How I Got My First Job as a Data Scientist
After hundreds of applications and rejection emails, I finally landed an interview with my current boss, Eric. During the interview, he asked me if I knew anything about BERT, a robust natural language processing algorithm developed by Google. Unfortunately, I had to tell him “No.”
I was disappointed but excited. This interview was the turning point in my job search. The field of data science is broad, and I was applying to various roles with little focus. But after my interview with Eric, I decided to focus on sequence models and natural language processing. I needed to learn about BERT.
Over the next two weeks, I completed the Udemy course Learn BERT-most powerful NLP algorithm by Google, and two guided projects from Coursera: Fine Tune BERT for Text Classification with TensorFlow and Sentiment Analysis with Deep Learning using BERT. I was so excited about what I had learned that I sent Eric an email to tell him how much he had motivated me. I told him about the projects I completed, and he was impressed. As a result, he scheduled a second interview with another team member.
During the second interview, I talked about my projects and my newfound knowledge of BERT. I was offered the job!
There are a few key things that I believe contributed to my success:
