Presenting to you the INSAID Spotlight Budding Data Science Leader interview series. This is a series of interviews of budding data science leaders, enrolled with INSAID in different courses. These students coming from diverse backgrounds and even different fields, have rich experience in their own domains. They have interesting views to share with the world, their experience in the industry, what brought them to the field of Data Science and many other such interesting aspects. These interviews will enrich the readers about the insights, trends and many other related points.
In a recent conversation, we spoke to Rahul Kumar who is enrolled in the GCD program at INSAID.
Name: Rahul Kumar
Current Organisation: HCL
Total Experience: 9 years
Batch: Global Certificate in Data Science (GCD) January 2019
Ankita: Rahul, could you walk me through your career journey and the professional experience you have had so far?
Rahul: I did my engineering in 2009 and after that I did my PG Diploma in software development. Post this, I got a job in Hewlett Packard as a Windows Administrator and worked there for more than 3 years. After this, I switched over to Siemens in their healthcare department, where I was supporting the application product and was handling the critical outages to the BAU. It is an operation which runs with the windows and VMware. Going forward, I joined IBM in 2015 as a Technical Services Specialist, supporting operations and also developed a skill in doing Root Cause Analysis (RCA) with the help of data.
This was the turning point in my career as I joined the analytics team in this organization. I got to work on real-world analytics, carrying out anomaly detection and handling client projects. After IBM, I joined HCL, my present company, as an Associate Consultant. I was hired for the analytics team though, but things didn’t go as planned and I was included in a different project and now, I am handling end-to-end project management.
Ankita: Could you help me understand your program’s progress at INSAID; what all things have you done etc.?
Rahul: We have completed all our basic statistics as well as the Python programming language. EDA is also completed along with the project. We have also covered our foundation Machine Learning module; this includes supervised and unsupervised learning. As of now, Machine Learning Intermediate is being covered, which includes some advanced level topics as well.
Ankita: Which is your favorite Machine Learning algorithm and why?
Rahul: Random Forest is my favorite algorithm because it offers high precision level. While I was working on my EDA project, I compared this algorithm with others, but Random Forest’s precision level was incomparable.
Ankita: Right. What all tools and packages in Data Science & Machine Learning have you mastered so far?
Rahul: Python is my pick. This tool or language was so easy to learn with all the explanations given by the mentors at INSAID. I also started practicing it regularly. Python is my favorite because it is more accurate and powerful than any other tool. This is why it is the most popular tool and is used a lot.
Ankita: Were there any initial challenges that you faced when you entered the field of Data Science? If yes, how did you overcome them?
Rahul: It was a bit, initially, as I had to brush up my statistics and mathematics. Being from an operations background and having no experience in programming, it came up as a big challenge for me. It was when I joined INSAID that I refreshed my concepts and this made me confident now.
Ankita: At INSAID, students are encouraged to maintain high-quality GitHub profiles. Have you also built a GitHub profile? How do you think this will help you?
Rahul: INSAID introduced me to maintaining a dedicated and crisp GitHub profile. This profile is like a mirror, displaying all your projects, tools used and the complete work you did. So it’s very helpful for us. All the organizations prefer GitHub profiles over the traditional resume.
Ankita: My next question to you would be- Crafting a great Data Science resume is a critical part of getting shortlisted for Data Science roles. Tell us some ways in which you have improved your resume as a part of Data Science Career Launchpad.
Rahul: Before I went through the Career Launchpad sessions, my resume was lengthy, stretching to four or five pages. But now my resume is only two pages. This is a precise communication of projects completed and tools worked on etc. Because a recruiter has just 5-10 seconds to go through a resume, so it will be a better idea to have a concise resume that will be effective in your job search.
Ankita: Rahul, my last question to you would be- What will be your advice to anyone who wants to start a career in Data Science and who is actually a fresher in this field?
Rahul: My first advice to the freshers would be to brush up the concepts of statistics and mathematics. Next step would be to join a good institute to carry on with his dreams to be a data scientist. And, I feel INSAID is one such institution that is working hard on us to make us data leaders. As the last piece, I would like to add that the freshers should also have a strong command on any one of the programming languages like Python, C or C++. Combining these steps would ensure that they have a glorious career in the data science field.
Ankita: Perfect. Thank you for your time and have a great day.
Rahul: Thanks and same to you!
