Being from a non-tech background need not stop anyone from pursuing their career goals and dreams. Read further to learn more about Apurva Avinash Patwardhan’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in her own words and how she enhanced her skills in Data Science over the lockdown.
I am Apurva Patwardhan. I am a commerce graduate, but after graduating, I did not want to complete my further education in commerce and was in search of new opportunities. As in-demand and ever-growing scope of data and business analytics, I wanted to pursue my further career in the same. After my graduation, I did a PG diploma course in Data Analytics. It was a newly introduced course, and since the lockdown began, I couldn’t get much of the knowledge needed and was searching for a course for building my skills and knowledge in the relevant field. That’s when I came across a news article which read ‘Great Learning’s Postgraduate Program in Data Science, and Business Analytics’ ranked #1. Fortunately, one of my relatives was already studying the same course. I contacted him to ask how the course is and got good reviews. So I decided to pursue it and build a strong skillset while stuck in lockdown. And I can confidently say that it was a good decision.
Before I joined this course, I had no coding experience, being a commerce background student. So the coding part was a bit difficult in the beginning. But the introduction to the python course helped me a lot, and as the modules progressed and I started practicing along with it, coding is not the biggest challenge anymore.
I gained industrial knowledge with the help of relevant modules, content, and hands-on.
By the end, of course, I started applying for jobs from GL Excelerate portal. There are many good companies on the portal. And one such company, SG Analytics, offered me an internship with them. It was a three months internship, and it is a very good goal-oriented and multi-national company. As a fresher, it was a good opportunity to work with such a company. I learned the practical, real-life application of the knowledge and experienced the professional world.
All my interview rounds were held online. We had 4 questions, 2 coding questions from python, and 2 queries from SQL for the technical round. And after being shortlisted from the technical round, it was a one-on-one interview. After that, within 10-12 days, I received the confirmation for the internship offer.
Throughout the course, the mentors for all modules and the capstone project have been of great help, and also support from my Program Manager from time to time was very helpful.
One thing that helped me a lot from shifting my core career to data science is making my basics of statistics strong and practicing as much as I can and not just limiting myself to the material and hands-on provided in the course.
