How to show EXPERIENCE... when you have NONE?!?

Key Takeaways

job postings for data science-based roles are puzzling to comprehend if you have no relevant job experience and are looking for an entry-level role most all postings require some type of experience so how the heck are you supposed to showcase experience if you've never worked in this field what update nerds i'm luke a data analyst and my channel is all about tech and skills for data science and in this video today i teamed up with some of my data science friends so that way we go through and share how we showcased experience when trying to land our first roles all these different friends work in different areas of data science data analytics and data engineering but we all had the same problem where we needed to showcase experience when we didn't already have that experience already from a job in this field but before we get into this i think we need to clear up this magical word of experience the first thing about experience is that it doesn't have to only mean that you physically work for some employer to gain this experience instead this can and frankly should be gained in other fashions and you can gain this through maybe your capstone projects and some of your certificates or even portfolio projects that you're trying to pursue and then maybe even if you're trying to get into content production this could also be a form to showcase and demonstrate experience can gain and also count this while in different situations could be in school it could be while you're job searching or it could be while you're working in some sort of non-related world or field so overall what i hope that you actually gain from this video is how all of these different individuals were able to build and demonstrate experience to land their dream roles without actually physically working in that field previously all right so first up is sophia she works in tech and has previously worked as a data analyst her youtube and her instagram both focus on providing resources for those in the data analytics field in this clip she shares how she was able to land her first role as a data analyst by capitalizing on her experience that she gained in her non-data analytics based role previously you could describe my way of getting into a data science role a bit of a backdoor approach if you will straight out of college i landed a job in a data management project and you might think it sounds really cool but just wait i was doing mainly very basic data validation and data cleaning work for months before progressing to more complex projects after showcasing that i'm up to the task i ended up during the year that i was on the job doing quite a bit of work in things like building processes for data entry that ensured high quality data which we love and also helping out planning system improvements because some of the legacy programs actually ended up causing quite a lot of data errors now you might think how does this have anything to do with data analyst or data scientist jobs and getting one well after i left that job the experience that i'd gotten in very grassroot level data quality work which is actually quite a lot of the data science work as well it was really appreciated because i had an appreciation for high quality data and how to get it don't overlook experience whether that's six to 12 months of doing something that isn't called data scientist or data analyst in building fundamental skills in the industry they really are appreciated and it might actually be your shortcut to getting a job as a data analyst what i want to highlight though is also that because of this approach to getting a job in this industry i never had to build a portfolio or show mine to anybody and that feels a little bit like cheating to me so in case you are building a data science portfolio which i absolutely think you should here's a tip from someone who's interviewed quite a few people with portfolios great data analyst roles the really number one tip that i would give is to focus on business-basing soft skills and how you can actually showcase those in your portfolio these could be presenting requirements gathering or communication and to do something in your portfolio that showcases this could be attaching a slight deck about your analysis results it could be adding a tldr of your key findings in your analysis business leaders love tldrs you could record yourself on zoom presenting the analysis to stakeholders and attach that video to your portfolio sure that you understand that the role isn't just about the technical stuff and you'll be sure to stand out thanks sophia and if you're a complete beginner to the field of data analytics i highly recommend you check out this video from her on her pathway and recommendation for getting into this field all right next up is nate nate is a fellow youtuber and also created the platform strata scratch where he provides resources for those trying to ace their data science interviews nate has been working in the field of data science for the past 10 years and in this clip he shares how he built up his portfolio in order to showcase his experience most of my technical skills came straight out of school i didn't have a lot of experience building out data science type of projects or or really just even the collaboration and understanding what it means to make a business impact and so most people straight out of school they'll either go you know the technical track and try to become a data scientist or data analyst or they might just dive into something completely different and so that's what i did i became a management consultant and then after consulting um i started my own company so my technical skills there were put on the back burner but i did do a lot of personal projects a lot of data science personal projects that focused on improving my technical skills so through building a lot of these personal projects what i noticed was the data science process is basically exactly the same thing for every single project end-to-end and so what i mean is for every single data science project out there what you're always doing is collecting the data cleaning the data picking and validating a model building that model and then churning out recommendations always the same few steps and so what i started to do just noticing a pattern and being a relatively lazy engineer i started to automate things as much as possible so i collected data from apis that would then automatically clean the data that would also automatically fetch the data at regular cadences and then i started using common technologies or popular technologies out there like um aws google cloud and started hosting a lot of the models and the data out in the in the cloud and using a lot of those tools that were available to me so after a while what i noticed was i essentially built a data science infrastructure from end to end and i built a bunch of personal projects around the same infrastructure so when i was interviewing for my next data science role it was really easy for me to just talk about the entire data science process what i did why i did that and all of the technologies that i used and what was really apparent to the interviewer was that i know the data science process i'm using the exact same technologies and processes that they're using so then all in all i was able to prove not only i had the technical skills but i also know the entire data science process i know the technologies and then i layered that on with my stories on how i also managed client expectations how i made recommendations how i communicated effectively to the client and how i ultimately solved their problems so combining all of that together is just a great recipe for a well-rounded data scientist and that helps you in your interviews what i'll do now is i'll hand it back to luke thanks nate and if you're interested in more content from nate here's a video i recommend that he provides on how to design the perfect data science project alright last up is ben aka the seattle data guy he is the brains behind the great articles on his medium blog post and has also shipped recently to providing more content via youtube ben is a data engineer at a fang company and in this clip he demonstrates how he goes about generating experience outside of his normal day job today i wanted to discuss how you can show your experience not just in terms of trying to get your first job but also in trying to get your first client if you're into things like freelancing or consulting contracting whatever it might be you're gonna deal with a lot of similar problems that you might have had in terms of trying to get your first job when you're trying to get your first client which is why is anyone going to hire you especially if you're coming in more from a perspective in terms of a consultant or a freelancer who might not have any previous work that they can show one of the first places that is very easy to approach is just start creating content and start creating content that people want to watch or view for common problems that people have to deal with in your industry and this helps you in multiple ways one this helps you think about your clients perspective and not your perspective in terms of what problems that they deal with oftentimes when you're technical whether it be programming or even something like video editing you're very good at the thing that you do and that kind of almost takes you away from the problem because you're not as aware in terms of someone who has no idea on what they actually need or what their solution is and so creating content forces you to think about what are the problems that people that don't have the skill run into when they try to do something like perform some sort of analysis or edit some video in addition this kind of builds a bulk of social proof where people might find one of your articles and they might continually find more and more information about you and eventually they'll might connect with you they might become more relatable to you they might realize that you're a person and be a little more trustworthy in terms of creating this relationship with you and that's one of the biggest challenges you'll face when you try to get clients next a quick thing that i just learned is develop partnerships whether that be with consultants products whatever it might be if you're going to be consulting there are people that need your specific skills and sometimes it's to help integrate their product especially if you're technical into someone's systems and they might not have enough people to do that and that's where you can come in if you are a good partner personally i've developed a lot of these partnerships because of all my content and it started with often written partnerships that then turned into technical partnerships where i actually am like their solutions person but that's one place to start the key point here is you need to build that social proof whether that be through content or through getting referrals through partners who might already have trust built with a client having that social proof ensures that people look at you and want to sign your proposals that's my tip for today now let's head back to everyone else thanks ben and if you're interested in learning about different data engineering projects that you could potentially pursue i highly recommend you checking out this video from him so bam there are some examples of how you can generate and showcase experience when you have no prior experience in this field i feel like the key theme shown by everybody here and all these different examples was that they had to put the time and effort in you couldn't use necessarily a certificate or some sort of course as it you had to go above and beyond in order to generate and showcase this experience if you're interested in learning about how i went about generating experience to land my dream job then check out this video right here as always if you got value out of this video smash that like button and with that i'll see you in the next one [Music] you