How should aspiring data scientists prepare for their careers?

Your career path is based upon your skills, your interests, and your experience. You naturally gain all different kinds of domain knowledge and specialized skills as you are immersed in your everyday practice.

Companies are always looking for data scientists with specific skills but also, of course, those with the right certification. For those who are already practicing data scientists, this can help you further improve your career and your ongoing education. Pursuing ongoing education and skills in this field, in particular, is going to be a huge asset because technology is evolving so quickly.

If you’re not keeping yourself informed and fresh all the time, you’re going to find your relevancy and your contribution to your job role really at risk. If an advanced degree isn’t an option for you or doesn’t interest you, but you still want to focus on specialization through educational resources, you can earn a bachelor’s degree in data science and then extend your specialization by taking supplemental courses.

For example, in programming languages or in a data warehousing function, many will see the data sciences as cross-disciplinary fields, and this can be an advantage because there’s so much room for specialization.