When you are upskilling, choose a program that will help you learn all the concepts required to become job-ready. Read further to learn about Preeti Singhal’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics Course in her own words.
I am a Computer Engineer with over 20 years of work experience in the field of IT, specifically Web Solutions which spans from development of CRMs, Quality Monitoring solutions, Market Place for Aggregators, Report Automations, Human Resource Management System, Survey systems, B2B Ecommerce platforms, IOT to Project Management tools, Intranets, etc.
Being a woman, I have been fortunate enough not to face any gender discrimination with regard to the quality of work or remuneration at any of the organizations. Rather, all employees were given equal opportunity and appreciated for their hard work. Initiatives were encouraged, and more responsibilities were given to deserving employees without any bias.
However, extreme isolation and balancing work and family became very challenging at times. I was the only female in the software department for the last 10 years. Also, women being expected to be more responsible towards the household tend to burn out faster due to the “double whammy” of giving more time towards chores and family and managing the corporate expectation of devoting more time towards work. In the last 4 years of my corporate stint, I dealt with it by working in a hybrid model (6 hrs in the office and 3 hrs from home daily).
I have been on sabbatical for a year and a half. The last 2 years of my corporate life had become very monotonous. Similar work routine, lack of new opportunities, repetitive work, bureaucracy in the work environment led me to think towards doing something different.
I am yet to start looking out for opportunities, but I feel that it will be very challenging to return to corporate life. However, due to a paradigm shift in today’s work culture given the recent times, I hope that there may be opportunities with a hybrid work model, but it is yet to be seen.
Since I am from the IT industry and used to manage large datasets for various businesses, I could see that businesses wanted to derive more insight from past data and strategize accordingly. This led me to identify Data Science as a field I wanted to pursue further.
There are many perceptions present that Data Science is theoretical, abstract, has little application, is more competitive than other jobs, and less inclusive. One of the reasons is that too much importance is given to theoretical knowledge in university curriculums, and companies lack a coherent strategy, promote male-dominated competitive work culture, and are not able to communicate the impact and purpose of data science within their businesses.
Surveys show that women seek work that has more real-world impact. Thus, a career path that is seen to be abstract, low-impact, without a strong purpose, competitive instead of cohesive, and collaborative work culture is less attractive to women as compared to men.
To encourage more women towards Data Science, effective communication, bringing awareness, information sharing, and encouragement are important from both universities as well as companies seeking such talent. Universities need to include real-life examples and actual use cases to highlight the impact of data science work in the real world. Companies need to showcase the collaborative work culture and provide realistic job descriptions while recruiting.
While I was looking for upskilling myself, my primary requirement was a program that would take me through all the aspects and facets of data science and not just a short 2–3-month course. I was also looking for on-campus classes within the city. Based on the research, the Data Science and Business Analytics program from Great Learning was at the top.
This program has helped me learn various techniques of understanding historical data, drawing insights, trends, and patterns, creating predictive models, and optimizing solutions.
Data Science is about finding solutions to problems statistically, which is backed by data. I would advise young women to be more open-minded towards their work, never stop learning, be curious, keep exploring this evolving industry, and don’t resist change.
