Internships are an effective way to break into data science domain as a career path. One can witness a successful transition into a full-time data science role enabled by an internship. Data Science is a broad field of study and hence getting into an internship before applying for a full-time role will help you experience hands-on what you have learnt in your certification or data science online course. In this article, we will talk about various aspects of internship in data science and look at top opportunities for beginners in the field.
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Data Science Internship Interview Preparation
Like a full-time job, to apply for an internship, you will have to go through the interview process. Interviews are the biggest challenge faced while landing an internship reason being no previous work experience in the domain. Therefore, it is not always sure what aspects of your resume the recruiter would focus more on. Also, it is not very clear what skills should you display during the interview and on your resume. One quick fix about this problem is to mention all that you have learnt and worked in the field of data science on your resume in a very precise manner. And this requires for you to draft your resume very carefully to make it short, interesting, decluttered, and impactful. We will talk about making an effective resume in detail in the next section.
When it comes to impressing the recruiter in an internship interview, keep in mind the following points:
- Develop an ability to structure your thoughts. For any problem given by the recruiter, try to break it down into smaller steps. Identify the end goal and based on the data that is provided, prepare a process to approach the problem.
- Know about what the company you are interviewing for does and what os their vision. Also, go through the JD provided to you by the recruiter and gauge where you stand as compared to the requirement.
- While mentioning the projects that you have worked on, focus on the approach you pursued and the results that you achieved.
- Mention how you would replicate your learnings to real-world problems.
Effective Resume for a Data Science Internship
Writing an awesome resume is tough and it might take hours, days, or even weeks to perfect a resume that will land you the internship you want. You also might have to tailor your resume to fit a specific job description. You might face difficulty while deciding what experience to actually put and what to skip.
Studies suggest that an employer glances at a resume for mot more than 5-7 seconds and decides to call the candidate for an interview or not within this time period. So effectively, you have just six seconds to impress a recruiter with your resume. This makes it even more important to draft an impactful resume to get a chance at an interview. Here are some tips that will help you to create a powerful resume for your dream data science internship opportunity.
- Ensure that the experience, achievements, and jobs you include are relevant to the position you are applying for. Skip the ones that are not relevant to the job description.
- Include the keywords mentioned in the job description to your resume. If the employer is looking for skills in Big Data or Machine Learning Course, ensure that your resume has these keywords under the skills section.
- Quantify your achievements with numbers. For example: automated and optimized reports using SQL server hence reducing manual effort by 70% and debugging effort by 60%.
- Make your resume stand out from the hundreds of resumes that recruiters go through for a single position. You can do it by highlighting your unique qualities, using suitable design elements, making the resume visually appealing with graphs and charts, and other such efforts.
- Rather than listing all that you have ever done, choose the strongest content and list only those points.
Internship Opportunities for Data Science Beginners in the US
There are various job portals and platforms where you can look up for active data science internship opportunities in some of the best companies to be employed with. Some of these internship opportunities and job portals are:
Glassdoor – Glassdoor has a list of over 5530 data scientist intern Jobs in the United States area.
Indeed.com – You can browse through more than 500 data science internship listings on Indeed.com
Internships.com – You can find an exhaustive list of more than 15,000 data science intern positions across Boston, Chicago, New York, Atlanta and other cities on Internships.com.
LinkedIn – World’s best professional social networking website LinkedIn has more than 5000 data science intern jobs. Here you can connect with your recruiters directly and visit company pages for more information.
SimplyHired – This job platform has more than 600 internship opportunities in Data Science.
Apart from job portals and job listing websites, you can also directly visit the career section on different companies’ websites to check out for internship opportunities. The top companies in the United States that look out for interns in the field of data science are:
- Apple
- Microsoft
- Merck
- Bayer
- 3M
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- Micron
- Viacom CBS
- Lockheed Martin
- Adobe
- Covance
- Tapestry
- Lubrizol Corporation
- Change Healthcare
- Centene Corporation
- Waymo
- Walmart
- Amazon
- Intel
Importance of an Internship in a Data Science Career
Once you complete your internship, you will become a data science professional who is qualified for a full-time job. An internship provides you with a whole lot of learning and experience that text-books and classes could not. Let us what all you will get by pursuing an internship in data science.
Solving Real-World Projects
While on an internship, you would be solving real-world problems and it is a valuable experience. You could be involved with the end-to-end data science lifecycle, right from defining the problem statement until building models to solve the problem.
Team Work
You would get to work with really smart people among whom you will learn to be able to work in teams. Data Science projects require collaboration within and across teams as all work towards achieving the end goal. While working in teams you get to know different perspectives and different approaches to a single problem. It also helps you develop soft skills which are important as you go up the ladder in your career.
Practical experience and exposure
When it comes to data science almost all companies ask for some prior experience. With internships, you get actual corporate experience. Apart from working on real problems and enhancing practical skills, you get to learn corporate dynamics as well, such as teamwork, reporting, communications within and outside the department, project management techniques and much more.
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