How to Become a Data Science Professional in 2019: A Brief Guide

Free apps, free websites! There’s something fishy, don’t you think? For every free app or website or a profile you create, it is being paid with a currency called your “personal data.” With digitization on the rise, millions of people are accessing and using the internet today generating huge amounts of data daily.

According to a 2017 LinkedIn report, data scientists were deemed to be the second-fastest-growing career in the United States. Of all the statistics that were reported, among the top ten job roles, four of them were related in the field of data. Data science is a growing rapidly showing no signs of slowing down.

There are very few data science professional out in the market. And with the growing demand, this profession will not cease to stop. This demand is no longer confined to the IT techies and the software realm. The past years have seen the massive growth of ten, twenty times in the data science-based jobs such as the education sector, marketing, and even the manufacturing domain.

Since 2016, the world has been generating 90% data. To sort and interpret these bits of information from users, organizations need data scientists.

Let’s first understand what data science is and why do we need data science.

Data Science

Most of the definition you will come across says data science to be a multi-disciplinary field. It is a blend of different tools, set of algorithms and machine learning tools that aims at discovering hidden patterns from data that is extracted. A data science professional not only gathers and cleans the data, but they’re also responsible to conduct exploratory analysis to discover positive insights from it. Machine learning helps in predicting business and future outcomes based on the data collected.

The need for data science

For instance, do you have any idea how to analyze your customers’ demand, their requirements, and likes, etc.? How about you get the preexisting data like the customers’ browsing history, age, purchase history, income? You had all these details earlier as well, but then you were not able to train models to be specific about your requirements. Today, with a large amount of data that is created and produced it is possible to train models more effectively based on which better recommendation or products could be sent to your customers. In return, this could be highly beneficial to bring more businesses to your organization.

Step-by-step guide – data scientist professional

The first step toward a career in data science is to first get an advanced degree. Organizations are least bothered whether your degree is through a traditional university or an online university. All they care about is the set of relevant skills.

Since data science is a heavy lift in the market right now, you should be prepared to stay relevant and updated regularly.

A bachelor’s degree is usually the minimum level to pursue data science. However, the best opportunities are reserved for those data with science professionals with advanced degrees. With demand expanding, tech professionals have moved to diverse learning ability by taking up certification programs from the best data science certifications body.

Take that leap and acquire skills like:

• R and Python programming
• Statistics and Mathematics
• Machine learning algorithms
• Data Visualization using tools like Tableau, ggplots, RapidMiner, etc.
• Predictive modeling
• Databases like SQL and NoSQL
• Business acumen
• Intellectual curiosity
• Communication skills

Learning the above skills will provide a head-start in the data science career path. However, to land a job you should be able to demonstrate these skills to potential employers. Data science is a field that requires a lot of practice. Taking up certifications and working on projects is an ideal way to start a data science career.

If you’re ready to take up this challenging job role, it’s high time you start your research on the best online certification program that best fits your profile.