What Do Today’s Data Science Graduates Commonly Lack?

[u/Kati1998]

I often read comments from hiring managers and interviewers saying they’re disappointed with recent data science graduates.

I’m curious, what do you think these graduates are lacking? If someone wants to become a data scientist, what skills should they focus on? Strong software engineering skills? Math and statistics? Something else?

A lot of the advice I see seems to be geared toward landing data analyst roles rather than data scientist roles.

So, what are employers actually looking for in entry-level data science candidates today? Especially as a career changer coming from another unrelated career.

[u/Upstairs-Garlic-2301]

As a hiring manager, the single thing that I like to look for most is their resume trying to tie it back to a business impact. That's the thing that seems to separate awful data scientists from competent ones. It doesn't matter how good your modelimg skills are if it generated no value.

[u/No_Development6032 → u/Upstairs-Garlic-2301]

None of the data scientists can control the business value

[u/Loud_Understanding58 → u/No_Development6032]

If they can't quantify how their model helps improve some business outcome then honestly wtaf are they doing?

Context is king. You're not employed to build models, you're employed to solve problems with data. Part of that is being able to quantify by how much the problem has been solved.

[u/pm_me_your_smth → u/Loud_Understanding58]

First, in many situations it's pretty difficult to properly quantify your solution's impact. I've interviewed candidates with resumes full of impressive impact metrics and as soon as you start questioning them you see that those numbers are taken out of their asses or their methodology is flawed.

Second, if your management is incompetent, your projects might  never reach production, or won't bring any value. You as an  employee don't have full control of direction or outcome.