The thought that why these nerdy IT professionals usually earn more money than a marketing, sales, finance, or HR professionals must have crossed your mind at some point in your life. A high percentage of job seekers might even have given thought to shifting their careers from their current ones to the lucrative one in data science (DS), given its growing demand across multiple industries. However, very few know the beaten path to a successful career in data science. Hence, we are going to touch upon a few factors that will bring you close to a glittering career in DS.

Reasons for a changeover to the Data Science career (why?):

As we are aware that the importance of data science has increased in leaps and bounds over the last few years, pay has also doubled in comparison to the pay in other jobs. With reference to the data by Team Lease, data scientists with over five years’ experience are likely to receive an income of about INR 7.5 MN per annum, much higher by comparison with the income of other engineers who receive an amount of around INR 0.5 to 0.8 MN per annum. As forecasted by The Hindu, the job market for data science is going to burgeon and face a deficit of nearly 0.2 MN data scientists within next three years, not to mention the prediction made by Gartner about a huge investment in big data two years down the line.

Considering all the positive elements mentioned above, if an aspirant is demonstrating excellent learnability, a keen interest in learning nuances of data science and machine learning (ML), comfort in maths and statistics, and an aptitude for learning practitioner-level programming, then nothing is better than cashing in on this golden opportunity.

Understand the role of a Data Scientist:

As for the responsibilities of a data scientist, he/she is accountable for placing a high value on data and analytics, sourcing and cleaning data, bringing automated solutions to any kind of business problems, and implementing machines learning mechanisms. Knowing these functions, in brief, will be of great help to an aspirant. Besides that, a data scientist must acquire operational knowledge of data visualisation and certain proficiency in ML technologies and algorithms such as Naïve Bayes, Decision Forests, k-NN, and SVM.

A sine qua non for embarking on the journey:

Setting out your career in data science needs a great deal of hands-on practice and the end-to-end delivery of guided as well as unguided projects, right from loading and cleaning data to building models, under close supervision at the institute. More importantly, a proactive approach to asking as many questions as possible in classes will contribute towards an in-depth knowledge of data science. So, ask plenty of questions that you hit upon during unsupervised projects. If you want to make a long-standing career in data science, you must learn to perform in teams.

Nextech Infosystems always recommends building a GitHub portfolio and to work on at least one time series project and one natural language processing project so that you can gain sufficient knowledge that can lay the foundations for successful job interviews. Apart from this, blogging is an excellent platform for going into specifics of any kind of subject and displaying your comprehensive knowledge to prospective employers. Once you master the domain, you are likely to achieve milestones in data science.

Devise a course of action:

Begin with elementary online courses in Maths, Stats, and fundamentals of programming. Then, take a leap forward with instructor-led classroom programs at Nextech Infosystems, which will equip you with the necessary skills following career transition. For more details about the programs at Nextech Infosystems, please visit https://nextechinfosystems.com/data-science-masters-course/ and https://nextechinfosystems.com/machine-learning-masters-course/

Keep track of the efforts:

Nextech Infosystems has developed an in-house platform such as Commit.Live, which observes and compares the progress, performance, and KPIs of students with that of the others. Such a platform assists students with achieving their full potential based on the results.

Choose the right platform (institute):

Publicising yourself in the job market is of prime importance, and hence, Nextech Infosystems ensures the development of marketable skills through career counselling and provides guidance on advertising them using excellent resumes and LinkedIn profiles with technically correct keywords.

Networking with the right people:

Active participation in various hackathons (events that bring together all the experts such as programmers, developers, project managers, subject matter experts, and more) provides you with a window of opportunity, which you must use it to your advantage for expanding your professional network and for obtaining real-project exposure. Most importantly, Nextech Infosystems has associated itself with partners, which facilitates meet-ups to exchange views and techniques that domain experts implement in businesses. Rubbing shoulders with such experts opens up productive avenues for a promising career in data science.