How Data Helped Me Pick a Data Career
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My data career is something that I built 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 fulfills me intellectually, spiritually, and financially.
This career surprised me — because I never thought that this career was my dream job. It is surprising how life sometimes works because you never know where you end up and what work you will do in the future.
From my teenager to my 20s, I was building my career to become a biology researcher, and I rarely think of a career outside the research life. I love the research work, and I feel 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 for deciding on my data career, and how using data could help me determine 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 has not translated well into biological research; either I lack creativity, or my writing is not enough. Anyway, I can never 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 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 do.
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; apply for a job in the industry and learn 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.
The above is a representation of my research. 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 a dead-end like my previous career choices.
The research finding tells 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, health is somehow related, but the occupation title is too specific for me, and finally, the data field is worth more research.
Future of data career
First, I research how valuable data skills are in the future — would it be necessary for a company? 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. I find that:
More than 80% of executive respondents say that data skills would be valuable to the company,
81% of respondents mentioned that data skills necessary for the senior leadership position,
The demand for data experts is 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 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 took 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 does a data scientist do 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 jobs 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 come from a research background and have identified some of the above skills as my expertise, such as Statistics and Bayesian, but I still lack some skills in Algorithms, Big Data, and Data Management.
Nevertheless, I still feel this is a career for me because I never knew before the research I had done is that there is a position in an industry that requires statistics, 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.
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.
The industry thou seems to have a different pattern than academia, where most data scientists' time is spent cleaning and organizing data.
I am 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 said that it 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 enter the data career because all the data have shown a great prospect, which 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 going 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 are important for my career decision:
The Data field is one of the Fast Growing Occupation
The demand for data expert will increase in the future, and data skill is required for the senior level
Data Scientist is the most sought title in the data field
There are six 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.
Most data scientists’ 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 find 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.