3 Proactive Steps to Transition Your Career to Data Science
By: Kenny Kim
Tags: Mentorship, Data Science, Careers, Data, Learning

Photo by Jaromír Kavan on Unsplash

3 Proactive Steps to Transition Your Career to Data Science

From an Accounting Major to a Data Scientist at Facebook

During college, I decided to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the University of Washington. I’m a first generation Korean-American, so I did not receive much help from my parents in choosing my career. I learned about the different types of jobs and careers through mentors and peers. This is probably another story I want to get into later, but it is one of the main reasons why I love helping others out with their career decisions. Now let’s go back to the purpose of the article.

How did I transition my career from accounting to data science?

Looking back, I can simplify what I did into three proactive steps. Not being happy with where I was and what job opportunities my college education led me to, I started by reflecting on what I liked about accounting and what I didn’t like about accounting. From what I was good at and what I enjoyed doing, I started matching these things to the career opportunities were out there.

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1. Reflect

Reflecting is so often overlooked, and what people don’t do enough these days. We have so much to fill our schedules and days with so we become too busy to sit down and just think. Some people want to change their careers all the time but they never spend the time to learn about theirs likes and dislikes. Two activities that helped me reflect on my days were going on hikes (I live in the Pacific Northwest) and journaling. These helped me jot down how I was feeling and what I did everyday. If you’re not satisfied about where you are, you need to do this. The more you think about what you want to be or where you want to go, the more chance of it becoming a reality. There’s actually researches around the more you attempt something the more likely chance you’ll be successful at it. You have to speak or think about this into existence.

There were many nights where I thought about what I wanted to be besides becoming an accountant. That led to research about what other opportunities there were in the job market that matched my interest and skills. Although this is not possible for everyone, this is why I decided to get my master’s in Information Systems. I looked back at the classes I took and realized my favorite classes involved data and problem solving. The slogan for my master’s program was something like“building a bridge between data and business”. Since you are reading this, I assume you are already exploring. Long story short. Take some time to reflect.

2. Self-studying

After reflecting, you have to make a plan. Make a plan about what to do in order to get from where you are to where you want to be. There are so much resources out there in how you can become a data scientist on Medium, there should be absolutely no excuses about how one can become a data scientist. Look through those resources and start studying!

I personally took some online classes on Coursera and Udemy, and I am still paying for Datacamp today. To give you some context, I am a data scientist that helps product teams make data-driven decisions. My one recommendation would be to become a product data scientist, you probably just have to master SQL and statistics. Here are some articles/notes I wrote down in the past as I prepared for my Facebook Data Science interview.

Statistics:

SQL:

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3. Networking

Lastly, while you are doing the top two (reflecting and studying), reach out to others. Please don’t be afraid to reach out to others. It’s free to reach out to people on LinkedIn and if you don’t get a response back, don’t be offended. People are busy! I personally have 100s of people that reached out to me and I couldn’t get back to them because I only have the time to invest in just couple people. The worst thing that can happen is that they don’t respond back… The best thing that can happen is that you get a mentor and a friend!

Back in 2014, I actually reached out to a data scientist at Facebook because I was interested in what he did. He is now currently my manager. I took the time to learn about what he did everyday for his job and whether it matched my expectations of my dream job. Over the course of several years while I was transitioning, I learned from him and many others about their job. This helped me figure out whether the job I was pursuing matched people’s experiences and stories.

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Summary

There are many proactive steps you can take to become a data scientist. This article isn’t meant to be a checklist, but it is my personal experience and recommendation. This is all in hopes that it might help another individual thinking about transitioning and becoming a data scientist. In summary, I thought about what I was good at and what I enjoyed doing, I invested some time to learn about what my dream job is, and I asked others for feedback and guidance.

If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave your questions or feedback below or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Medium: https://medium.com/@testandlearn

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennyk1m/