Whether you are from a technical background or not, and whether you have a gap in your resume or not, taking up the right courses and putting in your hard work will surely lead to success. Read about Anmol’s journey with Data Science and his experience with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in his own words.
I am a Mechanical Engineering graduate from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. I completed my B. Tech in 2018. I had a thorough core background in college and I was very involved in CAD Designing and Simulations. I was the designing head at KIIT aeronautical society. I got placed in an IT company immediately but I had to quit my job due to personal reasons in August’2018 just after 3 months of my joining.
I was out of a job in 2018 with only 3 months of work experience. I wanted to explore the possibilities for myself so I tried a variety of things but they didn’t quite work out. Fast forward to Jan’2020. I had a 1.5 year work gap and didn’t know what to do next. This is when I got to know about the the PGP-DSBA course by Great Learning in Data Science, and I joined it. I was apprehensive about it because I had no prior coding or analytics background, but it was a great journey for me. I joined the 11-month online training program so I could learn things at a slower pace and really grasp the concepts. The biggest challenge for me before I joined the program was that I did not know what to do. I had almost exhausted my options in terms of career decisions and that was scary for me. I had an inclination towards designing but the core industry didn’t have a lot of options for me. I just stumbled upon data science and I gave it a try. I have loved it ever since.
The biggest challenge in my data science journey was getting over my phobia for coding. I had no prior coding experience and thus the initial phase was a bit bumpy but as the course progressed, I was able to pick it up. I was looking for a career transition and I was able to successfully land an analytics job. I am looking forward to learning new things and increasing my knowledge as time progresses.
My resume was shortlisted for 2 internships and about 3 companies but I joined the first company that interviewed me. There were 3 rounds with a written round, followed by a technical interview and then a final interview with the Team Lead. It was an exciting process and I learned a lot about what I can expect in a data science interview.
I should mention here that the career guidance session and resume building session really helped me a lot. My initial resume had problems that were addressed in great detail and the career guidance session was extremely helpful as well. I gained a lot of confidence after talking to the mentors. Two months later, I was able to land a job.
There were two things that really helped me throughout the journey – first was the weekly mentoring sessions taken by my Mentor Mr. Shivang Krishnatreya and second the continuous support from my Program Manager – Ms. Richa Anand Sethi. Both of these played a pivotal role in my journey.
The mentoring sessions were really helpful because we were able to learn about the real-life implementations of the concepts that were learning. There were areas that we may overlook, but were picked up in these sessions. Some of the concepts really helped me a lot in my interview process as well.
The continuous help from the program office and program manager was also great. A lot of fun events were organised that helped to maintain the fun in learning and also helped in revising the concepts. Sometimes there were some hardware issues and software issues which caused problems for me but all my grievances were addressed. The program manager really made me feel right at home and helped me throughout the journey with all kinds of issues at a very quick pace.
The data science curriculum at Great Learning is really great. It contains a lot of tools that a beginner needs. There is a heavy emphasis on the basics which is very important. The course moved a good pace and covered a lot of ground. I learned a lot of things not only from the course content but also from events such as Hackathons.
The mentoring sessions were my favourite part of the program. Every weekend we discussed the concepts with the mentor and learned a lot. The best part about these sessions was the real life experience that the mentor shared with us about the data science industry and how the concepts are implemented in real life.
I had 3 months of work experience, a total of 2.5-year work gap and no CS or analytics experience when I started the program. Still, I was able to land a data science job, in the middle of a pandemic. I am extremely happy that it worked out for me and I was able to enter the analytics industry. I have a dream of pursuing higher studies abroad, I hope that I can make that come true.
Data science is a very wide and evolving industry. Data is the new fuel that the world will run on. To all those who want to make such transitions I want to say work hard and give it your all. Data science will make its way into all kinds of industries, so you can choose what kind of problems you want to solve. The one advice that I want to give everyone is that you should be ready to learn a lot of concepts, tools etc. Also, be ready to constantly upgrade yourself to learn new things. My best wishes for you all.
