anecdotal evidence ahead ...

I wanted to be a data scientist at a top tech company, so I did as Hanif did, and went to the data on LinkedIn. my search was more specific - only data scientists at top tech firms, and is also a very tiny sample.

But first, my situation at the time:
Masters in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania. strong database, AWS, spark, and python skills. worked in a social media research lab that looked social media impacts on health, mostly did NLP involving twitter and health outcome data. Coauthored a paper that ended up in JAMA (journal of american medical association). Eventually I got what I wanted, but it wasn't easy.

TLDNR:

- message recruiters directly

- find a way of showing them you are a good candidate beyond your resume - I found kaggle was really helpful, I recommend it.

- be careful of getting pigeonholed out of DS positions by recruiters. your LinkedIn should speak 'I am a data scientist at heart'

- be prepared to fail interviews and learn from mistakes

- study stats (youtube,books), coding (leet code), and SQL (leet code?)

Findings:
Degree - Need masters or PHD.
Major - Statistics or some version of it was most common and MBA's at top MBA programs 2nd, Computer Science very rare. why MBAs? probably because those programs had wonderful stats programs.
School - Top schools are very important.
previous job - Intern at a top tech company. Intern as a data scientist hugely beneficial. Next most important feature was whether the previous positions was data scientist. Not data backed, but I would argue that becoming a data engineer to get adjacent skills is a bad strategy. DE are highly needed, a recruiter will put you on DE loops, not DS ones. I feel like data analysts also struggle to become DS.

I thought my situation was at least somewhat ideal, but I was not getting interviews. 0. Its hard emotionally to not be able to get to where you want without been giving a chance, just got to keep trying. Findings helped me realize (previous job) that I was going to need to go about getting interviews in a more efficient manner.

I needed a way of getting attention. the reply rate of websites seems to be 1/50, which is problematic if you want to work for a specific set of companies. I think the best thing to do is to go on LinkedIn, search <company name> + recruiter. Message the recruiters directly, they have all the power in setting up phone screens, and they send batches of candidates to open positions hoping some of them will get a role. Now you got their attention, so you also need a way of getting into those batches.

An important metric for success was already being what I wanted, so I had to find a way of saying 'I can do this'. I starting spending most of my free time on kaggle, the zillow home price prediction. I finished top 100, which I STRONGLY feel this helped me get interviews. I recommend it. Its a free, zero risk way to get experience and display your passion/skills.

Next, I got some phone screens but failed a few and failed an on site. Technical phone screens are either stats, coding, or SQL - never been asked ML questions. Sometimes I failed coding questions, sometimes I failed stat questions. I addressed this by studying lots of stats (YouTube was very helpful) and coding (leet code). I already had years of SQL experience, so those questions were always easy for me but be prepared to answer the histogram question. I had some recruiters tell me in initial phone screen 'even though you applied to a data science position, we think you would be a better match for this data engineering position instead'. ouch, I realized my LinkedIn and resume looked very DE like because of my years as a database administrator and I added lots of spark/HIVE to my resume because I saw that on most DS postings. Its important, but don't over highlight the wrong things. I politely declined and kept trying.

Eventually I got exactly what I wanted, and I am very happy for it. It took me 2 years after graduation to get there, and I had failures at all parts of the process. I know it sounds cliche, but keep trying is my best advice.