Data Science Hangout | Kristi Angel, Stitch Fix | How to Break into Data Science

Well, welcome back, everyone, to the Data Science Hangout. If you're joining for the first time, it's great to meet you. I'm Rachel, and I'm the host. As I mentioned last week, it's really nice to be able to share some space with everyone right now. So we do want to reiterate and share again some of the avenues to help those that are affected by the war in Ukraine that have been shared by Viola and Sep, but also ask others to share in the chat as well.

If this is your first Hangout, this is an open space for the whole data science community to connect and chat about data science leadership, questions you're facing, what's going on in the world of data science. So we want to create spaces where everybody can participate and we can hear from everyone. There's three ways to ask questions, probably more. You can jump in live and raise your hand on Zoom. You can put questions in the Zoom chat, and feel free to put a star next to it if you want me to read it out loud, if it's maybe loud where you are or something like that. But we also have a Slido link where you can ask questions anonymously, and our team will share that in the chat in just a second here.

Just like to reiterate that we love to hear from everyone, no matter your level of experience or area of work, too. But with all of that, I'm so happy to be joined by my co-host for today, Christy Angel. Christy is a senior data scientist, interview coach, and data science mentor at what says on the website Grubhub, and Zach already stole it from me, but congratulations are in order for your new role now at SitchFix. So Christy, I'd love to have you introduce yourself and maybe share a little bit about your role.

Kristi's background and mentorship work

Sure. Thanks for that, Rachel. So yes, I'll be joining Stitch Fix on their A-B experimentation platform team. I probably shouldn't preface that with A-B because I'm assuming it does a little bit more than just A-B testing, but I don't quite know yet. So we'll see. TBD. But as you might imagine, my background is specialized in experimentation, data science, and inference, causal inference. I started in experimentation back in 2016, right after I graduated with my master's in statistics. I started at Groupon, and at the time, web-based experimentation was not what it was today, I'll tell you that.

I remember right before I interviewed for my first job, I Googled, you know, optimize experimentation, web experimentation, and found very little information, and now it's everywhere. So I feel like I kind of lucked into a little niche. That said, in my free time, there are several other things that I do to contribute to the data science community. One of those things is that I am a data science mentor through a boot camp called Thinkful. This boot camp, I mentor data scientists and data analysts. The thing that's unique about this particular program is that we pair students with mentors in addition to their full-time or part-time curriculum that they choose. So they really get to work with somebody in industry, understand how data science is actually applied, and how that's different than a classroom environment.

And then the other thing that I've been a little bit more focused on recently is interview coaching for that same student population. So I primarily work with data analysts and data science graduates from boot camp programs, and I conduct mock interviews with them, because a lot of these students and candidates are fresh out of this boot camp. They might be career pivoters. They could be PhD students who are looking to bridge some skills gaps. They might also be just right out of undergrad, or maybe they didn't go to college at all. I actually had a student recently who was in the military, and then he came out and did a boot camp. And so there are just a lot of different needs, but I would say there's also a lot of anxiety around the mystery of what comprises a technical interview.

And so I think one of my favorite parts is just getting people to a place where they're feeling confident in their interviewing ability, and that is a lot of just recognizing that anxiety that's there. So yeah, and then that's all I do.

Interview coaching and reducing anxiety

Awesome. Thanks, Kristi. While we're waiting for questions to come in from everyone, I'd love to learn a little bit more about that, and maybe some of the tips that you share with people when you're coaching them for interviews, or how you help them get over that anxiety.

Absolutely. So I think one of the first things that I always like to do is just kind of put out my feelers. And the way that I do that is I come right out and say, if you're anything like me, I am a nervous interviewer. I just put it right out on the table and make it okay to fess up and say, me too. That way we can just kind of talk about the elephant in the room and bring the level down a little bit. I also think that my interview style it matches the interview style that I like to be interviewed with, which is conversational. It's collaborative. And I'm not going to ask questions like, guess what number I'm thinking.

I do want to understand your thought process, but if you get stuck, I'm not going to leave you to struggle. I'm going to nudge you forward. And really, it doesn't take a lot. But I think realizing that that's all it is for people is really, really helpful. Because I think they get caught up in this data science universe where it's like, well, they could ask me anything. They could, but they're probably going to focus on the job description and your resume. So let's narrow the focus and just bring it down a little bit.

I have seen a lot of success. I really, really have. I offer all of the students that I interview to connect with me on LinkedIn and keep me posted. Some do, some don't. And that's okay. But I love seeing my success stories. There was a candidate that came in to me a couple months ago. And I had to escalate, actually, because I got about 15 minutes into this mock interview. And I realized that this person was going through some real trauma. He had signaled a couple of times, like, I've been working so hard for so long, or I've just been struggling for so long.

And it really struck a chord with me because I also come from a background where I kind of had to bootstrap myself up a bit. I was a waitress for 20 years while I put myself through school. I'm the first person in my family to graduate from high school. There are some days where, you know, on my path, it was really, really hard. And so when he said that, it just connected with me. And I put my interview notes away. And I was like, this is a different conversation that we have to have. And so, you know, we talked about it. And he had this, I didn't want to call it imposter syndrome, because I think it's more than that.

But it turned out he didn't have a college degree. And he had military experience. And he was afraid that by submitting his application and getting through an applicant tracking system that he was automatically going to be bounced away. And I said, that's fine. That might be true. But that's not what we're going to do. Because that's not how you're going to get a job. You know, and we talked about it. And I spent supposed to spend an hour on the phone with this kid. I spent an hour and a half talking him through it. And I said, I think about halfway through, I'm like, you've got yourself a mentor, like, I'm just married to this right now. But two weeks later, he got a job, he just needed a confidence boost. There's other people, they need to work on some SQL skills, you know, but being able to identify those weaknesses early on really sets them up for success in a good way.

Breaking through applicant tracking systems

That's amazing. But it brings up a point I know we had talked about earlier as well. When people don't have degrees, and they're kind of hitting that roadblock in recruiting and not getting through to the hiring manager, what can we all do to change that?

That's interesting, because I did have another student. She is one of the most tenacious, hardest workers, committed learners. I mean, she would run laps around me. I was so amazed at her tenacity. And she was going to, I mean, she was going to Grace Hopper, she was going to all the conferences, talking to as many people as she could talk to, doing everything right. But she had a political science degree. And I think, you know, she was tie-eyed and talking to a lot of big tech companies, not really realizing there were other avenues. But she was getting shot down automatically by a lot of companies, because they were saying that she didn't have a STEM degree. And I was really frustrated. Like, part of me was like, I want to find out who those recruiters are, because I thought those same companies said that we don't need degrees anymore. And so I feel like there's this like, you know, a misalignment of, well, what do we want from our data scientists?

And also, I think there's sincerely a knowledge gap in some recruiting teams that we can help with, too. And that's something that I always try to do, because I end up going to all the college recruiting events that I can, but just educating your recruiters on what different flavors of data science looks like, and where they might come from. I absolutely love what's happening in the chat right now. Everybody's sharing their majors as well. Yeah, no social science. I love working with social science teachers. I was a stats grad student, but I have a lot of sociology PhD envy, I'll admit that.

Does anybody have experience with, like working directly with the recruiting team at your company to kind of say, like, hey, this is something we might want to look past here and change the way we're doing it. The company I work for State Space Labs is, I think, unusual. The founder himself is the first person in his family to have a college degree, you know, bounced through several community colleges, you know, ended up with a PhD in neuroscience. So, you know, this is coming from the top down, as you can imagine. So the idea of what degree you have is pretty much irrelevant at the company. You know, whether it's somebody who's being hired for engineering or data science or anything. We have plenty of people with military backgrounds. There are people with high school degrees who work at the company.

But I fully understand that this is really, really unusual. And, you know, I think we're lucky that we have the CEO that we have. And I'm not sure how you convince people that, you know, it's really not just okay to look past the degree, but probably a really good idea in many cases that you need diversity of thought and background in order to, especially if your company has a consumer facing product and you want the company as a whole to have empathy for end users. I think it's really important to have a really varied set of life experience backgrounds. But yeah, I'm not really sure how you convince people at a more traditional company that it's a good idea.

That's awesome that your company does that though, Jenny. I love that.

Does anyone else have thoughts on on this topic? Oh, I see. Matias, you have your hand raised. Want to jump in? So we are a small startup in the women's health space. And we kind of look beyond degrees in a lot of ways. A lot of our most senior data science people have like a biology degree or something like that. Right. And it's really more about what they've done in their previous jobs, because we need them to be effective from day one. But for the more junior folks, it's kind of difficult. Right. So what we find is a lot of people with degrees, even if they have a degree, they're not very good. Right. But when you're more junior and then on top of that, you don't have a degree. We just don't find a lot of talent. Right. We don't find a lot of people that are very good with that. Right. It's not like we would be opposed to that. But the degree and the experience gives you a little bit of a certification. Right. It's a little bit easier to say, like, OK, these are the people that we should talk to, because, you know, in the startup, there's always more to do than you have time. Right. So if you go really in depth with like five candidates or 10 candidates, that's a lot of drain on the organization. Right. So you're trying to use these degrees as a little bit of a filter to see who we can talk to quickly.

I think that's a good call out in the startup space in particular. It's a little bit different of a situation because, like you said, you need people who can be effective from day one, hit the ground running. And in that case, maybe that's where interns come in at a certain maturity once you get there. But, you know, it's definitely one of those things where, you know, when you can take on a junior level person, I mean, we still have to hire junior level people because we're all going to get older. It's just not a sustainable model if we don't. And I love seeing certain organizations that do that intentionally think about, like, the bandwidth that they have to be able to train in-house. And I've seen some companies launch programs successfully to do that.

Training interviewers and improving the interview process

Yeah, thanks. I wanted to ask Christy about, well, first, if I can make a comment and then ask a question. Comment is you clearly are helping candidates and kind of training them how to do interviews. Are you also training interviewers? Because, you know, I think a lot of interviewers could do with a bit of skills. I agree with that 100 percent. So when I was at Groupon, my job before my last job, GovHub, that was something that I was involved in. Towards the end, I was working. We had, similar to Amazon, we had what we called a bar raiser program. And so one of the things that I wanted to see happen, I helped to ensure that all interview loops had a diverse representation from the interviewers. That was something that was happening at a certain level above or above at one point or on my team, because I would track down the recruiter and insist on it. But the other thing that we were working on is extending the bar raiser training program more broadly to some of those core principles and tenets to all interviewers because interviewing is hard. I mean, I think I got thrown into it when I first started doing it.

So I always interview from the perspective of kind of an interviewee is, you know, how do I want to be treated? And I think that makes it hard for me. It's one of those things that I still to this day second guess is that external validity. It's like, was it me or was it my question or was it the candidate? And that's not a good place to be in because this is someone's livelihood that you're that you're handling. And I take it very seriously. So I think that you're right. We all need to learn to become better interviewers. It's I think that we make these really complicated frameworks for interviewing when really, you know, if we just had some thoughtful and meaningful conversations with people about what they've done and what they know and how they think about things. And we might get further.

It'd be really nice to hear, you know, what are the kinds of conversation starter questions or, you know, things that because as an interviewer, you want to get a feel for whether that person has skill or even just personality to deal with the job you're interviewing for, you know, what are good starter questions that, you know, open them up to kind of go, right, you know, give me the information, but let's do it in a way that isn't challenging or, you know, difficult, if you know what I mean. I mean, it's supposed to be a little difficult, but it's more, as you say, it's a kind of, you know, come on, just tell me.

So, yeah, I mean, the first thing you want to do is you want to try to put a maze and develop some trust really quickly. And I wish I could explain to you how to do that. But I was a waitress for 20 years. And so that's, that's literally the job is, you know, hi, table, how are you? And in three seconds, I have to assess. Are you hungry, grouchy, happy, like, you know, whatever, what kind of mood are you in? You know, and read the room. So I don't, I don't know how to practice trial and error, making mistakes.

Yeah, I think it was, maybe it was me. But I'm so glad that we have like panels, though, because then you can kind of corroborate the evidence. And yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I was just coming from some that's, as I said, I don't go to university in the UK, I believe Mike is also from the UK. We have something called apprenticeship. So you do four days working one day learning. But the qualification isn't seen in the same way. Basically, I, you basically just get 18 months to years of experience. And that's how you set yourself rather than the qualification. But I have coming from some that, as I said, I know that from the position I put myself in, I didn't want to go to university. So I know I have to work harder. So I deal with these external stuff, and competitions and all that stuff.

Like build shiny dashboards, models. But yeah, it's the, it's the instant rejection and all this, which I felt like sounds like I completely understand it. If they're getting 100 or so applicants, or 200, no one's going to be able to go through that they have to have a minimum requirement. Or, yeah, as, as Mateo said, it's just going to spend someone's going to spend their entire week looking at one job, or two weeks, depending on how big it is. So I completely understand that. So which is why I've started looking at smaller companies, because they're more likely to take a chance to take a risk, have less applicants. So someone's going to be able to spend looking at it. And then hopefully, once they go, actually, it's an interesting portfolio, and get myself into that. So that's what I've been looking, I've only been looking for about two weeks now. So it's not like I'm expecting lots. But yeah, that's the way that I'm approaching it.

Networking and dealing with interview fatigue

Yeah, that's great perspective, Zach. And great that you're doing all those contests and stuff, too, like Big Data Bowl, I know we mentioned, but Javier, I see you had your hand raised, too. Do you have something to weigh in on this topic?

Yeah, I kind of had a question for Christy, just to follow up to all these discussions. Because I've experienced this myself, two occasions in my career, in my life. Years back, I was super unhappy in a job. And, you know, I was so busy with that job, that finding interviews or getting interviews, applying for jobs felt exhausting. And kind of like a parallel to this, I eventually quit that job and went back to grad school, because I was like, okay, I'm not getting the types of jobs I want. You know, I was reading and learning all about predictive modeling without even really knowing what it was. I was just very interested in the way people were presenting on this topic. So I went back to grad school, and I experienced like, significant interview fatigue. I mean, the first month or two were very exciting, you know, you're applying to positions. But after a while, it's, it becomes sort of taxing, because you're like, okay, I have to sound excited about this job. Like, it no longer becomes fun on a regular basis to interview and learn about these companies. Do you have, I don't know what the right answer is. Like, I've thought about this a lot. But do you have any guidance for people that are, you know, students who are kind of feeling this fatigue, or just people unhappy in their current job? Or, you know, like Zach, not to put you on the spot, but someone like Zach trying to break into the into the space and applying, you know, position after position?

Yeah. Um, I mean, I'll, I'll tackle the breaking into the space piece first, because I think it's, it's sort of a slightly different problem. I recommend to all of my mentees, like, like I mentioned, the fellow who didn't have a college degree either, when I said, we're not going to go through applicant tracking systems, what I meant was, we're going to network and I don't like the word networking, because I think it automatically puts people at kind of like, Oh, I don't want to do that. But utilize LinkedIn as a social media, a professional social media site. You know, find people who are generating content that you find compelling and interesting. You know, find your tribe. Once you find your tribe, you know, or as you begin finding your tribe, engage, they're going to start knowing who you are by your comments and your feedback and your ideas that you're contributing. And then, believe it or not, you're going to start building a reputation for yourself. I mean, it's just how human relationships work. You don't mean to be doing it, but you just being you, that's what happens. That's how I got my job at Stitch Fix. Honestly, I had followed my new boss, Eric Weber, on LinkedIn for some time. I really align with his style of leadership. When I think about the kind of leader that I want to be, I want to be like Eric. And so we stayed connected.

But utilize LinkedIn as a social media, a professional social media site. You know, find people who are generating content that you find compelling and interesting. You know, find your tribe. Once you find your tribe, you know, or as you begin finding your tribe, engage, they're going to start knowing who you are by your comments and your feedback and your ideas that you're contributing. And then, believe it or not, you're going to start building a reputation for yourself.

Now I'll address the other question that you had, Javier, which was, you know, the interview fatigue. And I can speak to this personally, because I was laid off in 2020 due to COVID in April. In fact, I had the great fortune of graduating in 2010 during the housing market crash, not knowing what I wanted to do. And then, yeah, anyways, interview fatigue. I interviewed for seven months in 2020. I was planning to leave Groupon and move on to my next journey, or the next step in my journey. You know, I think I had already been planning that at the beginning of 2020. And then once I started applying and COVID started, the rug just got pulled out from underneath me because the entire market changed. Where I thought I had a leg up, all of a sudden got very, very competitive. And then also what was happening behind the scenes that made it incredibly frustrating was that different positions were being combined or pulled because nobody knew where the pandemic was going to go. So talk about frustration. I made it all the way through full rounds with Pinterest twice, and I think five times with Facebook in a matter of a couple of months.

So I get fatigued. But I think personally, what I can say is when I finally felt the most successful or the most at ease was when I just gave into it. You know, it's like, okay, I've done all the hard work. I've prepared all I can prepare. Now I just, like, I just have to show up and be the most authentic me that I can be. Like, I just need to bring her along for the ride. Because if she shows up, then I'm good. But that's where the problem comes. It's like, can I, is she going to come today? You know, so I think it's just making sure that you're taking care of yourself enough so that you can be there. I think the other thing is just being really candid and honest with your recruiting partners. I think people forget that they are your partners. And so always advocate for yourself with your recruiters. If you wake up on the day of your interview, and like you're in a panic attack, or, you know, like, any number of things that could happen these days, right? Don't there's no shame in rescheduling. They want your best self to show up to they want you to get the job. They don't want to continue continue interviewing forever. They have work that they want to do. And they want you to come along and do the work too. So just I think, for me, that was what really unlocks progress for me. And, and it helps. It helps bring joy back into it because it helped me connect with my why.

Staying motivated through rejections

Okay, Chrissy, I can see in the chat, too. It's resonating with a lot of people and I, I love I can't read the chat right now. But I love seeing you all talking to each other. I want to make sure to get to some of the anonymous questions that were asked you and this is actually a follow up to the question now. But how do you stay motivated and optimistic while looking for a job after like a certain number of rejections or ghosting from a company?

The first thing I do, there's, there's a couple of things. The first thing I do is, I allow myself a day to grieve and just feel the way I'm gonna feel. Like I've, I've seen people who can knock out interviews back to back, you know, and even I've seen people do two final rounds of interviews in one day. That's not me. I mean, I'm resilient, but like, I also need my space to just to work through my feelings. So if that's you, that's okay. I have a dog who looks like a Muppet. He helps a lot. He gets me out of my head when I just want to like curl up in bed. I still got to take care of him. So that helps. And he's just goofy and he makes me laugh. Yeah, I gotta be honest, like you really got to hunt for positivity these days. But where you can find it, take it and just kind of relish in it for a little bit.

Definitely. I see Matthias, you're smiling and raising your hand too. I just think that's such good advice, right? And I think one thing probably also to always keep in mind, the people on the other end, the people who hire you are human, right? So A, there's a lot of people who are also, and I'm sorry to say this over and over again, there's a lot of people who are not good at their jobs, right? So if they don't hire you, there's a lot of people who don't do the diligence. They don't put the work in to find the best candidates. So it's not you, right? I think that's always important to keep in mind. And then when you do work with good people and they don't hire you, and that's also not a bad thing because if they know what they're doing, then they know that you're not a good fit. That doesn't say anything about you as a person. That just means, hey, in this position, our assessment is you might not be as successful as you want to be. So, you know, take that. I know this is like super hard to take it as that, but that is also a positive. Trust them, right? So if you work with good people, trust their judgment. If you work with bad people, just brush it off. It doesn't matter. Move on to the next thing. Get your feet in the door. Once you have the foot in the door, do the best thing you can and build your expertise.

Well, and I would add to that, you know, like it can be hard to take the ominous, not a good fit because it's vague and it's like, well, I thought it was a great fit. You know, it's not specific. But if you can imagine some realistic scenarios, for example, like, I mean, I've had not a good fit right now. And when companies are able to give that kind of feedback where, well, for example, I'll give an example. I interviewed with Netflix in 2020. It was one of the first interviews that I did because in my mind, I'm like, I'm not going to get that job. And so I figured it would be a practice interview, right? Well, first of all, it still feels crappy when Netflix, even if you don't think you're going to get the job when Netflix tells you no, you're still like, well, if I can't get the job I don't want, how am I going to get the job I do want? You know, it is a constant mind game and it's a mind game that you have to outsmart yourself at, really.

But I think the other thing is what helped me so much in this interview round that I just went through, that same recruiter reached back out to me now a year and a half later, they remember you. And apparently what I didn't know at the time was, and this is so funny to me, apparently I nailed the statistics round, which I think was the one that I thought I did the least well in. And it just wasn't as efficient in SQL. And it's like, well, I mean, yeah, okay. I mean, I can practice SQL drills more, but that was it. So, I mean, that felt great to know that like I was that close and getting that feedback helps because you're like, okay, I'm not far off. I am on the right path. People do like, you know, what I have to contribute, but they just don't need me right now, or they need something slightly different. Yeah. And if you work with a good company, they're always happy to give you that feedback, right? If you ask, right? No one likes to have that conversation unprompted, but if you ask them like, hey, what was it? They will always have constructive feedback there.

Red flags and choosing the right opportunity

Kristy, Robert and I were talking a little bit earlier on Slack about like red flags to look out for when you're interviewing with a company. And I think right now, like we see a lot of recruiter emails from people and maybe a promises huge salaries or like, how do you decide which opportunity to take or to interview for out of some of the others?

Yeah. Okay. Hang on. Let me just jot this down because I want to, those are, I think, two really good questions I want to address separately. So red flags, and then there was, I'm sorry, what was the second question? How did you decide which opportunity to go after or to take? Yeah. Okay. So first let's start with red flags. For me, it depends on like what your values are, right? For me personally, things that I value in a position are, you know, immediately having that feeling where I can be my authentic self, that like, I feel that natural ease of communication, maybe sense of humor, some laughter. I want to know that like we can work together. And I like to work in a fun environment. I like to bring a sense of humor. And so just making sure that like, we're on the same page there because like, this is what you get. Like what you see is what you get with me. And I'm very upfront about that. So I'm particular.

I value people with diverse backgrounds. You know, so a diverse team. I value learning. I value building for the long term. I value innovation. So I think about my values, and I'm trying to find a team that fits with that. And I, like, I knew a lot about Eric going in. So that one was a no brainer for me. In fact, like I approached him because I wanted to work with him before.

So I try to shop for managers. If I'm honest, if I can, I will always shop for a manager. And if I feel like I'm not like connecting culture, like on the same page with in terms of culture, that's where all my questions are going to go. If I don't get a sense of that from them immediately, I'm going to ask about it. And my favorite questions is just, can you describe your team culture? Unsurprisingly, the same person who introduced themselves as a Princeton PhD, struggled to define their team culture. So, you know, to me, that was a red flag.

I'm trying to think of other like, I look for managers who really care about growing their team members. I think some managers forget that's part of their job. And that's okay, you know, because managers also are new managers sometimes, you know, and maybe you're not supported the way that they need to be supported. But those are the things that I look for. And if I'm not getting a vibe that that's there, I'm going to keep moving.

What factors? So those are some of the factors that drove my decision. Early on in my job search, I was really torn, because I was unsatisfied where I was. For no reason other than just like, personally, I think logistics is kind of boring. It's like a bunch of timestamps. And I want to see like more direct impact on people. And to me, as someone who's worked on experimentation platforms, the people I impact are my colleagues, my stakeholders. So I have a special place in my heart for internal tooling. And I think I, for a long time, I grappled with that point, because I felt like I wasn't a whole data scientist, because I had never done more algorithmic data science, or machine learning, I've never put a model into production.

But my last project that my last role was putting together an experimentation training program. And I got to write, and I got to teach. And I got to just like brain dump all of the things that I know about experimentation. And I think simultaneously, I've been really struggling with trying to understand what confidence is, like, at the core, what is confidence. And I was observing myself just fluidly explaining what experimentation is and how to do it to non technical people, in a very like plain and simple way. I was like, wait a minute. This is confidence. I mean, I'm being confident right now. And so I just realized, like, this is, this is what I know how to do well. And I'm at the point in my life, you know, I'm not, I don't have enough time to be an expert in everything. And so maybe I just be an expert in testing, and I can collect more hobbies and do fun stuff on the side and enjoy life.

Building your resume and getting noticed

There's quite a few anonymous questions, too. I don't want to miss, let me just jump over. Someone had said, I have been working as a data scientist for three plus years now. But I'm feeling my experience doesn't look valuable to recruiters, just assuming from low calls. Do you have any suggestions?

Yeah. So when I kind of approached this problem as a data scientist, and I and I think, you know, if you are, if you're blind, or if you're just kind of cold applying, you know, through company websites, you know, then you want to target the top of the funnel, maybe take a take a look at your resume, maybe, maybe see if you can get some resume reviews from colleagues or peers that you trust, and see, see what their thoughts are, if there's a way that maybe that might be more effective. But again, I still think that if you can get referrals, or, or your like I said, your resume into the hands of a hiring manager, there's lots of hiring managers on LinkedIn right now that are blatantly advertising for roles that they're trying to fill. So take advantage of that.

But if it's not a resume problem, you know, and it really is just a matter of, of thin content, you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can fill that out. So, let me think here. I mean, there's definitely projects that you can do on your own. There are volunteer organizations where you can join as part of a team to do, do projects. I know Data Science for Social Good has an offshoot, but I can't remember the name of it. Maybe we can look that up later and share that out. But look for volunteer opportunities. Because then you have the good fortune of learning from other people as well.

I think going to meetups, particularly the Python and R meetups, if you can, another really great way to network and form community. But you just try to build communities of people who are willing to vouch for you and pass your resume along. And I think that's a to vouch for you and pass your resume along. Because that's, that's the best way. Yeah, I think. And then, like, in a situation that you're in, if you have any say about the projects that you're working on, try to be strategic. See if there's other projects that you think are valuable that someone's working on, see if you can ask your manager, if you can be a part of that in a small way.

Definitely. That's great, Chrissy. And I can't speak for everybody here on the call, but I love the community feel of this too. And I'm sure there's a bunch of people on this call right now who'd be willing to take a look at your resume as well and connect with you. But I do want to say if anybody is in that position right now, feel free to shoot me an email too. And I'll try and help you connect with people as well. People reach out all the time on LinkedIn that are on the other side too. They're hiring for roles and they just can't find people and there just seems to be this mismatch happening. But yeah, definitely feel free to reach out to or if anyone wants to put in the chat if you're willing to connect with someone too.

Ismael, I know you had a somewhat similar question too, so I just wanted to see if you had any other follow-up to add too. Kind of. My question was for data science roles, I see a lot of requirements for like PhD or master's. And I currently, for example, have a bachelor's degree and have some experience as a data analyst. So just trying to see what will be like the best bridge between having a master's to fulfill to that. Like I'm currently trying to build a GitHub repo very slowly just because life, but other suggestions would be really appreciated. And thank you.

I mean, it sounds to me like you are already, you know, your head's in the right place and you're thinking of the right things. I mean, I'll be the first one to note that like I don't have a public GitHub repo. You know, I choose mentorship and coaching as the way that I contribute. So I don't have a lot of time for my own projects, which is, I don't know, I have mixed feelings about. But anyways, you know, I think that it can be very effective, though, in terms of like showing what you can do early on and getting yourself from the analyst to the data science position.

You know, there's one like kind of odd habit that I have. At least I think it's odd. Maybe other people won't. But I have a permanent job search alert in Google Jobs. You know, my what I'm interested in is experimentation. But, you know, you might be interested in finance or something different. And so, you know, a couple of keywords and I just have it come to my inbox, you know, weekly or some cadence. The reason why I do that is because it helps me stay fresh with what's going on around me, particularly if I'm not in conferences or, you know, I'm not able to connect with data scientists outside my company. It just helps me keep a finger on the pulse of what's going on in the industry in terms of skills people are looking for. The way that data science is kind of starting to form into different subspecialties. And the reason why I'm recommending that is because of that skills based focus. When you start looking at a lot of job descriptions, you start to pick up on those patterns. And so you'll start to pick up on what kind of a data scientist you want to be based on what you like to do. But you also get a better sense of what kind of skills they're looking for and where you really need to focus in on.

Resume reviews and self-promotion

Sure. Thanks. This is about resume review, kind of mentoring slash resume review. So yesterday, we have a couple of open positions at our company in data science and analytics, which I will share. But I got forwarded a resume by a friend of a friend saying, is this person qualified for one of the roles I'm seeing? And so I looked at the resume and noticed immediately, you know, she had listed the bullet points under each of her job titles. She was listing them in ascending order of importance or impressiveness. So the things that were most impressive she was putting last. And she was also in some of her bullet points, she was sort of being really definite about what she was looking for. And so that was being really deferential to her colleagues. Like, you know, I've been working under my mentor to do this or and then I looked at her LinkedIn page and saw there were a bunch of accomplishments and job responsibilities that were really impressive that were listed on her LinkedIn page. And that hadn't made it onto her resume. So my answer was, you know, I'm not sure whether or not she's qualified for this job, but forget about that. She really needs to overhaul her resume. It's not showing how great she is. And I gave, you know, specific advice, which apparently she really appreciated. But, you know, it really hit me. What's the like, what's the mechanism for this? I mean, it just so happened that someone forwarded me the resume and I was nice enough to take 10 minutes to do this, but not everyone is going to do that. And is there, does anyone know of like a forum? Does RStudio have a forum for this? Does our ladies have a forum for this? Because especially for people who are very uncomfortable with self-promotion, it's just the resume just reeked of that. And I felt horrible. She's just really, you know, really shooting herself in the foot. And I'm sure it's really common.

I'm not going to lie. I was there myself when I first, when I first started looking for a job before grad school. Yeah. I just, I didn't, I just didn't get it. You know, like I it's, it's, it's, it's funny to me now. I will share with people my very first resume that I was using and, and I show them like where I started. I show them kind of somewhere in the middle where I was looking for an internship. And then I show them where I am now, you know, and how it's evolved over time. But, you know, like my, my thought process when I first graduated was like, well, I have a degree in physics. What else do you want to know? I mean, I can, I could do anything. Right. It's just so youthfully arrogant. But, but, you know, like, you gotta, like, I, I take the time because I'm a sucker and I don't say no. And, you know, I'll, I'll help people like you need to make it easy for people to connect the dots because that was not obvious to me before. I thought everybody could just connect the dots and they were in my head or something like that. But like what, what it is to me is indicative of someone who probably doesn't have a lot of confidence and is probably not in a good, when I see a resume like that, and then the difference, like that probably tells me they're just not in good culture. They probably have never experienced good work culture. And I absolutely want to have a conversation with them and learn more about them, see how they sell themselves.

But in terms of like approaching the wider problem, I really love maybe our ladies supporting resume reviews as part of some of the chapters, if that's something they're interested in. You can always tweet at them ideas. I'm sure they're open to it. Otherwise, I take it there. There are a lot of preparation companies coming up. But, you know, at the end of the day, it comes down to people who can afford them, which doesn't feel great. So, you know, I think that maybe just we all take a vow to lead by example and, you know, make a call to action on our own networks. Like, are you are you actively mentoring? Because you should be, you know, it's our responsibility to bring up the data scientists of the future. And so we all got to chip in on that when we can.

Are you are you actively mentoring? Because you should be, you know, it's our responsibility to bring up the data scientists of the future. And so we all got to chip in on that when we can.

I think that's something that we could probably look into, too, as part of the data science hangout website, or we'll, we'll chat more about that internally. And Jenny, maybe I can reach out to you to ask for some more information to also put that into the LinkedIn group, too. And we can continue the discussion about that there as well. But along with our ladies, maybe also the R for data science, online learning community slack, good place to do that, too.

Social science, data science, and mixed methods

I see Justin, you had put one into the chat with a star for me to read. So the question was, as someone new to this discipline, can you speak about the intersection of social science and data science?