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How Data Helped Me Pick a Data Career

The data-driven decision for my career is the best path that I could take

Photo by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash
Photo by Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

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My data career is something that I build up from scratch, and I never knew that I would end up in this field. It is the pinnacle of my work and something that I feel truly fulfils me intellectually, spiritually, and financially. This career surprised me – because I never thought that this career is my dream job.

It is surprising how life sometimes works because you never knew where you end up and what work you would do in the future. From my whole teenager to my 20s, I was building my career to become a biology researcher, and I rarely think of a career outside of the research life. I love the research work, and I feel that I would be nothing without my research. I was content with everything because my environment supports what I want to do, and I feel I would make a great biological researcher – although life always has a different plan.

In this article, I want to tell my experience, my thought process to decide the data career, and how using data could help me decide my career steps. Let’s get into it.


Finding a new passion

My research career path is thorny because I take a very niche major and am not good financially. The competition is also fierce because the research position is rarely open. With this stacked above me, I realize one other truth – I am not the brightest researcher in the room. I have a lot of passion for research, but it somehow not translated well in biological research; either I lack creativity, or my writing is not enough. Anyway, I am never able to secure any research position after my Master’s time.

With nothing much going on in my life, I am trying to find a new passion in my work because I feel that research is something that I could do but maybe just not in academia. That is why I decide to do some research to find my new passion.


Research on a new career

I know what I am good at – I am good at analyzing the data during my research time, and I am also passionate about any work I did. In this limbo time when no research work I could do (Ph.D., laboratory, etc.), I feel I need to do something I have not done before; applying for a job in the industry and learning new skills. But, I don’t want to go blindly; that is why I did a little research on the best career for the future.

Image by Author
Image by Author

The above is a representation of my research. Basically, I am trying to find the data regarding the fastest-growing career. What would become the next future? If I want to switch careers, it should be close to what I know but would not become dead-end, like my previous career choices.

The research finding telling me that many future career choices are related to either energy, health, or data. Energy is out of choices as it is not where my expertise is, then health is somehow related, but the occupation title is too specific for me, and finally, the data field is worth more research about.


Future of data career

First, I research how valuable data skills are in the future – would it be necessary for a company in the future? Would it advance my career? And is it hard to learn?. One of the research summaries I find give me insight into all these questions. Basically, I find that:

  1. More than 80% of executive respondents say that data skills would be valuable to the company,
  2. 81% of respondents mentioned that data skills necessary for the senior leadership position,
  3. The demand for data experts increasing each year.

The above research summarizes that a data career would be valuable in the future and having a promising career because the demand and the top-level career would require data skills.

I also try to look at another research source to support how a data career is a future. Another research done by World Economic Forum in 2018 found that 73% of respondents expect their enterprise to adopt the use of data technology, and by 2022 85% of respondents intend to have expanded their adoption of user and entity big data analytics. This result is quite promising as the research also mentions that the established data role would be expanded in the future.

Many research found that a data career is good, and I have been convinced that data is the future in every industry. However, I haven’t had any idea what a suitable data career for me (there are many titles for data careers out there) is. That is why I take a look at another research that categorized the data job title and found out that Data Scientist is at the top of the chart. With that in mind, I feel Data Scientist is something I would consider for my future career, but what exactly do data scientists do, and what skills do I need?

What data skills?

While I have an answer that a data career would have a bright future and data scientist is the title I go after, what is exactly the data skill I need to get into the data career and what data scientist did for a living?

For starters, I am referring to the research by customerthink for identifying the data skills required in the data career. This research interestingly divides the skills depending on the job roles; however, only two job roles within a data career emphasize data proficiency: Business Manager and Researcher. Most of them need the following skills:

  • Statistics / Statistical Modeling
  • Big and distributed data
  • Machine Learning
  • Bayesian Statistics
  • Data Management
  • Algorithms

I am coming from a research background and have identified some of the above skills as my expertise, such as Statistic and Bayesian, but I still lack some of the skills for Algorithms, Big Data, and Data Management. Nevertheless, I still feel this is a career for me because I never knew before the research I done is that there is a position in an industry that required statistics so much, and I am good at it.

Then I am trying to find research that would tell me what Data scientists do in their daily Job. In this case, I find nice research by Forbes that is sure about what most data scientists do during their employment. The result is shown in the below picture.

Image by Author
Image by Author

I am initially surprised by these findings. In my mind, data scientists would work thoroughly with the data by analyzing and developing statistical modeling, which I do most during my research. However, the industry seems to have a different pattern than academia, where most data scientists’ time is spent cleaning and organizing data.

I am really intrigued why data scientists need to spend so much time of their activity cleaning data? Many references write why data cleaning is necessary, but most of them said that data cleaning was done to improve data quality – which is logical.

Would I want to spend most of my time cleaning datasets? The answer is Yes in my current time. But at that time, I am still not sure about this activity. However, I am sure that I want to go into the data career because all the data have shown a great prospect, and it aligns with what I did previously. That is why, after all this research, I decided to get my hands dirty by taking online courses and go to Bootcamp, but the experience would be another story.


Key Finding

From a little research I did to find my new passion, I find some key findings I feel important for my career decision:

  1. The Data field is one of the Fast Growing Occupation
  2. The demands for data expert would increase in the future, and data skill is required for the senior level
  3. Data Scientist is the most sought title in the data field
  4. There are 6 skills I need to learn to succeed in the data field: Statistics / Statistical Modeling, Big and distributed data, Machine Learning, Bayesian Statistics, Data Management, and Algorithms
  5. Most of data scientist time is spent on data cleaning.

Conclusion

Finding a new passion is not easy, especially when I am already trained in my whole Education to become a biological researcher. However, I need to face reality and finding a new work passion because my previous experience is dead-end career-wise.

That is why I am utilizing what I am good at – analyzing data. I am using the data to find my new career and find out that a data career is one of the fastest-growing occupations, and the required skills are aligned closely with my previous experience.

With all the data showing a good prospect and not a dead-end career, I decided to go for a career in data and to build everything from scratch in this career.


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