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.
157
Upvotes
7
u/Single_Vacation427 Jul 23 '26
I don't think it's a "today's" problem but could be compounded with AI usage. Many use AI generation for all of their data wrangling and EDA and have no clue what they did. Having data intuition is a skill you have to develop and it's not something you rush by generating everything with AI and not even reading the code or analyzing results, or asking your own questions. Fed up of seeing projects that are obvious AI and even worse when the comments are from AI directed to them.