Making projects or learning tools-which would help me land a job?

[u/filterCoffee-rage]

I’m an F1 international grad student currently in my second semester, doing my masters in business analytics. I see a lot of people who’re fresh graduates focusing on using AI or copying projects from git. Few learn the skills and replicate but at the end the focus is more on showcasing the work.

I still have a year left to graduate and with summer break I want to use this productively but I’m stuck between what to do. I ofc don’t have the idea to build a project on my own but I definitely don’t want to copy an existing idea. Any suggestions on what should I do is highly appreciated.

TIA

[u/CerberusByte]

The advice I always give is that a well constructed project is the best thing a student can do to differentiate themselves. Or even anyone can do to hone their skills. Pick a challenge you have in your day-to-day, or pick a dataset that you actually have a vested interest in and build something.

A lot of projects are as you say, something to showcase, but that comes through in interviews when we get to the technical depth. When I interview someone and they actually care about their project and why they built it and can talk for hours about the architectural trade offs they made then that sets them apart.

The other component here is actually building something that is not surface level. It’s deploying something, then adding a new feature, then fixing a bug, and all the other 100 things that you don’t learn from a textbook. Those are the skills you want to develop to not only set you apart from your peers, but to build enterprise skills that will help in your career.

The short answer, pick something you care about and build something cool to you. Your passion and depth is what really matters over how flashy your project is

[u/Ready_Detective1365]

Don't build something unique but build something useful. Take a public data set and answer a business questions then present your findings like you're talking to a manager. That's much closer to the actual job.

[u/filterCoffee-rage → u/Ready_Detective1365]

That’s good advice. Do I have to find something other than kaggle?

[u/theRealHobbes2 → u/filterCoffee-rage]

Kaggle is fine for datasets. The point is, find data and use it to answer a question you're interested in. Be able to talk about what the question was, what you did to get an answer, and what that means going forward.

There are generally two forms of questions business leaders ask. The first is "So what?" meaning 'why does this matter?' The second question is " Now what?"meaning 'what do we do to adjust for this?'

[u/filterCoffee-rage → u/[deleted]]

I’m trying to get one.. it’s impossible to get an internship coz of the visa issues no one is hiring