the book on people analytics. During his Hangout, he discussed his career transition from mathematics into data science and psychometrics, how he built his people and talent analytics team, and his passion for developing open-source resources (like his books, linked below). 

He was generous with insights and practical advice, but the example he shared about using network analysis to map collaboration patterns between employees and suggest a better company organization really blew me away. Have a listen in the clip below.

Kris Saling

 

When Kris joined us, she was Director of Innovation for the US Army Human Resources Command – could you get a cooler title?! She’s got an even cooler one now. You should definitely give her episode a watch to hear her talk about the importance of building coalitions, the success of their data literacy program, and how sometimes it takes a top-down data-sharing directive to break down data silos. If you work in data, you probably know all about silos!

The community asked, “What success stories do you have in people analytics that helped you get buy-in from leadership?” Kris had a really great example. The Army was facing a personnel question: “Why do we have a force that’s different from what we require?” But she knew the talent and skills were there – they were just hidden behind different role descriptions and labels. Using existing data, her team was able to build a personnel mismatch program, which quickly demonstrated that their forces actually had most of the skills they needed. Kris says, that’s the power of Data-Driven Talent Management, which, spoiler, ended up being the title of her BOOK! I’ll link that below, but you should listen to Kris in her own words first.

As promised, here’s a link to Kris’s new book, Data-Driven Talent Management: Using Analytics to Improve Employee Experience, but I’ll mention it down in the resources section as well.

 

Liz Esarove

 

You couldn’t ask for a deeper well of people analytics knowledge than Liz Esarove’s 24 years working with HR data at AT&T. Among lots of other information and experiences, Liz had some advice for starting a people analytics team: build strong relationships with HR leaders first. Their pain points will guide where analytics can help most. And don’t forget to find other people analysts to connect with online and in real life! We can all learn from each other. (If you know me, you know I agree with Liz there! Community rules.) You can listen to Liz’s advice in the clip below.

David Meza

 

Would you like to meet the head of people analytics at NASA? We’d love to introduce you. David brings an incredibly down-to-earth (see what I did there?) approach to leading in analytics. When the Community asked, “How much of NASA’s people analytics teams are focused on predictive modeling versus reporting and business intelligence?” David said he envisions balanced teams: about half focused on predictive modeling, a quarter on visualization and reporting, and a quarter on data engineering and architecture, but he recognizes that, realistically, everyone might do a little bit of everything, and says that’s true at NASA, too. Listen to his thoughts below.

 

Trevor Fry

 

Trevor is a Lead Data Analyst on the People Insights & Analytics team at Pinterest, and he gets to wear all kinds of hats! In his Hangout episode, he described all the different things people analytics can mean. You’ll hear him talk about analysis methods, too, like structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine mediators and moderators of different relationships between predictors and outcomes, relative weight analysis (RWA) for helping to determine possible drivers of behavior, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate what’s being measured.

Trevor recommended the book Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic. It’s not a book about people analytics specifically, but about communicating information. Trevor made the point that how we communicate our findings is as critical as what models we use.

The community asked, “How does people analytics differ from data science, and how can someone get started in it?” If you have the same question, have a listen to Trevor’s answer below.

 

Books, Blogs, and Podcasts

 

If you’re new to people analytics (or want to level up), here are a few highly recommended resources to help you on your way:

 

An absolute gem of a resource

 

GitLab’s People Analytics Handbook is a wildly good resource filled with LOADS of information, including an entire resource section of its own, which you should go check out. It’s a peek behind the curtain that outlines what people analytics means as a function, as well as the mission and objectives that guide GitLab’s team. It will give you a feel for their people analytics toolset (Tableau, R, Snowflake, Google Sheets, Culture Amp), philosophy, and even their priorities around data governance. Do not miss this one.

 

Keith McNulty’s work

 

Keith quite literally wrote the book on people analytics. In fact, he wrote two! He was also a gracious and funny guest on The Data Science Hangout, which you might have seen above.

 

David Green’s work

 

David Green has been advising in the people analytics space for more than a decade. His newsletter and podcast have been recommended to me by multiple people analysts, so I wanted to share them here. Check them out for yourself!

 

Cole Napper’s work

 

Cole runs a people analytics podcast and Substack called Directionally Correct, and just put out a book!

 

More books on people analytics

 

Predictive HR Analytics by Edwards, Edwards, and Jang

 

The Fundamentals of People Analytics by Craig Starbuck

 

Data-Driven Talent Management: Using Analytics to Improve Employee Experience by Kris Saling

And if you’re looking for community (and I seriously encourage you to), here are a few organizations that have been recommended by people analysts:

 

Examples from Industry

 

What can people analytics look like in the real world? It’s highly technical work producing tangible human outcomes. I gathered a few industry spotlights from Posit below that can help demonstrate the power of people analytics in practice.

  • NASA: using strategic workforce and scenario planning to assess the impacts on the organization’s human capital.
  • Trillium: building employee performance reporting to help managers and traders know how their trades stack up.
  • Regeneron: creating a mentor-matching tool to connect employees across the organization.

We’d love to continue the people analytics conversations! What do you want to learn about? What resources do you have to share? Join us at The Data Science Hangout every Thursday at 12 PM ET and let us know. We’re a data science community dedicated to supporting and celebrating data practitioner,s and we always have a great time. Come make some friends!

Tags: data career insights data science hangout