How I Became a Data Scientist | Computer Science Job Search Part 2

hey guys welcome back to another video if you haven't already check out part one of my internship and job search where i talk about how i got internships in software engineering and data science at goldman sachs and amazon so a short recap i left off last video talking about how i just got my goldman sachs internship this video is a little bit about my internship experience but mostly focused on my full-time job search that eventually led me to getting my current job as a data scientist in tech this story is another story that's a journey full of self-doubt disappointments perseverance but finally a happy ending i hope you enjoy it so during my

internship i realized that computer science was not for me no i'm kidding um it wasn't that computer science was not for me it was just that i didn't really enjoy working by myself um on like whatever project or coding that was supposed to do and being like very confined to a single problem you know every day i would essentially go to work and i would like code or whatever some and every week i would meet with my manager and then i would go home just like do this every single day and for me i realized although i enjoy the technical aspects of computer science and my job i also felt like i needed more human interaction and i'm someone that's pretty extroverted and i found that working in a very siloed way is not something that is very conducive to me doing the best job that was the summer of my first year i finished off my internship around early august or so and then i went and took a long vacation in china where i was able to reflect a lot more about my internship and just like my whole degree in general i felt like i did enjoy the technical aspects of it and data science is something that i still really enjoy but having worked on such a technical project i felt really drained from that like not being around people not talking to people going to even like going to meetings with something that i missed a lot so i was just like pretty depressed about it i didn't really know what to do i didn't know if i wanted to go on and just like go get a job in data science or if i want to go into software engineering and it was just like a huge mess the first

semester of my second year so i'm going to take the precaution now and just say that what happened is not a representation of most people who change their careers or people who actually go to mcit it's more just me i was like okay that internship you know i like the people there i like the work but that whole like atmosphere just like sitting there coding by myself made me really depressed so like you know i can't do this anymore i don't want to be a technical person anymore i think i'm going to go to management consulting like that's literally what went on in my head um and there's like a few people that was like yeah you should do management consulting because you know you're like pretty extroverted you like talking to people and you like doing like analysis and stuff so i was like okay and i literally just like abandoned everything that first semester and interviewed for management consulting for those of you who have interviewed for management consulting or worked in management consulting you would know that the interview process is something that you really need to prepare for you know it's not like you just show up and just say some random things and then you're fine like there's it's a very structured process that people will spend like months if not like years after preparing for so long story short i interviewed for a lot of management consulting companies literally failed every single one of them except for one and you know that made me really question my decisions again at that point i was pretty defeated so i also applied to like more software

engineering jobs as well as data science jobs and i got some like responses for software engineering and i got one response for data science i knew at that point that i didn't want to be a software engineer so i was like okay let's just like give this data science thing another try so when i talked to the

recruiter about this job they actually told me that it was actually more like an internal consulting role you would get asked like pretty open-ended questions from business leaders or you know like pm and you're supposed to use data in order to answer those questions which ultimately would lead to them making specific decisions and driving impact i thought this was actually really awesome because it was essentially like wanting to do that like communication stuff for management consulting but still using you know the technical knowledge that i have this is like the perfect role for me so i really doubled down and looked at the interview questions that they were going to ask me and actually like studied really hard for it the thing was that the interview questions were going to be in sql and i didn't actually know any sql i learned python i learned java you know i learned c plus but i have never touched sql in my life so i actually just like sat there and learned sql from scratch by myself and you know it was definitely an ordeal but i was very motivated um to get this job sorry my camera just died on me as i was saying i really double down and learn sql from scratch and made sure that i had a really strong grasp of everything that they were going to ask me i was able to pass my second round interview which is a virtual interview and then i went on to do my final round interview which was on site i actually had a really good time i think it was because i prepared really well i also knew that was really well suited towards that job so i ended up like not feeling very nervous and really enjoyed it also like talking to the people that work there so i was very certain that this was a job that would be just really great for me

after i went back home i was anxiously awaiting for about a month or so then they called me and said that i got the offer and i was just like oh it just felt so good because you know everything that happened before i felt like it was kind of like almost leading towards this the rest of the semester at school went pretty well i finished up all my classes i then graduated

all right so that's the end of my internship and job seeking experiences i also like to talk about three key takeaways that i think would be useful as you go on your internship or job search number one there's actually so many different flavors of jobs out there i thought i could either be a software engineer a data scientist or a management consultant but in reality each job can actually be so different and each of them is a blend of different skill sets if i could do this again i would tell myself to be a little bit more patient and open-minded as i go through the experience i would definitely not have abandoned all my technical skill sets and go for management consulting just because i didn't like a single part of my internship experience two spend a significant amount of time introspecting about what you actually want in your job it's not just about getting an internship at some brand name company or a cool tech company it's what you're gonna spend every single day doing for possibly many years three so what i think i actually did really well throughout my job searching experience was the fact that i narrowed in on a job that had a lot of the traits that i thought would be really suitable for me and because of that i was very motivated to get that job i had a really well thought out plan and studied very systematically in order to maximize my performance with minimal amounts of effort and time this allowed me to balance school and my job search and allowed me to feel really confident well prepared when actually going through the interviews

so that's it thank you so much for watching i hope this two-part video series was useful for you and gives you a little bit of hope and some tips for your own internship and job search i'm still trying to improve my content quality so let me know what you guys think in the comments below also let me know if there's any other videos that you guys would like me to do thanks so much for watching and see you guys next time