If you’re a curious person, you may enjoy a career in data science, marketing research, or consumer insights. Businesses report that there is a growing need for data specialists—analysts, engineers, scientists, translators, and cybersecurity managers—to grasp the power of data insights to drive major business initiatives. Business professionals across organizations depend on analytical know-how to make informed decisions with real-time insights. Ongoing data evolution requires data scientists to learn and adopt new technology to accelerate organizational data strategies.
For budding professionals in the data science/consumer insights field, it’s essential to have foundational knowledge in applied mathematics, statistics, data analytics and visualization, machine learning, computer science, or data engineering. These may be courses you wish to add to your upper-level academic work. You can also apply the resulting skill sets to your brand as you investigate internships and projects. Keep in mind that insights specialists must be able to communicate and present complex findings to cross-functional teams clearly and succinctly, driving data-driven decision-making from those findings.
Internal marketing departments generally rely on analysts to handle business intelligence and data scientists to aggregate company data. Read this article to better understand the role differences between a marketing analyst and a data scientist. Review the differences in salaries for marketing analysts and data scientists here.
Now build a chart summarizing the skills necessary for both roles and then identify which of those skills you feel you already possess and which of those you need to work on. For those skills that you need to develop, identify one or two steps you can take to add this to your personal brand.