Guest blog Ronald Buijsse: “What are the career perspectives for a professional with Data Science?”
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We would like to introduce you to Ronald Buijsse, who started in 2017 as one of the community academic directors for Professional Education at JADS. For this blog he did some in-depth data analysis on data collected on Professional Education programs since 2018, to answer the question: “What are the most common career moves for alumni of the Professional Education program?”.
What are the most common career moves for JADS Professional Education participants?
Since I joined JADS Professional Education in 2017, I have been involved in the graduation of about 100 participants . What was the impact of their exposure to the Professional Education programs at JADS? How did their life change? What are the most common career moves and what were the reasons for success?
Most common career moves?
Based on the large diversity in people entering the Data Entrepreneurship programs, also the career moves are very diverse. Most common moves have been:
- from a part-time to a full-time data science job
- from follower to change leader
- from regular employee to innovator
- from employee to entrepreneur
The move from a part-time to a full-time data science job is the most common move. This move is relevant for more than 50% of the participants. As soon as employers notice the data science interest, they will start to make use of it, by inviting the participant for challenging data science related issues. In our program even about 40% of the participants already made a move internally during the course. This move was valid for all type of participants: consultants, engineers, accountants, software engineers with both IT, finance and also law backgrounds, but also for people in health and government.
The move from follower to leader, relevant for about 25% of the participants, needs some explanation. Quite often, people with interest in data science are less interested in management positions. But when data science people experience that their solid advices don’t lead to the right impact, as management quite often neglects them, good data science people are triggered to opt for another approach. They start to learn more about convincing people. This topic is included in the Data Entrepreneurship part of the Professional Education program, with lessons on decision making, consulting skills, design thinking, pitching etc. And quite often the participants refer to this part of the program as ‘the part with the most impact’. As it helped them to stand up and go out, much earlier than before. And quite often they then got the role of change leader in their company.
The move from regular employee to innovator, which happens to about 15% of the participants, is supported by the challenge based and interactive way of education. People describe the data entrepreneurship program as a total new way of learning: very teasing, leading to a lot of curiosity and therefore much more fun. This is also possible due to the enormous amount of public available tools, datasets and communities, which are being used in the program. Combined with the challenge based and peer-to-peer type of education. This all contributes to change participants from employees to innovators.
The move from employee to entrepreneur most often is based on an already existing ambition to become entrepreneur or intrapreneur. About 5% of the participants made this move during or after the program. And although the professional education program is focussed on data science skills, it also includes lessons on entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and start-ups.
Reasons for success?
The main reasons for successful career moves in Data Science are not related only to great programming skills, although we are convinced that experience in working with for example Python, SQL and Jupyter Notebooks helps a lot in creating real decision impact. The main reasons for success were found after an in depth analysis of the results of 100+ graduates and have been summarized in one word: BamTuGo. This stands for “Be Ambitious”, “Team Up” and “Go Out”. These three capabilities have up till now proven to be the key for great career moves in Data Science. As Data Science requires curiosity combined with guts and also social skills to get other people involved from start to finish. Nothing happens without the technical data science skills, but also nothing happens when you focus only on technical data science skills. Soon we will write even more about the first data entrepreneurs, educated at JADS Professional Education, and happy and successful in their new roles or even successful with their start-up initiatives.
More information?
Do you want to know more about the Data Science for Professionals programs of JADS?
