In December 2019, I finished my Bachelors of Science in Statistics. I was happy that I am done with school for now but at the same time, I knew that the real challenge, securing a job, just began. In this blog post, I will be sharing my experience of how I got my first data science job after my undergraduate degree and what I think are some good ways to secure a job after graduation.

It’s been more than a year since I graduated from university. But I still remember the job hunt very clearly. I did two co-ops and had a total of 12 months of internship experience. My first internship was at the BC Cancer Agency and my second internship was at Statistics Canada. Unfortunately, the BC Cancer Agency only had funding for Master’s students and even though I loved my time at Statistics Canada and Ottawa, I did not want to go back there. The internship -> full-time-job route is certainly the best route when it comes to getting your first job after graduation. I wasn’t so lucky but still thought I was decently prepared and had good job experiences.

My Personal Data Sciecnce Job Hunt

I applied to data science positions approximately 2 months before my last final exam. I had some luck and landed two interviews. However, my lack of preparation and inexperience in interviewing was a big hurdle. To get my previous two internships I only had to interview three times so my interview skills were… baaaad. At the beginning of 2020, I prepared answers for some common interview questions such as “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you want to work for us”. For the first questions, I prepared a canned response where I talked about my internship experience and adjusted it here and there to the job description. I did the same for the second question. Also, I always had a different canned response for each interview depending on the company and job description.

My job hunt strategy was in essence to apply to as many online job postings as possible. The main websites I used were Indeed and LinkedIn. At the end of January 2020, I also wrote some messages on LinkedIn to some people who graduated from my university. I got some feedback and advice but nothing concrete in terms of jobs. On top of that, I also did some informational interviews with people in the data science industry.

At the end of February, I received an interview for a data analyst position from a start-up company in Edmonton. The company sent me the information about the interview and also asked me to think about a way how I would collect all cities in Qatar and how I would determine in which municipalities the cities are. I coded something up where I overlayed the country of Qatar with a rectangle and then I randomly inserted latitude and longitude points into it. I then reversed geocoded these points with help of the Google API and received cities and municipalities of Qatar. I then downloaded a shapefile from Qatar and determined the municipalities and provinces of the cities with the help of the sf library. In short, the interview went very well and I was offered a flight to Edmonton to check out the office and to meet all the people after the second round of interviews. I was very excited and one day before my flight to Edmonton I got a call that the flight was canceled because of COVID 🙁 The company liked my work and they were willing to hire me. However, at the beginning of COVID, everything was a bit weird and no one knew about the virus or what is happening next.

I was happy because I received a non-official offer but was also a bit confused about the future. For April and May, I focused more on building personal data science projects to keep learning and to improve my coding skills to detach from the confusion a bit and focus on my craft. At the end of May, I finally received a formal offer from the start-up company in Edmonton and started remotely on June 1st. All in all, it took me technically 3 months to get a job after graduation. Due to COVID, it took an additional 3 months.

The worst about the job hunt is the rejection. It gets better though the more rejection I received. A very close second is filling out my name, address, and other personal information when applying to jobs online. After filling out about 4 job postings in a row, I just wanted to punch a wall. The best way to describe it is that it is irritating to do the same thing, like filling out personal information, over and over again.

At my first job, I used a lot of Python and pandas in combination with R to create dashboards, reports, and R Shiny applications.

Advice For Data Science Students

The easiest way to get a data science job right after graduation is by working for the employer where you had your internship. You have already built a relationship with these people and if you did a good job during your internship, the employer is usually happy to hire you. I have seen a lot of students going that route.

Be persistent. Eventually, you’ll get a job. It might not be your dream job but at least you are getting valuable experience and you can pay the bills. If you notice, that the job is not the right one for you, look for other ones. Don’t worry about switching your job just a few months or even weeks into the job.

Do side projects. A great way to showcase your skill is by creating side projects that you put online for potential employers to see. This made the difference when I got one of my jobs and was well received by the people who interviewed me. It is a great way to assess a person’s skill level and shows dedication and passion.