The Most Underrated Skill In Your Successful Data Science Journey
By: Chayan Kathuria
Tags: Help, AI, Soft Skills, Machine Learing, Data Science

Mastering asking on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the best sources on the internet to find the right people for help and suggestions while learning Data Science. Reaching out to the right people in the right way is an essential skill that will maximize your chances of getting the solution you’re looking for- be it a dataset or any other challenge.

1. Identify the right people

The first step is to connect with the right people. “Right” here not only implies that the person should have the skill or the knowledge on what you want to ask, but also the person should be active on the platform to reply. So use the search bar to search for the keywords of the skill such as “Machine Learning”, “Data Scientist”, “sklearn”, etc. Once you get a list of people, have a glance at their profiles and their activity section. The more the number of recent activities, the higher are the chances that that person will reply. Moreover, use the “Send a personalized invite” feature to send a pre-connection message with a short introduction about yourself and your motive to connect with them.

2. Build a warm relationship

Once you’re connected, the next step is to send the first message and then build a warm relationship. This is crucial as it will help you build a relationship with that person for future help/collaborations as well, and not just a one-time affair. The first message should contain a short description of the help you need and why you think that person is the right one for it. Make sure you’ve done some pre-work and exactly know what to ask for.

A bad example of the first message:

Hi, I am stuck on XYZ dataset and not getting good accuracy. Please help me.

A good example of the first message:

Hi ABC, I see that you’ve been working at XYZ as an ML Engineer for 2 years and thought you’d be the right person to help me out on a dataset. I’d be grateful! Looking forward to your reply.”

3. Ask for help

After getting a reply, elaborate your problem in detail and ask for that specific thing you need help with. This message should also include what you tried so far or why you’re unable to proceed further. This gives the other person an indication that you’re genuinely stuck and need help. Do not bombard the person with all the details and the datasets on the first go. Brief them about the issue you’re facing and wait to see how they respond.

Ask them what other details they need to get a better understanding and give their suggestions. If you sense that the person is very willing to help and are asking more questions about the problem, ask if they’d want to connect on another medium that is better for them than LinkedIn. It could be Telegram/Slack or even a Zoom call. But make sure to be subtle and not pushy. Lastly, be patient and do not budge them very often. And in case you see that there is no reply from the person for a long time, then back to ground 0! Reach out to someone else.

A bad way to ask for help:

“I am unable to get an accuracy of 90% on this dataset (attached). Can you please help?”

A good way to ask for help:

“I am working on ABC dataset and have done pre-processing and some feature engineering. I trained a Random Forest model on it. However, the accuracy is not increasing beyond 80 even after tuning the hyperparameters. It’d be great if you could give any tips?”

4. Act on it & update the helper

Once you’re satisfied with the help and suggestions you got, it’s time to apply them. Do make sure that you’re clear with what they intended to say so that there are no gaps in your understanding.

Once you’ve acted upon it and have successfully found your way through the problem, it’s necessary to update the person that their suggestion helped and you are now proceeding on the problem. This will add another layer to your relationship with them and will indicate to them about your sincerity and that the time they spent on your problem wasn’t wasted.

However, there could also be a case that the suggestion they gave didn’t work. The best way is to again reach out to them and tell them how you applied the suggestion and what were the results. In short, keep the discussion going until you get what you need.

Lastly, it is important to end the conversation on a positive note so that there is scope for a conversation later. When you do this, it’s no longer a one-way help, but a genuine relationship.

A bad way to end the conversation:

“Thanks”

A good way to end the conversation:

“Thanks for your help/suggestions. It helped me and now I’m onto further challenges. Moreover, I’d be more than glad if I could be of any help to you now or anytime in the future. Cheers!