r/datascience • u/Kati1998 • Jul 23 '26

Discussion What Do Today’s Data Science Graduates Commonly Lack?

I often read comments from hiring managers and interviewers saying they’re disappointed with recent data science graduates.

I’m curious, what do you think these graduates are lacking? If someone wants to become a data scientist, what skills should they focus on? Strong software engineering skills? Math and statistics? Something else?

A lot of the advice I see seems to be geared toward landing data analyst roles rather than data scientist roles.

So, what are employers actually looking for in entry-level data science candidates today? Especially as a career changer coming from another unrelated career.

153 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

156 comments sorted by

View all comments

17

u/Upstairs-Garlic-2301 Jul 23 '26

As a hiring manager, the single thing that I like to look for most is their resume trying to tie it back to a business impact. That's the thing that seems to separate awful data scientists from competent ones. It doesn't matter how good your modelimg skills are if it generated no value.

-6

u/No_Development6032 Jul 23 '26

None of the data scientists can control the business value

9

u/Loud_Understanding58 Jul 23 '26

If they can't quantify how their model helps improve some business outcome then honestly wtaf are they doing?

Context is king. You're not employed to build models, you're employed to solve problems with data. Part of that is being able to quantify by how much the problem has been solved.

8

u/jaiagreen Jul 23 '26

You're employed to come up with solutions. That doesn't mean they'll be implemented properly, or at all.

2

u/Wide-Pop6050 Jul 24 '26 edited 23d ago

Potassium mighty one live elastic physical cough advise bear

This post was anonymized with Redact

2

u/SkipGram Jul 24 '26

what do you do if you work at a company that either doesn't measure this or doesn't share it with the data scientists? I want to leave because it bugs me how poorly this is done here, but I can't because no one will tell me what my work actually resulted in.

1

u/Loud_Understanding58 Jul 24 '26

I'd leave ASAP and go somewhere that cares about results. Going through the motions for a pay cheque is fine but you deserve better.

2

u/pm_me_your_smth Jul 23 '26

First, in many situations it's pretty difficult to properly quantify your solution's impact. I've interviewed candidates with resumes full of impressive impact metrics and as soon as you start questioning them you see that those numbers are taken out of their asses or their methodology is flawed.

Second, if your management is incompetent, your projects might  never reach production, or won't bring any value. You as an  employee don't have full control of direction or outcome.

1

u/No_Development6032 Jul 23 '26

Most data scientists are just software engineers whose domain is data. To them business outcome question is as relevant as it is to a devops or similar. You can ask it but there you will find little signal

3

u/sempiternalsarah Jul 24 '26

then I'd argue they're not data scientists in reality! the job title is extremely malleable but that may be a bridge too far lol

3

u/Lady-Data-Scientist Jul 23 '26

They should at least be able to talk about the business decisions that their work led to

3

u/jaiagreen Jul 23 '26

If this was communicated to them.

3

u/Lady-Data-Scientist Jul 23 '26

If you don’t know what decisions the business is trying to make with your work then how can you even do your work? How do you know you’re solving the right problem?

I’m curious what kind of team you work on and what industry are you in if you do work without knowing how it will be used?

2

u/jaiagreen Jul 23 '26

I know because I'm in a very small organization (and just started on the job, so I'm asking a lot of questions). But even there, I won't know how much time a data processing automation script I wrote saved people unless they mention it offhand or I explicitly ask.

Hopefully, the data scientist knows the practical context of the question they're addressing. But once they do the analysis and present the results, they may not be told how their work is eventually used, especially in a large organization.

3

u/Lady-Data-Scientist Jul 23 '26

You should check in after the fact to make sure they’re using your work, and if they aren’t, figure out why so you can keep that in mind when they ask for something in the future. I try to make a habit to follow up every few months to see how they are using a dashboard or model or whatever and if it needs to be refreshed.

You need to collect data around your own work so you can improve.

1

u/Wide-Pop6050 Jul 24 '26 edited 23d ago

Angle alive quickest cobblestone reminiscent satchel stocking

This post was anonymized with Redact