Hi. I'm Jen. Welcome! One of the most common questions I'm asked about getting
into data science or data analytics is can I be a data scientist with a blank
degree? A math degree. A physics degree. A programming degree. A business degree.
Today I'm going to break down for you data science degree options and exactly
what degrees you can get into data science with. There are great data
scientist degree and data analyst degree programs out there but they're
relatively new. So if you're already in the workforce chances are you're not one
of the people that has these degrees unless you've graduated within the past
five or so years. On the other hand, maybe you are a junior or senior in
college and you've recently decided that you want to go into data analysis or
data science but your degrees in a different area.
Do you need to start over? Do you need to go back for another degree? Probably not.
Let's look at what that might mean for you. If you have a technical
background of any sort and specifically a technical degree of any sort chances
are extremely strong that that's exactly the data scientist degree that you need.
It is very common for people to go into data science and data analytics with
degrees in things like math, statistics, programming, computer science because
these are the really the background and the foundation of the work that you're
going to be doing as a data scientist. And prior to the last five to ten years
there really weren't programs that you could go to specifically for a data
scientist degree or data analyst degree. Maybe you don't specifically have a math
or statistics degree. Maybe you don't have an engineering degree or a
programming degree. That's okay too. The biggest thing that a good degree program
will have that will prepare you for a data scientist or data analyst job is
something that does have some math skills, some logic skills,
and hopefully some programming skills. Most of the programs that are out there
the area that tends to be the weakest is that programming skills unless maybe you
are a programmer or you have a computer science degree. A lot of people in the
business and math end may or may not have any exposure to programming in
their degree. That doesn't mean you can't build those skills though or that you
need to go specifically take a course on programming. I'm a self-taught programmer
and many people are the same. There are lots of free and cheap resources that
you can learn to program on your own outside of a degree environment. That
doesn't mean that those programs that teach you how to program or code are bad.
For some people that's the way they learn best. They need that structure and
environment to learn those data analyst programming skills or those data
scientists IT programming skills that you need for the job. If you do
specifically go take a programming training make sure that you're taking
one that goes into depth on a specific language. There are lots of options out
there as people try to cater towards this ever-growing market of data science
and data analytics and a lot of them give you a nice overview of all of the
different things you might encounter. Very, very few of them give you the
practical skills that you actually need to get a data scientist job though. Most
of them will touch on the highlights so you have that broad exposure but you
won't know enough that you can actually go get a job with that specific language.
If you do decide to take one of these classes or courses online or in-person
at your local community college or your local university then also take time to
learn one of the languages more in-depth or take some specific courses that go
into how to learn Python or how to learn R or how to learn SAS. Any of these
programming languages that are common to data science are ones that you should
focus on and pick an area to specialize. While there is a lot of room
for people that are generalists, more and more companies are looking for
specialists in certain languages. And there are a plethora of different
options for employment in each of these languages so you really can't make a
wrong choice. If you want to know more about how you might choose between the
the three most common languages if you're just getting started, I'll link to
another video where I talk specifically about how to pick which language that
you want to learn as you're getting into data science or data analyst jobs. If
you're pursuing a data analyst job you may or may not do very much programming.
Should you even bother to learn these? I think it's helpful to know at least
some programming because it gets into one of those other things I mentioned
which is logic. It forces you to think in a very structured and logical way and go
from step 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 and so on to get from something that you don't know
or don't have a solution to to something that you do know that possibly - probably -
answers some sort of business question or concern. Can you be a data scientist
without any degree at all? There are some cases where you can be and some
companies will hire without it especially if you have a lot of
experience. The key is going to be showing that you can use all of these
skills that you have all of the strengths that are necessary to do this
job. Some companies won't consider you without a degree and that's something
that you'll have to make a decision if it's important enough to you to go back
and get that degree or whether you'll just have to realize there are going to
be less companies that may employ you. The other consideration is it may take
you a lot longer to get into one of these roles. You may have to take some
stepping-stone roles to help prove yourself within a company or within that
skill set. This may look like starting as a data reporting analyst
or some sort of data preparation role before you move up successively into
higher-level roles including a data scientist position or a data analyst
position. You can get these jobs without a degree but it is going to be much more
difficult and the landscape will be very
competitive because there are plenty of people that do have this technical
background or a technical skill set to show that are going to be harder for you
to display. That's going to make it even more important that your resume is
extremely sharp to demonstrate exactly how you're able to utilize these skills
and fulfill the needs of the role. When you're ready to prepare your resume to
get a data scientist job or a data analyst job check out the link below
where I offer a training that teaches you everything that you need to know to
build a perfect data analyst or data scientist resume. Thanks so much for
watching. I hope to see you back next time. Please consider subscribing and
liking this video if you'd like to see more content just like this.