{"id":1531,"date":"2019-02-22T01:45:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T22:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2023-08-28T11:58:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T11:58:53","slug":"what-no-one-will-tell-you-about-data-science-job-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/bigdata-cloud\/what-no-one-will-tell-you-about-data-science-job-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"What no one will tell you about data science job applications"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

You have trouble finding a data science job, but don\u2019t understand why?<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m a physicist who works at a\u00a0YC startup<\/a>. Because of what our company does, I get lots of emails that ask me for data science career advice.<\/p>\n

Many of those emails ask me very similar questions. Over time, I\u2019ve developed a few stock answers to the questions I usually get.<\/p>\n

A few days ago, I got an email that asked most of the questions I usually get in a single message. I wrote an answer and sent it back, but then I realized this was a great chance to expand on my answer and post it in public for anyone who\u2019s having trouble finding a data science job, but who doesn\u2019t understand why.<\/p>\n

For every person who has a question, and asks it, there are ten people who have the same question, but don\u2019t ask it. If you\u2019re one of those ten, then this post is for you. Hopefully you\u2019ll find it helpful.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the email I got, edited for length:<\/p>\n

The email<\/h4>\n

From: Lonnie [name changed]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Subject: Trying to get a job in data science<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am a college drop out (I start with that because apparently if you don\u2019t come out of the womb with a phd in theoretical physics and 15 years of data science experience something must have gone wrong with the birth). [\u2026] As I drifted through marketing I found I that I liked the data portion the best. I originally skilled up A\/B testing getting certified by Google in Google Analytics & by Optimizely in their testing platform. Then from there I went into Python, SQL, etc. I just graduated from [well-known data science bootcamp] and I am struggling to even get interviews. I have sent out over 100 applications (even in other cities) and I have had very few interviews.<\/p>\n

To keep \u201cskilling up\u201d I am doing a Udacity NanoDegree & Dataquest.io<\/p>\n

Here is my LinkedIn if you want to check it out:\u00a0[<\/a>redacted]<\/p>\n

[\u2026]<\/p>\n

I think my lack of academic pedigree is really what is killing me. It is not really skills (though they really need a lot of work and I am doing that). I am not even getting the interviews to show my skills so that\u2019s why I say that.<\/p>\n

I had an in person with [BigCo] and it was my first time ever doing in person coding or a whiteboard so that didn\u2019t go well.
\nI had a take home that was a survival analysis from [big startup] and I had never studied that so that didn\u2019t go well
\nI had a take home from [BigCo] that got me an in person and they passed because of my education (which is stupid since they had my resume already).<\/p>\n

Other than that: nada<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[1]<\/p>\n

My answer<\/h4>\n

Hi Lonnie \u2014 thanks for reaching out.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the truth: depending on where you\u2019re submitting your job applications, a 2\u20133% interview rate could be normal. There are two reasons why, neither of which you\u2019d have any way to know about.<\/p>\n

Getting lost in the\u00a0crowd<\/h4>\n

The first reason is that most hiring teams use something called an\u00a0applicant tracking system<\/em>\u00a0to tell them where their best candidates are coming from. If you apply through a channel that\u2019s given them poor results in the past, they\u2019ll spend less time looking at you. [2]<\/p>\n

<\/canvas><\/figure>\n

Your job application will most likely be processed by an applicant tracking system like\u00a0this.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, if you apply for a technical job through Indeed, you\u2019re very unlikely to get anywhere. Everybody knows Indeed, and it\u2019s easy to apply that way. That means the average person who applies to a job on Indeed is, most likely, an average person. So a hiring manager will spend less time looking at a resume that comes from Indeed, because she expects it to be average.<\/p>\n

You can get around this problem by applying on websites that most people don\u2019t know about yet.\u00a0Key Values<\/a>\u00a0and Y Combinator\u2019s\u00a0Work At A Startup<\/a>\u00a0job page are good places to begin. [3] By using websites that most people don\u2019t know about yet, you\u2019re marking yourself as someone who seeks out opportunities intentionally. The average person who applies to a job on those websites is, most likely, above average. That\u2019s why companies pay more attention to applicants who apply through less known channels.<\/p>\n

Office politics<\/h4>\n

There\u2019s a second reason why applying to generic job boards doesn\u2019t work very well. It might be hard for you to believe this, but a lot of the companies that post to job boards (especially big ones)\u00a0don\u2019t actually do it to find people they want to hire<\/em>. [4]<\/p>\n

<\/canvas><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re searching for a technical position on Indeed, you\u2019re doing it wrong. Sorry,\u00a0Indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

That sounds insane: why the heck would they post to job boards at all, then? What you need to understand is that in most big companies, there\u2019s a sharp division between the human resources team (HR) and the engineers. The HR team is usually the one that\u2019s posting the job on Indeed.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, HR isn\u2019t staffed with engineers, so they can\u2019t really tell which candidates are truly talented and which ones aren\u2019t. HR only knows how to screen for credentials, which means checking if you went to a good school (did Stanford think you were good enough to get in?) or worked at a good company (did Google think you were good enough to work there?).<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the dark truth of why your hit rate is 2\u20133%:\u00a0HR can\u2019t tell the difference between good bootcamps and bad ones<\/em>. So they have to default to saying \u201cNo\u201d, because they don\u2019t want to waste the engineering team\u2019s time looking at bootcamp grads who might not be any good. I\u2019ve seen this hundreds of times.<\/p>\n

Luckily there\u2019s good news: most engineering teams understand that their HR can\u2019t screen for talent. So the best engineering teams hire through networks and back channels instead of job boards. As a result, my best advice to you is:\u00a0start embedding yourself in engineer-driven machine learning meetups<\/strong>.There\u2019s no magic here: just go to\u00a0meetup.com<\/a>, find relevant-looking meetups and start going to them.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll catch on pretty quick to which ones are valuable and which aren\u2019t. Networking has compounding benefits, so ask smart questions, try to have rewarding conversations, and listen for the inevitable \u201cwe\u2019re hiring\u201d announcements when folks introduce themselves.<\/p>\n

The interview<\/h4>\n

A quick word about this: the job interview is a dark, mystical ritual. Every company\u2019s process is different, and every company thinks its job interview is The One True Job Interview.<\/p>\n

There are lots of ways to get better at interviewing, but the best way is to do it a lot. So my advice to go to meetups will help you here, too: the more you interview, the better you\u2019ll get at it. Even if you bomb your first ones, it\u2019s a skill like anything else and you\u2019ll pick it up as you go.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I\u2019m sorry this system is so badly broken. I know it\u2019s especially hard for beginners. It isn\u2019t fair, but there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel: after you have 1\u20132 years\u2019 experience, the companies start chasing you. The reward is worth the effort.<\/p>\n

If you have a question you didn\u2019t see me answer here, you can always just ask it on Twitter:\u00a0@neutronsNeurons. My DMs are open \u2014 don\u2019t be shy!<\/p>\n

**********************************************************<\/p>\n

[1] In a follow up email, Lonnie told me he didn\u2019t feel like his bootcamp was the reason he was having trouble, but that the problem was instead that he didn\u2019t have much of a formal education.<\/p>\n

[2] Applicant tracking systems can also screen out resumes automatically based on keywords. But I\u2019ve found most people already know to include the right keywords in their resume, so I won\u2019t expand on that here.<\/p>\n

[3] I know that by posting links to these job boards here, I\u2019m ensuring that more people will know about them. But it\u2019s unlikely that either of these will be as big as Indeed in the near future.<\/p>\n

[4] Of course some do, and of course even those that don\u2019t sometimes find good candidates that way by accident. But if you\u2019re the one who\u2019s job hunting, treat those companies as a pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have trouble finding a data science job, but don’t understand why? For every person who has a question, and asks it, there are ten people who have the same question but don’t ask it. If you’re one of those ten, then this post is for you. Hopefully, you’ll find it helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":485,"featured_media":3933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[94],"ppma_author":[3109],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigdata-cloud","tag-data-science"],"authors":[{"term_id":3109,"user_id":485,"is_guest":0,"slug":"edouard-harris","display_name":"Edouard Harris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Harris","first_name":"Edouard","job_title":"","description":"Edouard Harris is CEO and co-founder at SharpestMinds (YC W18), an online mentorship program where senior engineers train fresh grads for free."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/485"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31712,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions\/31712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}