HOW TO GET A JOB IN

DATA ANALYTICS

FREE TEASER: 1 OF 46 INTERVIEWS

MICHAEL DILLON
 How to Get a Job in Data Analytics: 46 Interviews with Data Professionals

Here’s a sample from the eBook. This is 1 of the 46 interviews.

It’s with a data scientist at an incredible start-up in France.

This start-up, Groover, is an innovative platform that enables musicians to send their songs directly to
the best music influencers, to get feedback and coverage.

This data scientist works on topics such as natural language processing (NLP), recommendation
systems and business intelligence (BI).

Interestingly, his background is in theoretical physics.

Why did you want your job?

I was originally studying physics but didn't want to do a PhD. So, after my master’s I decided I would
try a job working with data.

I noticed that it was quite common for people studying science to go into data after. I had several
friends who went on to become data scientists directly after their undergrad.

I noticed that given my background in maths and some scripting in Python (thanks to computational
physics classes), it wouldn't be too hard to make the jump.

I went into data science because I wanted a more mathematical role with a research component
(model design, experimentation, metric design etc.)

This was instead of a more practical role like data analysis or data engineering.

It turned out to be a cool choice and I'm enjoying my time as a data scientist right now!

Why did you choose the industry that you work in?

I work in a music-tech start up. I love it because I make music on the side. Being able to work in
music and be surrounded by people who are also passionate about music is very cool!

The company organizes concerts with artists that we work with etc. It's really cool! This makes the
job more interesting for me, given that it's so tightly related to what I love to do.

How did you get the job?

I was hired after an internship.

To get the internship, I prepared a bunch for general Python questions (LeetCode etc.) and studied the
basics of machine learning (several different algorithms, how they work, when they're useful, metrics
to measure their performance, how to train them in practice etc.).

To get the internship I had to pass a technical interview as well as a take-home machine learning
(ML) exercise. Then, it was just a question of doing a good job in the internship!

What are your data related responsibilities in your job?

I work on our recommendation system. It’s deep learning based. I work on a lot of features to try and
improve it (reinforcement learning & NLP etc).

Since I'm in a start-up, it's also up to our team to put the models we design into production. So, after a
phase of research & development and model design, in notebooks, it's time to create a real pipeline,
by creating scripts.

This enables us to define, train, replace, compare and check the status of the models in production.

It's basically all in Python, using Keras/TensorFlow, Pandas, Scikit-learn and NumPy.

We also do a lot of analysis for the business team to help them compute metrics of interest (related to
revenue, acquisition etc.). For that, we use an external utility called Metabase. It is is hooked up to our
database where we write SQL queries and visualize the results and create dashboards (using
Tableau/Looker etc).

I would say my role is quite "full-stack" since we are all involved from the phase of R&D to
deployment on our cluster.

Was it difficult to get this role?

I got hired after an internship. If you come from a scientific background, it's not that hard to transition
into data science. All the math is something you will probably have seen already (especially if you're
doing maths or physics). So, with some preparation and coding practice, you can start applying to
internships.

It took me maybe a month or two of preparation to get some basic ideas of the typical Python data
stack (Pandas, Keras, SciKit-learn etc) before I started to send out CVs. Then, if you get an internship,
try your best to do the best you can and then maybe you'll be hired after!
 How to Get a Job in Data Analytics

This eBook was written by Michael Dillon.

Here’s what you can expect from the eBook:

- A simple explanation of the jobs market

- 46 interviews with data experts
- A full data glossary

No more job descriptions. No more confusion. No more doing it all alone.

46 interviews with staff from Google, Intel, Dell, football clubs, NFL teams and start-ups.

Real people. Real stories.

Grab a copy now:

https://gumroad.com/a/915127411