Your first 60 days as a Data Scientist | Ep #24

Your first 60 days as a Data Scientist look something like this!

Join Manav in our video podcast as he explores how a new Data Scientist should plan his first 60 days at work.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

[00:07] Welcome to Episode 24!
[00:15] Topic of Discussion: Your first 60 days as a Data Scientist!
[01:15] Your 1st day as a Data Scientist
[01:54] What to do in the first month of your job?
[04:42] Your second month as a Data Scientist
[06:50] Quick Check!
[07:09] Wrap up!
[07:30] Learn more about Data Science at www.accredian.com

Welcome everyone to Episode 24 of Data Science and AI Weekly!

This is the second episode in this video podcast and here we are again with another very interesting episode, which is your first 60 days as a Data Scientist.

As you look to get into Data Science roles, one of the things that you need to be thinking about, is that let’s say that:

– you get the Data Science role that you’ve been wanting to,
– at a salary that you want
– and at a company that you want

But what after that? what next?

After that is something that you should also be thinking about because it will not only prepare you for the role that you will be handling but will also give you clarity about what kind of interview questions you can expect and you will be better prepared for facing recruiters when you will be sitting across the table.

So let’s jump into this podcast! And in this podcast, I’ll walk you through your first 60 days as a Data Scientist.

So let’s start with Day 1. On Day 1, you join as a Data Scientist, everybody thinks that you are a real scientist, everybody thinks that you’re going to be Superman, who will solve all problems in the company through data. Right?

So the first day, some people will quizzically look at you; what do you exactly do?

Some people might have questions about what is Data Science? They might not even know why the company has hired you in the first place. And if you are a part or if you join an established company with an established Data Science practice, then you can expect that you will be joining a bunch of Data Scientists headed by a Principal Data Scientist.

So the chances of them knowing what you will be doing are much, much better. Yeah. So your first day is about introduction to the team, to the company, to the company policy, etc.

Now, the next 10-20 days are going to be very, very, very crucial because these are the days when I want you to do three things specifically.

Number one, is you need to learn as much as possible about what your team’s different members are doing. Right. So let’s say that you have a Principal Data Scientist, and then you have Senior Data Scientists, then you have Data Scientists, and let’s say you’re Junior Data Scientist, so you should talk to each one of them and you should try to understand that what exactly are they doing because that will give you clarity about the kind of work that you can expect and you will be actually doing.

The second thing that you should try to learn is you should try to learn more about the projects that that team is currently undertaking. If it is undertaking multiple projects or If the team is currently undertaking one project, you should try to learn as much as possible about it. How long the project has been going on? What are the KPIs? What is the next project that you will be working on, etc, etc.

So understanding of the projects is extremely important.

The third part is something which I see a lot of Data Scientists actually not doing when they join Data Science roles is they don’t try to ask questions regarding how Data Science fits into the overall company structure?

Let’s say, for example, you’re joining Citibank, and Citibank has a Data Science team. Now, you need to find out what are the connections of the Data Science team with the various stakeholders in Citibank, and you need to find out let’s say, which all stakeholders usually deal with the Data Science team.

Is it the client? Is it is the Data Science team dealing with Citibank’s clients? Internal employees? CxOs, etc.? and possibly try to have a couple of meetings right, most likely, most people will be more than happy to meet you.

So forming your initial hypothesis about what is going on. And at the same time, making the people know that you are here, right, always helps get you visibility fast and helps you get interesting work faster, right.

So that’s what you’re supposed to do in 10-20 days. After that, in the next 20 days.

So 20 to 30 days have passed now, in the first month you would have a good hold about what you are expected to do in the second month.

Now it is all about getting on the task and getting your head down to the job. So this month, what you do is, you would have defined some problem statement or some work that you would need to do in the first month, you will start executing on the task, right?

In the second month, you will actually start getting noticed for your work ethic, be your hard skills, which is your Python skills, your R skills, your ability to manipulate data, etc. And if you feel anywhere that your skills are maybe not that strong, first of all, what you should do is you should go back home every day, and try to learn. There’s no end to learning.

And even if you become a Data Scientist, please do not assume that you would know everything. You would just maybe know 10% of what there is to know. Every day you should make an effort to go home and read up more, practice more with some of the algorithms.

And the second thing that you should do if you’re not able to understand some of the things is to ask more and more questions to your team members since you’re just starting off, they will be more than happy to help you.

The second month is also about showing some quick wins to the company. So what cannot happen is that you have now joined and you’re waiting for a couple of quarters to show some results.

If you’re sharp, if you’re passionate, you should show results in Month 2. And that’s something that I would highly, highly recommend because that gives you that initial advantage that other people see that you are good at this.

It can be SQL, it can be client interaction, you would want that to be taken to client meetings. And you would say that, can I take more of these client meetings, so whatever is your forte start showing some quick wins in the second month.

And if you do that, trust me, the rest of your journey will actually become very, very, very easy.

So here’s a quick summary:

– Start well
– Network with a lot of people
– Try to learn as much as possible
– Have some quick wins in the second month of your joining itself.

Right. So those are my tips for you in your first 60 days as a Data Scientist, I hope you would have loved those steps. If you did leave a comment. I always read every comment, I would love to see your comment as well.

This was Episode 24 of Data Science and AI Weekly. This is the second episode in the video series of this podcast. Thank you so much for watching, and look forward to seeing you in the next podcast. Till then. See you!