Landing Your First Data Science Job or Internship

At the conclusion of every college semester since I got into the Data field I've had numerous graduates and newly matriculating graduate students emailing asking for career advice, a job, an internship, Data Science industry advice, and a few other surprise requests. Unfortunately, when it comes to landing your first job in Data Science with a Master's degree in hand or an internship -- I haven't done either of those. You all may have some different obstacles to overcome. A special note for those of you with a low GPA, don't lose heart, most millionaires don't have a GPA over 2.9. But let's not focus on what we can't change right now and focus on what we can do, right now.

So in terms of experience, I'm not much help. But I think I can guide you to people who can help you. So we need to find people with such expertise around internships and recently got a job in the data field without job experience... (are you tracking with me here?)

Hey, wait a minute! I know some people who have experience in looking for and finding an internship! People who have an internship right now know, at least anecdotally, how to get an internship! Also, people who just landed their first job in the Data industry also probably have a lot better idea, again, at least anecdotally, of how to land a first job in the industry. Now we're talkin'!

So how do we find these people of mystery? Well, Boolean my Dear Watson. That is, boolean searches in the LinkedIn search bar!

Basically, you can start with a company name (e.g. Google, IBM) or a technology (e.g. Python, Java) and "intern" or "internship" and you're likely to find a number of people you can reach out to as well as internships at various companies where you can reach out to employees at those companies to learn more about possibly landing that job or internship.

Here's an example:

As you can see from above, four people who successfully, and probably recently, landed an internship at the company of interest (IBM in this case) as well as a listing of internships at IBM. (I blocked out names as they didn't volunteer to be contacted by everyone)

From here, if you haven't clicked on that Millionaire link already, I'll let you know what separates millionaires (and their 2.9 GPAs) from high GPAs who don't have millions... it's grit. So get after it! Reach out, be kind and reach out. Return the favor, help anyone who asks you for help as it helps the next person who might come along and that person's willingness to help someone else.

Great! Now all you have to do is work on your diving form....

Good luck!