How to prepare for a data science role in 2022?

Over the past couple of months, I've been working on building a community of data science professionals and aspirants along with my colleagues at TeamEpic. The goal of the community is to bridge the gap between the theoretical concepts that we learn in colleges/online courses and their real-world implementation in organizations.

We started with our research and analysis to understand what our competitors are offering to their customers and what the customers are looking for. To understand what the data science aspirants needed and the challenges that they were facing, we started interviewing them regularly. In total, my team has spoken to around 200+ data science aspirants across India. I interviewed around 50+ data science aspirants/professionals over calls and was able to classify their personas as follows:

• A college student with just a basic understanding of a programming language
• A student with fair knowledge of Python and data science concepts, and who has prior internship experience
• An unemployed person who has graduated in the last couple of years or had to leave their previous job due to some reason
• A working professional from a non-coding background, trying to start their career in the data science domain
• A working professional with good knowledge of real-world projects but not in Python/Data Science

While interviewing these data science aspirants and professionals, I tried to understand their challenges related to interviews, current job profiles, or the data science projects that they have developed. While speaking to all these individuals, I was able to identify a few common challenges that they were facing, such as:

• ?Lack of confidence, when explaining the technical concepts/projects in an interview
• No hands-on experience about the concepts that they have learned in colleges or online courses
• Not sure how an end-to-end project is developed in a team environment
• Inability to integrate multiple concepts and implement them on the project
• No relevant working experience in the data science domain

Relatable enough? Most of us have faced these challenges at some point in our careers.

To gain experience, these individuals participate in hackathons or boot camps while some of them opt for an internship. But wait! These days you need to have some tangible experience even when you apply for internships, isn’t it? Most of the interviewees shared these challenges and asked if I had a solution that can upskill them and land an interview in the data science market.

So after a lot of research, market analysis, understanding the Indian education system, and the job market, I have come up with 5 high-level steps to land an interview in the data science domain (probably could be used for any tech domain with some tweaks):

Next, I will discuss a bit in detail how you can follow these steps and will also share some sources that might help you in your learning journey.

Implement the code along with learning the theory

Based on the interviews that I’ve conducted over the past few months and from my personal experience, I know that most of us are yet to get our hands dirty by undertaking capstone projects and implementing the actual code and I can’t stress enough about this!

What I would suggest here is to get and hands-on experience by undertaking assignments and capstone projects as you learn the concepts. For instance, if you are trying to understand the fundamentals of the NumPy library, then open a Jupyter Notebook, write some code using the library, and experiment around it until you are confident enough to use it whenever required. If you need some study material to learn the basics of Python, then I would recommend referring to The Python Workshop which will help you to understand the concepts and implement them simultaneously; it's completely free.

Along with learning the concepts of Python and Data Science, try to identify the exact data science subdomain (data analysis, machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence, etc.) you would like to be experts in. Identifying the subdomain at an early stage will help you to create a more precise career path for you. But do not worry if you are still uncertain, you can decide that in the next phase as well.

Develop individual data science projects

So, Aditya, I have acquired the basic Python and Data Science skills and can write the code for individual concepts on my own; what next? Next, you can start developing individual mini projects (ideally in the sub-domain that you have identified). These projects could be based on topics such as disease prediction, recommendation system, detecting something, recognizing something, etc. You can easily find datasets for developing such projects online. So, keep developing such projects and try to increase their complexity levels by adding multiple milestones to them. I would suggest developing at least 12-15 such projects, basically, 1-2 projects for every major concept that you have learned. Apart from finalizing the data science sub-domain you can also try and identify which real-world domain (healthcare, e-commerce, finance, consumer, government, agriculture, etc.) you want to work into and create more projects around it.

What more you can do at this stage, apart from developing individual projects? So, to improve your code efficiency, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities, you can also participate in hackathons and other coding competitions. Doing this regularly will improve the efficiency of your code and make you more confident.

Next, you need to understand how real-world projects are developed in a team environment and understand other aspects of a project apart from developing the code.

Develop end-to-end group projects in a team environment

Trying out common individual projects will surely help you gain confidence, but do you think they’ll help you will get a job? Mostly not, and even if you get lucky with the job, you might end up facing many challenges such as developing the project in a team environment, combining multiple concepts to develop a single module, understanding the research/analysis/deployment of a project, etc.

So, how can we solve this problem, Aditya? Do you have a solution to it? Yes, you can either look out for some internship opportunities (but please research about the company and culture before joining) or work in some group projects program like the one at Packt – TeamEpic.

The TeamEpic community aims to bridge the gap between self-studied theory and work-ready practical experience.?This means helping you build relevant skills as you learn by mirroring actual working environments and team-based activity. By grouping you up with other community members at your skill level (and a vetted TeamEpic mentor), we give you a tangible experience that will push you over the edge with potential employers. So, what next? Click?here to register your interest in these group projects, and get ready to build the tangible experience that will push you over the edge with potential employers. You can also check out the Discord channel and network with like-minded people.

Write blogs/articles/whitepapers on your tech experiences

Developing code and building projects is the core skill that is expected from a developer. But what more can you offer to a company or your developing community? The answer is you can start sharing your tech experiences by writing blogs/articles/whitepapers and let the world know what you are onto. Not only will it help you to strengthen your profile but will also help you in many other ways, as follows:

• It makes you more insightful
• Your work will be appreciated and recognized
• Will improve your written communication skills
• Create an awesome professional network
• Earn money from it

While these are just some benefits of writing a blog/article, I am sure you will develop many other skills while doing this.

Create your presence in the professional world

In today’s world, with thousands of students getting a degree every year in India, it has become difficult for freshers to find a good job. Your resume is no longer enough to stand out from the crowd and so you need to build a social online presence. When I say social presence, I mean on a professional level, i.e., creating your existence on the largest professional platform, LinkedIn. LinkedIn can help you build many skills and create lots of opportunities for you. Some of them are as follows:

• Defining your skills and sharing experience
• Building your brand by sharing your projects, writing articles, etc
• Networking with like-minded and experienced professionals in your domain, which can help to advance in your career faster (85% of the jobs are found today via networking)
• Interview preparation and job opportunities related to your domain
• Understand the market trends so that you can tweak your career path accordingly

Again, these are just some benefits of creating a strong professional portfolio on LinkedIn and you will surely gain much more from the platform if used rightly.

These steps are completely based on my research, analysis, and data gathering. Following them may not guarantee you a job but will surely improve your chances of landing those interviews.

Helping the developers to grow in their domain is what I have tried to do over the past 3 years and the aim behind writing this blog is the same.

Please do share your feedback/thoughts and support this content so that I can help you with more such content. Follow me on LinkedIn for more such content. Thanks!