Benchmarking Background Of Forecasters

BENCHMARKING BACKGROUND OF FORECASTERS By Chaman L. Jain, St. John’s University W W hat kind of skill-set does a fore caster need to perform efficiently and effectively? One way to answer this is to see what kind of skill-set practicing forecasters have. The answer to it can be used as a guide. This article discusses the background of practicing forecasters in the United States based on the recent IBF survey. BACKGROUND OF PROFESSIONAL FORECASTERS The background of a forecaster can be categorized into two: (1) Academic and (2) business. First, we will discuss the academic background, which includes the highest degree earned and the subject area the person specialized in while in university/college. Degree Acquired. To get a handle on the academic background of professional forecasters, we asked two questions to the participants in our survey. (1) What is highest degree you have earned? (2) What was your major field of concentration in university/college? The data show that most of the forecasters have a Bachelor’s (52%) or a Master’s degree (36%). There is a small percentage of forecasters that are just high school graduates. On the other extreme, there are a few forecasters ...