At a certain point in your career, it becomes natural to feel stuck. At this point, upskilling and learning new concepts will help you power ahead your career. Read further to learn about Dolly Krishnappa’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in her own words.
I am a Biotech in Bsc and MBA by qualification. I started my career at fidelity as a financial analyst. I am married and have a daughter who is 5.6 years old.
I always went with the flow and prioritized family and personal goals over professional goals. I felt stuck in my career at one point and really wanted to pivot in my career.
I have been in the retail industry for over 15 years now and I was in the individual contributor role for about 10 years of my career in the techno-functional role. I am fortunate to have worked for companies like Target and now with JCPenney, who are equal opportunity providers and there is no gender bias. Hence, I never experienced any challenges or discrimination of any sort.
Most of the challenges I faced is because I stayed in my comfort zone for too long and went with the flow and didn’t invest in learning and upscale myself in the initial years of my career hence missed on few opportunities.
I was looking for a career pivot and fortunately, I got an opportunity to join JCPenney in 2017 based on my retail business acumen and they were setting up the analytics center of excellence in Bangalore.
I grabbed the opportunity and from then on, there has been no looking back. I put a plan of action to accelerate my career and was looking to upskill myself.
I found this space very interesting since I got to work with the analytics and Data science teams closely as part of my role and also in a day to day life we see the power of data and analytics. I think lack of confidence and self-doubt are the major reasons that are keeping women out of Data Science these days. Also, it is so overwhelming sometimes that one wouldn’t know where to start. I wasn’t sure if I could cope up or start from scratch after so many years of experience. I didn’t even know if I could focus again and study for so long but I could do it.
Women need mentorship and proper guidance to boost their confidence and to provide a roadmap to have a career in Data Science. First, it is very scary for someone to even think about the transition due to the hype and technical expectations. For someone like me who is not an engineer or techie, it would make it more difficult to take that plunge.
But Data Science or analytics is not just coding, it is a lot more than that. It is all about getting actionable insights and telling the stories using the data.
There are multiple areas with data science/analytics and one has to spend a considerable amount of time to do their homework and decide on which path they would want to take to achieve their goal.
Google can help them in knowing about various career options available in this field and corresponding skillset as well. So, they can make an informed decision and not get bogged down by the overwhelming information on the 10 different skill sets required to make it through the field.
Once you decide to make that jump, be prepared to constantly work on upscaling yourself and even intern with the companies and focus on learning in the initial years.
Have a growth mindset and be a lifelong learner to be successful in this field. Also, I would advise people to reach out to others and ask for help.
I had initially tried a few other online self-paced training but failed terribly to complete them hence I was looking at something where I can attend classroom sessions and learn by meeting and discussing with the people. After a month’s research, I finally decided to join GL since one of my colleagues suggested I go for it blindly.
It was in fact one of the best decisions in my life. It really helped me build my confidence, build a strong foundation in ML concepts and various tools like R, Python, and Tableau. It was definitely not easy and I had to sacrifice spending time with my daughter and going out on the weekends but in the end, I feel it was totally worth it.
It did get a bit stressful at times but then I had to work on prioritizing things and dedicate at least 30 to 60 mins per day to focused studies. I felt the curriculum and the structure of the course were also working professionally friendly that I never felt it was impossible to get through.
I have learned a lot from the cohort’s discussion and also from my team discussing the topics and learning from each other.
This course has really helped me in boosting my confidence. Helped me in guiding my team and asking them the right questions while solving business problems and it has also definitely helped in my professional and personal growth and I would like to thank Great learning for helping me in this journey.
