What is the most important thing to do after you got your skills to be a data scientist? It has to be to show off your skills. Otherwise, there is no use of your skills. If you want to get a job or freelance or start a start-up, you have to show off your skills to people effectively.
Here are some effective ways to show off the skills and get involved in the data science community.
You should not start all at once. It will be overwhelming.
Start with one or two that you are most comfortable with. Slowly, you will feel like doing more.
Github
This is free and the easiest way to make a profile. Whatever small big projects you have done for practice, make a nice and well-organized GitHub profile with them. Employers ask for a Github profile link in your job application. So it’s almost mandatory for coders to have a Github profile. It took me some time, in the beginning, to know that GitHub profiles can rank in Google. If you search for a certain project or topic on Google, you will see some Github profiles show up in the search results.
Try searching with this “linear regression from scratch in python, GitHub”.
You can have a nice portfolio for free to show off your skills. If you keep posting regularly, your profile will also become popular. Though it will take some time. Probably 7/8 months or a year. But even if your Github profile is not popular, still you will be able to use your Github profile link in your resume.
Social Media
I mostly use Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. On Facebook, there are a lot of groups that you can join very easily. You will find many people sharing their ideas, asking for help, and having conversations. I suggest, join some groups that you think are suitable for you and get involved in the conversation. Share your ideas, good articles, courses, videos, or resources that you know are helpful. When you will help others, you will get help back. Here are some Facebook groups that I joined:
Deep Learning and Machine Learning
Beginning Data Science, Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Mining, R, Python
Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning
There are so many groups like that. Choose the ones you like. The same way, follow the people in the profession on Twitter and connect on Linked In.
I got my first internship through a connection on LinkedIn
I can talk only about these three social media platforms because I use them. If you use other platforms as well, use them for your professional networking.
Meetups
There are groups in every area for sure who meet in person. Please join them and go to their events. This is the most effective way to network and get involved. You will meet the people in the industry directly and exchange ideas and learn what to focus on. I can share what I do to find good meetups. I started with meetup.com and Eventribe. I met some solid people there. I learned about some more cool meetups and events from there. Some times employers come to these events to announce some openings in their company.
Stack Exchange and/or Stack Overflow
These are two very useful sites. I use stack overflow. But both of them are good. Start using them today if you are not already. They are good in very many ways.
When I do a project and get stuck, I ask questions here and most of the time I get a reply within the first 10 minutes.
You even won’t have to ask a question for very common problems. Just search with the question, you will see that other people already asked that question and there are already answers there.
If you are a complete beginner in Stack Exchange/Overflow, it can be tricky
Some of my friends told me, they do not find it good. Because asking questions is hard. But it’s not hard. It may take a little time to understand, how to ask a question to get help. Once you learn that, you will love it.
After some time, you will be able to answer other people’s questions there. That’s a great way to practice your skill and also to show off your skills to the community.
You can use these platforms to search job as well. They announce job openings and you can upload your profile.
Conferences
Attend conferences and present your projects in the conferences or even in the meetups. This is a great way to show your skills and also improve. You gain so much confidence from it.
You do not have to be an expert in anything to present your project. You just need to prepare well.
Choose a project or topic and prepare it.
I first started presenting when I was just taking online courses and had no professional experience of any sort.
Someone in a meetup told me that you should present next. I said ‘yes’. After that, I was extremely nervous and scared until my presentation. I received so many positive vibes, encouragement and someone even gave me a referral! Since then I take every chance to do a presentation. That helped me improve my knowledge so much. Because when I prepare for a presentation I study a lot!. I am sure everyone does some extra studying when they know that lots of people will watch them talking.
You may find this article useful. It has a selection of datasets to do projects with also some ideas of projects.
If you start going to meetups, stay involved in social media, you will see so many small big events are going on constantly around you and they are always looking for new presenters. Volunteer in those events and slowly engage in conversation with people.
Slack Channels
Join slack channels. In every area, there are meetup groups, study groups, volunteer groups. Most of those groups have slack channels. Join them. They announce the events, conferences, meetups in those slack channels. You will be able to stay updated. Also, most slack channels have a job board. They post job openings there.
Write Blogs
This is one of the best ways to demonstrate that you know how to express. But I am putting it in the end because I hear from many of my friends that “Oh no, writing is not my thing”. Like any other skill, it will also take time to develop. But if you can get used to it, it’s great! Because it stays on the web for everyone to see. It’s almost like an asset for you. You can even earn money from it if you do it regularly.
This is a great platform for writing!
If you want your own individual domain, there are some free blogging sites like blogger.com. Use it. The good thing is, it is owned by Google. Or, another very easy way is to do a WordPress blog.
You can get a domain from freenom.com for free and a free hosting site is unlimitedfreehost.in. There may be other free resources too. But I used them before. So, that’s why I am sharing these ones.
If you want a space only to make a portfolio and add in your resume, these free sites are great. But if you want to take blogging seriously, the best thing is to buy a domain that you want and get a paid hosting.
Conclusion
These are some techniques I followed to get involved with the professional community. Now, I know a lot of cool people in the industry. The only thing I need to warn you is, please do not overdo it.
You have to save some time for yourself as well to study and improve your skills. There is no alternative to that.
My suggestion is to make a routine or plan. As per your schedule, fix sometime in a week or a day for this networking or community development. And stick to that. Otherwise, you will see that you are only busy with social activity and no time to improve your skills. You do not want that. On the other hand, you cannot avoid socializing or networking. Because if you have skills and you do not know how to show off, it will not help you develop your career. So, please find a way to balance them both.
#datascience #socialmedia #softwareengineering #dataanalytics
