The last few years have seen an unprecedented shortage in the number of data scientists in the workforce – but is the shortage all just a myth?
The Data Scientist is one of the most misunderstood roles in the world of tech. Their job is to examine huge quantities of data and decide on solutions to the questions that arise from it. This makes their role in analytics imperative to progressing your business on the technical front. Since their skills are inherently useful to every business that’s engaged with cloud computing, that means that every business wants one.
We wanted to find out exactly what a data scientist does and how they do it? We also wanted to know how we can retrain in this area to start landing big ticket salaries of our own. Here’s what we managed to find out.
What Does a Data Scientist Do?
First things are first, we need to know exactly what this role entails. We turned to the University of Berkley for more information on the crucial role these techies play in understanding big data. The short version is that businesses use data scientists to crawl through the huge chunks of analytical data they receive daily. The scientist can then analyse ways to improve the flow, shape the results into tables and graphs that are easy to understand, and can suggest solutions to recurring problems.
To have a data scientist on your team is to know where your areas of improvement are. They will provide solutions to the problems in your business model which are affecting customers opinions of you. They can do this across any section of your business that takes place digitally. If there is information to be extracted, they will find it and make sense of it.
How to Land a Role as a Data Scientist?
Now before you go looking through high paid Data Scientist Jobs, you need to have the skills and qualifications needed to land them. To do this, you need to study up. Any good career path starts with a good understanding of the job you plan to do. For a Data Scientist’s role, this means going back to basics and studying a computing degree.
As ever with computing qualifications, it’s not just the degree that lands you the job. You could show up to interview alongside five other people with the same degree as you. The one who will land the role, is the one with an intricate working knowledge of the most programs. Programs include things like cloud computing systems, Tableau, NoSQL Databases, and Apache.
To this end, you should study extra software systems outside of those taught in your degree. You can browse free courses online through organisations like the Open University. You will also pick up additional software system knowledge as you experience the world of work. Most offices will stick to one or two software systems that make things easier for them. This means that IT departments are fairly fluid as technicians move around the sector trying to learn new skills.
