Published on August 29th, 2017 | by Guest

Top 5 Skills a Data Scientist Must Have!

Over the years Data Science has gained immense prominence making it one of the most desired fields by the aspirants. However, the changing landscape of technology has compelled the candidates wonder what exactly should they learn to become a data scientist.

It is true that technology gets obsolete or upgraded in a year, but there should be a set of core competencies that can make an individual perfect for data scientist job. Intellipaat is one of the firms that help you garner your expertise in the fast growing field of data Science. Click here to learn about Data science.

Let’s take a worm’s eye-view of the Data Science skills that are must-haves in present times.

Expertise in Statistics/Mathematics- Data scientists are primarily known to do the most complicated jobs that a general technology geek cannot. Data Scientists perform all sorts of complicated calculations like regression, correlation, mean, clustering, multi-variate analysis, etc., and without a solid knowledge of statistics and mathematics, a person cannotfulfil the responsibilities with full efficiency. So, the first item in your cart should be statistics and mathematics.

A ‘GOOD GRASP’ of Analytics-The job of a data scientist doesn’t end with statistical calculations, but analyzing it and coming up with the outcomes to help management make decisions is the real job of a data scientist and it is certainly not limited to calculations, but looking at the numbers and identify the patterns. In other words, this skill is also called business acumen. Ability to visualize the distant future of the firm, analyze the potential challenges/opportunities, and suggest alternative strategies that will help the firm stay competitive in the market are some of the top activities that can be done using business analytics. Tools like SAS and SAPare used for this purpose in the top MNCs and hence candidates who are trained and certified in them get data science jobs sooner than other candidates.

Command of Programming- Goneare those days when scientists and mathematicians used to perform calculations on a calculator. Nowadays the world is getting overwhelmed with the emerging technologies paving ways for complicated computations to be performed in just few clicks. So it is not just computational abilities that a Data Scientist needs, but programming skills are also essential for them. The programming languages like R Programming and Python are some of the most popular technologies among aspiring data scientist. In fact, R Programming is known as the Lingua Franca for data analysis and is the most preferred programming language among the top data scientists across the globe.

Learn Business Intelligence- Analytics does not work alone. Data is the prime input for analytical techniques to be performed and hence big data goes hand-in-hand with analytics. Industries demand real-time analytics, which is possible only when the experts use powerful, fast, and smart tools like Tableau, QlikView, SAP HANA, Power BI, etc., to extract and analyze the bulks of raw data.

Big Data Technologies are Essential- As discussed above, Data Science is not a separate domain, but a blend of technology, analytics, and business acumen. Do you ever try to know how Facebook guesses the “people you may know”? Or how does it guess that you just checked out a shoe in Amazon? This is nothing but analytics made on Big Data. Big Data is changing the business dimensions and hence whether it’s an e-commerce site, a manufacturing firm, a social networking site, or a hotel booking application, it is seen everywhere. Technologies like Hadoop, Spark, Scala, etc., help the aspirants grab a foothold on the data scientist skills.

Conclusion

Though excellence comes with practice and effort, but having some tips and tricks help the aspirants hit the bull’s eye in one shot making the struggleeasier a big time. The pace at which technology is booming presently, soon the field of data science will be replaced by another area with different skill-set just like data science has dominated the technology domain now. However analysis is an integral part of a business and no business can survive this neck-to-neck competition without it. Therefore I suppose learning data science will not only save the employees from losing their jobs but will also open the doors of opportunities for aspirants as well.

Author Bio:

Sonal Maheshwari has 6 years of corporate experience in various technology platforms such as Big Data, Data Science, Salesforce, Digital Marketing, CRM, SQL, JAVA, Oracle, etc. She has worked for MNCs like Wenger & Watson Inc, CMC LIMITED, EXL Services Ltd., and Cognizant. She is a technology nerd and loves contributing to various open platforms through blogging. She is currently in association with a leading professional training provider, Intellipaat Software Solutions and strives to provide knowledge to aspirants and professionals through personal blogs, research, and innovative ideas.

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