Career Quiz. How to pick a job

Do a search or browse through the listings if you can. Are publication dates associated with job postings? Have jobs been posted recently? Be a little suspicious if job offers are undated or if all jobs have been posted “today” unless thousands of jobs have been listed.

How To Pick The Right Career In The Data World

january 23, 2021 7 min read

It’s no secret that data engineers, data scientists, and data analysts are popular roles that many people nowadays look at and hope to embody. PWC describes all three as “one of America’s most sought-after jobs,” while data scientist and data engineer are ranked 3rd and 8th, respectively, out of the top 15 emerging jobs in the LinkedIn 2020 Emerging Jobs Report.

These roles are very closely related to each other; in fact, many companies may even use the terms interchangeably. So if you are thinking about breaking into the data world, choosing the right role can seem like a daunting task that raises a lot of questions: Can I become a data scientist without a PhD? Do I need to know Python or R if I want to become a data scientist? As a person who has worked as a Data Scientist, currently works as a Data Analyst and has worked closely with many data engineers in both professions, I will try to break down the differences for you and identify the right resources for each.

Overview — High-level Differences and Overlap

If we roughly divide the companies into two sides – the engineering side and the business side – we can use the Venn diagram below to illustrate the relationship and the role overlap and the two sides of the company. Note that this distinction applies to most medium and large companies; however, in small startups, the lines between these roles blur; very often the roles can be a mix of all three.

The data engineer is closest to the typical engineer role of the three, and furthest from the business side. Data engineers spend most of their time designing, structuring, building, and maintaining databases. Most companies have data from many different sources, both internal and external; The job of data engineers is to build and maintain a data warehouse to keep the data easily accessible and useful to the rest of the company. How can different data tables connect to each other? What should be the primary key for each table? Here are some of the sample decisions data engineers make at work. Data engineers sometimes collaborate with the company’s business side to define the table structure.

Data Scientist is probably the best known and most frequently mentioned professional title among the three. A misconception about this role is that you must have a PhD in machine learning or a similar field. This is true for the subset of data scientists who focus on modeling and algorithms. These data scientists (~ 30% of all data scientists in a company) tend to have a very strong and highly quantitative academic background and extensive theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience in advanced machine learning issues. However, the majority (~ 70%) of data scientists come from more diverse backgrounds. They spend most of their time conducting AB tests and analyzes related to various business indicators; Models they will buildare likely to be used for demand forecasting or ad hoc analysis instead of augmentation learning or deep neural networks.

Data Analyst is used interchangeably with Data Scientist in many companies because both groups work closely with ad hoc metrics and analytics. If you need to make a distinction, it is likely that data analysts work more on business interpretations and visualization of metrics, while data scientists spend a lot of time analyzing them statistically.

Overlapping is common to the three roles. Anyone who has worked on Data Science projects knows that typically ~ 80% of the time is spent cleaning data, and regression or classification ultimately only takes ~ 20%, if not less. That is why it is so important for scientists and data analysts to work closely with data engineers; they can save anyone from bad data by structuring and purging the data in advance before it goes into tables.

To better illustrate how the three roles work together, imagine a company looking to run an AB test for a new feature in their application; Data scientists will guide the experiment to dimension the experiment and decide how to divide the control and test groups; Data engineers will set up the database in the background to make sure that when the AB test is run, user activity and events are logged and that data flows into the database in the correct format and structure. After the experiment, Data Scientists and Data Analysts will perform statistical analyzes of the AB test results and analyze some metrics important to them, as well as build visualizations for reporting purposes.

Perform a SWOT analysis. All you need is a pen, paper and a willingness to be honest with yourself. Don’t worry, no one else will see the results of this exercise, only you! Use a SWOT analysis to identify your current strengths and weaknesses, threats to your goals, and opportunities that you can reach out to and use if you think about it.

Career Quiz

In order for us to be able to gauge your personal interests and your usual style, you first need to answer a series of questions. Read each pair of phrases below and decide which of the two describes you best, then select the radio button next to that phrase.

When making your choices, assume that all work is equally paid and prestigious. After you have answered each of the questions, click “Continue” to continue. There are 24 questions in total.

Yes, blocking access to your contact details may make it difficult for your employer to reach you quickly, but it may also increase your market value in the eyes of the employer. You may be seen as someone who has a good job to protect and / or someone who is an experienced web user.

Examine the Financial Benefits

While it’s true that life isn’t all about money, earning enough money to live a comfortable life is definitely a plus.

When you are considering job offers, think carefully about how much you will earn as a salary, as well as other factors such as 401 (k) plans that can ultimately help you have enough money to support yourself after you quit your job. Or maybe one job may pay a little less, but is a short drive from home (you save fuel and car maintenance costs), and another job is higher wage but requires an hour’s drive each day. These are all important considerations when considering your options.

Determine How It Will Affect Your Personal Life

Do some of the jobs you are considering require you to work unusual hours, travel frequently, or agree to other things that may adversely affect your relationships with your significant other, relatives and friends? If so, these are important matters to think about privately and to bring up when talking to people who are most likely to suffer if you accept one job offer over another.

It’s okay and it’s okay to carefully consider the practical factors like the ones mentioned above, but don’t underestimate the feeling that is deep within you. It is more than likely that you have picked up signals that unconsciously affect your attitude towards certain job offers.

Create a list of 2-5 top career choices

Now it’s time to narrow down your career list – but not too much! You want to keep an open mind as more than one dream career awaits you. Choose the professions that interest you. Try to choose professions that match your existing qualifications (or choose them if you really want to get the qualifications you need over time. Remember Rome was not built in one day – you can always do more courses or study part-time if you have one such a need).

Check if your best career choices have similar qualifications and skills that may be useful in your future career. Perhaps all of your best career choices indicate that it is good to have good positive grades in science, English, or geography. Make a note of this as it can help you decide what your future study options might be – whether it be choosing GCSES and A-levels or thinking about courses and studying after graduation.

Think about your short-term and long-term goals

Now that you’ve thought through all of this to choose a career that is right for you, the next step is to reflect on some achievable goals.

To make your best career choice a reality, what are you going to work on in the next few months? And in the coming years?

Create a document or spreadsheet. List all the steps you can take to achieve your goals – and add a date by which you want to achieve them. Do you want to get a grade from a school project or exam? The course you want to research? Would you like to spend an hour looking for online interviews with people doing their dream job? Your goals can be small or large. They can be achieved in the evening or next year – but they must be achievable.

Create a list of achievable goals, add deadlines and you will take a big step not only towards choosing a career, but also making your dream come true.

Take the Job-Hunt Quiz: How Resistant to Fraud? to test your knowledge of understanding domain names and urls. It also includes solutions to help you learn more.

Evaluation Criteria — What Questions Should I Ask?

Now that we understand the criteria, we will create more specific questions to help us determine if jobs on our original list meet the criteria. If at any point not, cross them off your list and go to the next one.

Determining what pain you want is about understanding what your job involves and what its advantages and disadvantages are. When assessing a career choice from your list, look for information about not only the benefits, but also the problems and complaints that people have about their career position and trajectory.

Can I excel at this job?

• Do I have what it takes to be amazing in this field?
• Does this career play in my strengths?
• If not, am I willing to learn these skills and spend many hard hours developing these skills?
• Is there room for development and searching for new opportunities in this field?

Now you have your potential job offers as well as the criteria by which you judge them. The next step is to start methodically refining your list. Conventional wisdom suggests that you do an internship in one of the areas in which you are interested, but if your list is ten places long, accepting internships for all of them is simply not realistic. Therefore, we will use the MVP model to start eliminating opportunities with minimal involvement.

If the results do not match what you asked for, seek guidance or help and read them before trying again. Typically, in a search engine or other search site, the first few searches help you better understand how to use the search feature to get what you’re looking for.

How To Pick A Career in the “Real World”

Sorry. Were you talking to me?

I’ve been busy brushing my unicorn here. And planting clovers for my house elves. You say gnomes don’t eat clovers. – You know a lot.

Back to the real world.

The one where you actually need income.

See, I’m not the type of coach to tell you that you just have to trust the universe and that everything will work out. Just remove yourself from the negative energy of your old job and adjust to the positivity and you will attract your new situation.

Because although I believe in the Law of Attraction, I don’t think it works that way.

OF COURSE you need the income and you are OBVIOUSLY sticking to your job like a Titanic survivor clings to a life raft. You need it. Currently.

So stop fighting for not having the courage to quit when you have no idea what you want next. We don’t live in a world made up entirely of Ferris wheels and candy.

Let’s consider the hard part first, and when you have a plan you can give your work the shoes it deserves.

The Way You’ve Been Taught: How To Pick A Career

There are so many methods that can help us choose a career that it can be overwhelming.

Personality Tests, Skill Tests, Career Tests. People tell you what you are good at, not so good. Everyone has advice for you.

And your parents always thought you should be a lawyer.

So, if you are tired of taking the tests humanity has ever invented, I understand.

Here’s a simpler way to think about choosing a career:

What does your career have to do for you?

These are the ones that come naturally to you as part of who you are as a person. If you are naturally super organized, human, or love teaching people new things, these are skills that are likely to play a role in what awaits you.

16 Critical Criteria for Choosing the Best Job Board for You

First, the 6 “Security” Criteria to not trust a site that may harm you. Then take 10 “Productivity” pages to find the sites that have the best job offers for you.

If your site fails any of these tests, don’t use it. Find another. Easy.

1. Who owns the site?

Look for contact information on the site. Not only the form visitors fill out to ask a question, but also the name, address, and telephone number (s). Then check that the contact information is true:

Do not use the site if there is no contact information or you cannot verify the truthfulness of the company name and contact information.

• Google the address and phone numbers. Are they apparently real?
• Check the company name on the YellowPages.com company listings if they include a company name.
• If they don’t provide a name but do provide a phone number, use Whitepages “reverse phone lookup” to find the entity associated with the phone number. Does it show the business and / or location reported by the site? If not, go ahead.
• As a last resort, call one of the phone numbers to see if someone is responding from the organization running the site.

If there is no visible contact information on the page, check the “Whois” information for the domain name at DomainTools.com. Usually, the “subscriber” to the domain is you, who owns the domain name (and website).

Do not use the site if the domain name is “private” and you cannot find any information about who really owns the domain name.

2. What does Google tell you about it?

Google the site name to see what Google is showing you.

• If there is no site information on google, be very careful! It may be a brand new site (and thus have few or low-quality jobs) or it may be bogus.
• If your only information on Google is job links, be especially careful.

Does Google show news on this topic? What are the news articles saying? If Google doesn’t show anything about your site, or if what it shows in the first 3 or 4 pages of search results is mostly negative, move on.

3. Do you have to “register” before you can search through the jobs?

You must first evaluate the site to determine if it has any jobs you want before you sign up. This should be a BIG red warning that the site is not seriously interested in helping you find a job, especially if the site doesn’t have a posted Privacy Policy telling you what they do with your registration information.

Find Another Site – There are thousands of job websites available for you to try before joining.

4. Does the site have a comprehensive Privacy Policy?

If a site doesn’t have a Privacy Policy – one that’s easy to find and read – don’t use it.

Please read the Privacy Policy before registering on the job site !! A privacy policy should disclose the information the website collects and what it does with it (i.e sell or rent an email address, etc.).

Pay close attention to what is happening with your CV – who has access!

Some alleged job sites seem to exist only to collect your contact details (email address, home address, phone number, etc.) so that they can sell your information to companies that will bombard you with advertisements or worse. You provide a lot of very personal information on job sites and you need to know how it will be used.

The Job Board 10 “Effectiveness” Criteria

1. Does the site charge you for access to job opportunities?

Very rarely a job seeker should pay to access job vacancies, online or offline. In general, if the job seeker pays a fee, find another site.

Some “directors” job sites charge a fee. Before you pay, look for written guarantees of quality (and possibly exclusivity) opportunities and up-to-date testimonials from satisfied customers.

The only other online exceptions that seem legitimate are the websites of associations and associations. These sites may offer jobs (or resume publishing) to members only. In that case, you may wish to join an association if you are nevertheless interested in the association and plan to attend meetings, contact members online, access special information and reports, or get other additional benefits from membership.

2. Is the site easy to use?

You should be able to easily find a way to search for the job you are looking for – specifying the location and type of job (by keyword or other selection method). Once you’ve found a job that you like, applying for one should be easy for you. If you want to publish your resume it should also be an easy process. There should also be easy-to-follow directions in case you get lost or confused.

If you feel inept or uncomfortable using a site, please do not use it, no matter how “famous” or highly recommended it is. You and the site may just not have “good chemistry” and you won’t be able to take advantage of it. So don’t waste your time. Go for one that is easy to use.

3. Does the site work properly (e.g., search capability, resume editing, etc.)?

If you are looking for jobs in Chicago, Illinois, the job site should show you jobs in the Chicago area, if any. Some large employers have open jobs in multiple locations, so your search results may show a few jobs that at first glance are not related to your chosen geography. But most of them should match your search criteria.

If the results do not match what you asked for, seek guidance or help and read them before trying again. Typically, in a search engine or other search site, the first few searches help you better understand how to use the search feature to get what you’re looking for.

If, after 4 or 5 tries, you still don’t get what you’re looking for, either the site is missing the tasks you want, or the search function isn’t working properly (yes, it happens!). So it’s time to move on.

4. Does the site have the jobs you want — the “right” industry, profession, employer, and location for you?

If you’re looking for a social media marketing job in Silicon Valley at a company working on projects for major websites, an Oregon construction site job site won’t do you much good. The name of the website may give a clue as to its relevance to your job search (such as ComputerJobs.com), but you may not be sure until you look at the site. Try searching for the job you want and see what you find. Being able to search for a job should enable you to fine-tune your search so that the results are relevant and useful.

If they don’t have the job you want, go ahead. Don’t waste your time or risk your privacy by posting your CV and hoping that relevant job offers will emerge at a later date.