In the ever-changing data science landscape, people need to assimilate whether they are fascinated by the machine learning processes or just going along with the hype this field has generated. Many a time, fresh graduates get into data science, but they struggle to stay abreast with the latest trends.

To discuss this, and more, Analytics India Magazine got in touch with Sharath Kumar RK, Data Scientist at IBM India, for our weekly column My Journey In Data Science. He spoke to us about how natural it was for him to choose data science over other thriving domains.

Data Science Journey

Kumar graduated from Mysore and later on completed his Master’s Degree in Finance from BITS Pilani. Early in his employment career, Kumar worked as technical support for professional Microsoft products. However, it was only in his second job when he was exposed to data. Kumar used to carry out business intelligence and analytics for financial services. He understood the potential of data and started exploring it to obtain meaningful insights. 

Fascinated by the abundance of data, he learned new techniques for analysing data for solving various real-world business challenges. “I was a good problem solver, thereby, it was automatic for me to move towards moulding data using machine learning for mitigating numerous problems,” explains Kumar. “I realised that I was never getting bored of exploring data using different techniques,” he added.

Such enthusiasm cleared the clouds for Kumar to choose the data science field. He went on to say, how he never looked back after that and kept honing machine learning-related skills that led him to file a couple of disclosures (file rated patents) under artificial intelligence.

Preparation And Job Strategy

While talking about his strategy, Kumar said he preferred learning while at the job, took help from peers, and downloaded materials from the internet for quickly enhancing his skills. It is a competitive landscape, thus one needs to learn from every possible way and from everyone for gaining a competitive edge. 

For job, Kumar worked on creating a portfolio by working on different projects and hosting them on GitHub. He also solved problems in Kaggle to understand the approach to design the solution. Pinpointing the importance of critical thinking, Kumar said that he firmly believes that data intuition is crucial for solving problems. “Recruiters look at aspirants structured thinking than on tools and techniques. Although those are necessary, the primary focus for recruiters is on candidates capability of understanding the challenges at the micro and macro level,” says Kumar. 

Recalling his first data science interview, Kumar said he was asked to solve guesstimate questions, riddles on the paper to evaluate how he goes about solving a problem. Further, he was assessed based on his applied technical skills where he had to justify which ML, NLP, and DL, techniques were effective in various scenarios.

Strategy To Flourish In Data Science Domain

Kumar mentioned there always be someone who knows better than you in some of the other techniques. That’s why, instead of getting demotivated, he tries to learn from them and enhance his dexterity. “I believe learning is a continuous process, thereby, I keep pushing myself to learn new things and add value with my deliverables,” exclaims Kumar.

Besides, he said one learning from projects is essential for thriving in the domain. Of many successful projects that he worked on, he prefered a project where he made an end-to-end analytics framework for data extraction, transformation, and building machine learning pipeline, to deploy it in production and build visualisation using dynamic dashboards.

Advice For Aspirants

“Learning new techniques that emerge in the market is key to stay relevant, it also helps in enhancing performance to analyse data quickly. However, one should not lose grip on the fundamentals to thrive in the competitive landscape. At the same time, aspirants should be patient and participate in different competitions and use those skills in interviews to get an amazing job offer,” concludes Kumar.

The post Is Data Science For You? This IBM Data Scientist Tells How To Figure It Out appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.