  The data-driven economy has led to a significant shortage of data scientists.
To address this shortage, this study explores the prospects of outsourcing data
analysis tasks to freelancers available on online labor markets (OLMs) by
identifying the essential factors for this endeavor. Specifically, we explore
the skills required from freelancers, collect information about the skills
present on major OLMs, and identify the main hurdles for out-/crowd-sourcing
data analysis. Adopting a sequential mixed-method approach, we interviewed 20
data scientists and subsequently surveyed 80 respondents from OLMs. Besides
confirming the need for expected skills such as technical/mathematical
capabilities, it also identifies less known ones such as domain understanding,
an eye for aesthetic data visualization, good communication skills, and a
natural understanding of the possibilities/limitations of data analysis in
general. Finally, it elucidates obstacles for crowdsourcing like the
communication overhead, knowledge gaps, quality assurance, and data
confidentiality, which need to be mitigated.
