These hands-on projects were crucial for career transformations
How does someone get a dream job as a data scientist for the first time?
My dream job was to work in data science at LinkedIn.
However, I didn’t have any formal data science education nor a previous data scientist job title. Data science was an emerging new field at the time. It wasn’t as commonly taught in schools as it is now nor available in most companies.
Before I was hired by LinkedIn, I still needed to prove that I could do the work required.
I’m grateful that I was ultimately hired by LinkedIn. I later became the head of a LinkedIn data science team of 14 data scientists to acquire and grow our customers for our multi-billion dollar online advertising business.
I’ll share with you how I got started with data science in the first place.
It’s challenging to get your first data scientist job if you’re not already working as a data scientist. Perhaps you’re graduating from school soon. Or perhaps you’ve been working for a while as an engineer, a financial analyst, or a scientific researcher, but want a career transformation into data science.
The extra challenge is that career paths are no longer linear. You can expect to refresh your career and skills every few years. In fact, the World Economic Forum cites US Bureau of Labor Statistics that American adults have an average of 12 jobs by the time they’re at age 55. The World Economic Forum 2023 Future of Jobs report also predicts that 44% of workers core skills are expected to change in the next 5 years, with the fastest growing jobs to include data skills in AI and analytics.
When I surveyed my LinkedIn network, only 50% of the respondents indicated they’re working in jobs which are still directly related to their academic majors. Many data scientists that I know, and even those that I hired, have been like me in starting off with a different academic and professional background. Yes, people can aspire and successfully take steps for career transformations!
