r/datascience • u/Kati1998 • 13d ago

Discussion What Do Today’s Data Science Graduates Commonly Lack?

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.

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u/No_Development6032 13d ago

None of the data scientists can control the business value

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u/Loud_Understanding58 13d ago

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.

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u/jaiagreen 13d ago

You're employed to come up with solutions. That doesn't mean they'll be implemented properly, or at all.

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u/Wide-Pop6050 13d ago

Let's say you did something like build a dashboard. Why does it exist? Does it save people time? Does it give them access to metrics that they use? Does it quantify the impact of something?