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Talk Data to Me: A day in the life of a Junior Data Scientist

Data scientist at laptop

ARTICLE SUMMARY

Data Scientist are analytical specialists, responsible for collecting, analysing and interpreting data. This data is then turned into meaningful information that companies can use to improve their businesses.

Data Scientist are analytical specialists, responsible for collecting, analysing and interpreting data. This data is then turned into meaningful information that companies can use to improve their businesses.

Data is extracted from a range of sources, using algorithmic, data mining, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other statistical tools.

Data scientists are in popular demand, with companies facing ever more big data, hoping to extract useful information from it and make decisions.

Hannah Alexander is one such scientist! Hannah is a Junior Data Scientist at Ascent and she shares with us her experiences in her role, the challenges and opportunities she’s faced, as well as how companies can influence young females to join the tech movement.

hello everyone thank you for listening in as always I am Kaylee Bateman the content director at she can code and
today we’re going to cover the wonderful world of data science data scientists are analytical Specialists responsible
for collecting analyzing and interpreting data this data is then turned into meaningful information that
companies can use to improve their businesses but with companies facing more big data than ever before data
scientists are in popular demand and that she can code we’re lucky to say we’ve backed one for the next half an
hour to reveal just what her working day is like so a warm welcome to Hannah Alexander who is a junior scientist at
Ascent welcome Hannah hello thank you for having me thank you so much for
joining us and we’ve got a lot of questions to get through today but we would love to start with a bit of a
background about yourself if that’s okay yeah of course um so I went to
um university of bath and I actually did a civil engineering degree um and during my time there I did a
dissertation in my final year and it was I kind of just picked one out the blue
like I kind of I just put it on it sounded really interesting and I didn’t know that it was actually something that
would now be called data science and I really enjoyed it and I asked my tutor I
was like what is this can’t use for a job and it’s like yeah it’s called data science um and then I applied
um for jobs um as a data scientist and I applied as an ascent and I’ve had my job here
um since September 2020 so I’ve been here just over two years now and really
enjoyed it we learned it’s been good so when you found out about the job then did somebody come in and talk about it
or did you see a job um that you know maybe your tutor spoke about or how did it come up it was
actually so it was actually my flatmates when I couldn’t make the careers Fair one one day and my flatmates went and
the company is now called assembly used to be called mango and they help they they used to give out loads of like toy
cats and they all came back with these Tommy cats and I was like where what are these from they were like oh it’s this data science company was giving them out
they seemed really cool maybe you should apply that and um and I did and that’s yeah type on from their careers there oh
I see do you still have the toy cat that uh encouraged you into a career I
collected a few more along the way I haven’t heard that before I said that
somebody fell into their career um what encouraged you into a career in
Tech so I kind of found that because it’s so quickly expanding
there’s always new things to learn um and it’s such a kind of progressive
environment that people are always open to like new ideas and different of doing things
um even if you’re like junior senior people are still really interested in your opinion and and how we can improve
the way things are done because I think it’s kind of because it’s such a quickly expanding area that no one’s going to be
able to know everything themselves so it’s kind of everyone can have their say and contribute and
um everyone’s really open to ideas so it’s very it kind of Fosters a lot of creativity which is really exciting
yeah when you went to that careers there was was there anything in particular that you saw about you know not just
about the job that that you were interested in but about a career in Tech I mean you mentioned that it was you
know it’s really fast pace um and then you get to work with a range of people was there anything about that
Affair that you and your friends fought actually you know I haven’t considered a career in this area but this could
definitely be for me um I think that’s quite like pretty much
the main things really just that I I just say I feel like it’s an environment Tech in general I feel like people who
work there kind of the companies tend to look after their employees really well which is really nice yeah and just
always an added benefit to be like feel like you’re really um I don’t know
um respect respected and like they want they want you there
um and yeah I think it is just those like the collaboration with lots of different
Industries at the same time it’s really just in your Tech bubble even if it’s even if it’s other people in Tech
they’re in different areas so you kind of have to dip your toe into lots of areas if you like all the times it keeps
it very interesting yeah yeah and you you’re allowed to have ideas in Tech
aren’t you then then you’re encouraged to be an idea Factory and which means that you know you can keep growing in
yourself and in your career um can you tell us a little bit about your day today and what you do as a data
scientist um so my day-to-day is actually it will it varies depending on what projects I’m
on because as I work as a consultant I’m usually on projects and they last about probably like three to six months
depending on the length so you move around a lot which is one of the things that keeps it really interesting
um but most mornings start with what we call like a stand-up so we will meet on
on teams because I pretty much always work remotely um and then we
discuss like what we plan to do in the day um if anyone has any problems or
questions or blockers um and then we kind of use that time to decide how we’re gonna solve any
problems and how we’re going to move forward in the day um and then for like a large part of the
day um I’ll work independently to complete those tasks and
um I’m kind of always able to reach out to anyone if I if I need to talk to them or ask questions and equally it comes
back the same way it’s not I don’t really find that because I’m a junior people are just like I’m not
gonna ask how to do something because um yeah people don’t don’t just assume
that you don’t have to do something just because you’re a bit more Junior which is nice um and quite often I’ll have calls with the
clients as well to kind of sometimes they want to know where we’re at like how how’s progress going is you’ve got
to take the time to explain to them kind of like in non-technical terms what you’ve been
doing and what you found out so far um and sometimes and they just kind of want
to know like what do you what is achievable because that’s not always known at the beginning of a project like
how what exactly we can achieve because it depends on what data exists if I do
data science if there’s no data there um so yeah it’s usually really really quite
busy and buried um which is nice it’s like the mix of but it’ll just you know put your headphones on and crack on with work but
it’s having the day broken up with um meetings and talking to people yeah it’s your day actually what you thought
it was going to be when you replied because I think we’ve especially in data people seem to think you know it’s it’s
very it’s a very complex role it’s very technical role and there are probably times where I mean those of us not
working in data we think it seems like quite dry you probably wouldn’t have an opportunity to to have
um you know much variation or to to make uh you know make change
um but it doesn’t sound like that in your day is it was that something that you thought maybe when you joined but
you know your mind has changed now you’re in the role and you can see the impact that you can have with data
yeah it’s definitely rarely it rarely doesn’t get boring um because there is like there’s always
like kind of new problems to solve um I think it’s when a project doesn’t start
to finish completely flawlessly um yeah I don’t think I think I thought there’d be a lot more
um maybe just you know as I said like putting your headphones in and just doing boring tasks but I’ve not really
found that at all actually there’s a lot of times where um I I mean a lot of calls all the time
because you look for questions or needful updates and um yes it’s just yeah very diverse days
um there are some boring tasks usually like at the end of a project for you writing all the documentation and
wrapping it all up but a lot of it is um a lot more it’s more exploring and
every Project’s very different there’s always different things to explore with the data rather than doing the same things over and over again it’s not
really a one case fits all kind of approached it’s going to be different all the times you produce your brain a lot which I like
yeah and I didn’t want to use the word boring but you used it
but that is exactly it and I think that that’s a stereotype that comes attached to a lot of jobs in Tech until you work
in them and realize actually what they’re about and the impact that you get to make and the variety in your day
and I think that’s something that our community you know if they don’t already work in data that is something that they
might might think of that’s a word that they might go straight to that it will be boring and but as you said it’s just
like any other regular Tech job really great fun you get to do a range of tasks
and it’s incredibly fast paced so yeah another one of those stereotypes in
technology yeah that’s definitely one of the things that makes it more interesting because I did work for I did
well I did a year in industry in Engineering in the middle of my degree and I feel like engineering when you
talk about like Building Bridges and stuff that sounds really exciting but I actually found that really boring because on your day-to-day you’re not
actually doing all this cool exciting things it’s a lot of like you’re designing a bolt or
you’re like designing a beam and that’s like yeah you’re not really involved with like the big picture not not close
it doesn’t feel like it on you every day but um in this job you can kind of you see
like the fruits of your labor very quickly if you well because it’s just yeah it doesn’t take very long to kind
of well on on the grand scheme of things it doesn’t take a really long time to um get you know good good outputs from
from your work so it’s it’s nice to see the impact that you make really quickly on a short short time scale yes yeah
that must be nice to work in projects where you see an end to them quite fast
it’s not it’s some projects will go on for months and months and there’s no no ending you have no um satisfaction in
seeing it actually and be completed but as you mentioned Tech is incredibly fast and so is data
um but what sort of skills and qualifications do you need to work in data science
um so I say it to Key ones are being able to
um kind of think outside the box and solve kind of bespoke problems because
as I kind of touched on I didn’t do a data science degree or a maths degree I
did an engineering degree but I think that actually really helped because a lot of it was
we’d kind of learn stuff in lectures and then it would be like okay now apply this to a real life situation it’s
completely different than anything we’ve told you but it’s still the same information but you’ve got to be able to actually apply it and use it in a
slightly different way and that’s kind of a really good skill I found really useful I find it’s I’m a lot more
confident at being able to kind of tackle a problem and look at it from different angles and think about how I’d
actually resolve it so I think that’s really important thing for that to do um and even if you can’t code I feel
like that’s actually something that’s easy to pick up as you you can pick it up as you go along there’s so
much on the internet and so many resources and I feel like that’s actually a smaller part than people
think in data science I think there’s other skills that are really kind of more important
um so often in Tech about coding and that you can’t come into techness you know how to code and you know it’s
absolutely a skill that you have to have before you come in and you have to take a computer science degree and as you
said nine times out of ten that is just not the case within technology and even said there within data you don’t even
have to know that or it’s something you can pick up along the way um and that you know it’s an environment
where you can continually learn anyway so um I think that puts a lot of people off
yeah no for sure and I think because because I learned a little bit of code at Uni and I
I found it really daunting when we were first told though you’re gonna do a coding module I was like God I can’t do
that like that’s way too hard but once you actually just really tackle it and just kind of get stuck in it it does get
I found it quite once you’re over the hurdle it gets so much easier it’s just kind of if you know how to Google you can learn
how to code but it’s all on if you ask if you just Google what you want to be able to do someone’s done it before
somewhere and you can just tweak the code and use it for your own purpose so it’s not
as scary as it looks yes um yeah and the other skill I think is really important
is communication um because we as a kind of touched on I
mean I talk to the clients quite a lot and a lot of them don’t have like a data science background so if you’ve built
this crazy machine learning model and give it to them they’ll kind of just be like so what what does this mean why did
you give this to me so you have to be able to understand what you’ve done and then translate it into a more
like usable information and which is yeah that’s really important yeah yeah
extremely useful skill um within within the world of work and have you faced any challenges coming
into into the tech industry and into data science um but if so how did you overcome them
um the one that kind of Springs to mind is when I was so I was working on an internal project for our company
um with a few other people and we wanted to be able to compare the skills that we
had as a company to um what was in demand on on projects
and so we wanted to look at our marketing data that we had as a company
and kind of see what skills other companies were asking for from us
um and we knew that data did exist we didn’t know cobal state it was in or anything so we had this question
um and then we actually want to explore the data and it was actually pretty empty and it it was yeah it was unusable
um so we kind of we didn’t want to just say we couldn’t do anything because we
were still really interested so we got to tweak our initial plan um and we decided to look at what other
companies hiring permanent staff not consultants and we’re looking for so we ended up scraping Glassdoor and
comparing what um like what job adverts were asking for
versus what we had um and I think we ended up answering a pretty similar question and we still
found some really interesting results and information from that um and I think from that we kind of
learned it’s really important to work dynamically and communicate well your colleagues and kind of always think
every day like you know are we answering what we want to answer like are we on the right track
um have we you know is there is there blockers um
yeah and not don’t just plan for like 10 weeks in the future and try and stick to that family to be prepared to change and
kind of develop your your initial plan and that just means it’s wrong it just means that you know you have to adapt to
what was available yeah yeah and and obviously that’s where that that communication skill comes in
as well that you mentioned earlier which actually um you mentioned as well about working remotely
um and how has that been in terms of communicating with your team and you know because it doesn’t I think
previously I probably would have thought all data scientists you sit at home and you work on your own it’s quite isolated
but by the sound a bit you communicate with your colleagues on a day-to-day basis and you work remotely and it
sounds like you know they’re absolutely um flows fine and um you know it’s like
you have contact with your team every day yeah yeah every day um so it’s actually it’s funny because I
I would because I um graduated during coverage so I’ve always looked remotely but I would kind of quite like to go
into the office more just there’s not usually people in but just the human interaction but it’s actually quite
difficult to work from the office because because I consult I work with I
pretty much I don’t think anyone actually on my team at the building is in Bristol was where I’m based so I
wouldn’t they wouldn’t be in the same office with me anyway so I’d have to constantly go into meeting rooms
whenever I wanted to talk to anyone whereas now if someone’s if I’m at home if someone does ping somebody says you
free for a quick chat I can just just call them so having to have the fact of going into different rooms with all my
staff and then usually I don’t have two screens which I don’t really need to be able to show people things and yeah it’s
actually way harder to work in the office actually now which is really strange because I’m sure if someone said that like three years ago they think
that was crazy but it was so much easier yeah and trying to bring in hybrid
biking I think at the start was quite hard for people as well because we were so used to uh to being at home and like
you said you’re moving around the office trying to do meetings you’re trying to find some quiet within the office
um it was a very strange time I think to get into that that Rhythm I found myself when I started
um going into an office again I found myself booked on calls with other people that were at home and I would just sit
in the office and do Zoom calls with other people that were at home and not in the office on the day that I was in
so now what’s the point of that you know it’s I still wasn’t meeting them in is
because our team was so big that I hadn’t coordinated with who was going to
be in um it just seemed quite pointless to to be fair but um on a smaller team that’s
easy to coordinate and she can cope we like to go in because we can see each other and you’re absolutely right with
that human interaction um is invaluable to to meet with your team and to bond with your team and but
you’re right it’s it’s a struggle sometimes to um you know if you’re doing calls or you
kind of have to set that day aside don’t you for something different then yeah the work of the plan like a an easier
day or a quiet today when I go into the office which is quite funny yeah
especially in your role if you really have to concentrate and then suddenly you go from a quiet home environment to
lots of people around you in the office um I’m sure you’re sort of sitting there with your headphones on thinking kind of
everybody around me be quiet you know yeah I was talking to them Genie about this we’re like we just sit there with
our headphones on like why are we even here trying to concentrate yeah yeah know the
feeling but it’s nice to have had the option at least nowadays and what do you love
about your role um so one of the things I I really really
like is vanilla to like resolve a lot of my own problems um and not being like blocked by having
to wait for a senior member of staff to help me um because just because there’s such a good Community online in in data ending
code that as I kind of touched on before like if you’ve got a problem or you want to know how to code something someone’s
probably done something similar before so you could at least start on it and make some progress and that’s not to say
I don’t ask for help I definitely do but it’s not as [Music] um
yeah it’s not as difficult to kind of find the solutions to things and some other jobs um are definitely found in engineering
there’s nothing online so if you don’t know how to do it you can wait for someone to help you which is can be a
bit frustrating I always feel really guilty when I’m like stuck waiting to be able to do something so I I really love
that I think everybody suits my personality um and then also be a consultant is
really good because as I kind of mentioned before you move projects quite a lot or yeah a lot every few months so
I don’t really get bored because kind of by the time you’ve been on one for a while you start getting a bit bored it
finishes and then you do something else and at the beginning it’s always very new and exciting and yeah the day’s been
really quick so that’s yeah that’s a good Plus yeah and you mentioned that
um in your role obviously everything you can find online and there and there are lots of places to reach out to do uh
reach out to any women’s groups in Tech or is it there any that you’ve got your eye on that you’d like to you know be
looking to join or to network with uh I’m definitely open to but uh not
currently um yeah if I if I look for problems I usually just use a quick Google search
yeah and as you say there’s always someone out there that done something similar or you you know
look at people’s forums and I know there are a lot of women in Tech forums that offer great answers to problems and
things so there’s always that communication Network out there that you know you can you can reach out to that
Network and always find an answer for something which as you mentioned in you know other roles such as engineering
um you might not find that support sometimes and I think if you ever did find yourself feeling a
little bit isolated in technology there are lots of women in Tech groups that you can reach out to and to to work on
new projects and and build new things so um yeah you know you never quite fill on
your own in technology so that’s a good thing about the industry foreign
do you have any advice for our listeners um in getting into Tech or more
specifically data science now a lot of our community are very interested in data science and what it entails if they
were new to to you know just starting to think about it what where should they
get started what kind of advice would you offer them so there’s so there’s so many resources
online so if you’re just you didn’t know how to code there’s I I’ve used that
there’s a twinkle code academy which is I think it’s quite well known but it’s free and really useful to like learn how
to just basically start yeah um yeah really really good and
if you already know how to code but you want to kind of apply things to a bit more data science
um kaggle’s really good if you want to hurt um so they this is kind of a website
where people put on problems they have sometimes it’s real company sometimes it’s just I think
just made up um but then it’s kind of a day they usually data science problems so optimizing
things and and machine learning problems that sort of thing and
you you can download the data set you can try and solve the problem and then
upload your results and whoever gets the best one uh sometimes is actual like
money prizes um but yeah so it’s really good and you can look at other people’s code and like
see where your mistakes were and how you could have done it better and that’s a really good way to learn um and then
I think also there’s some really good uh YouTube channels um I can’t think of any
names on top of my head who do like just series about doing machine learning or
um or even just like starting and learning how to code like well like object-oriented programming and good
practice um and then I’ll still look really really good actually really well explained and they always upload all
their code afterwards if you wanted to take a look and play around with it um yeah definitely the main resources I
would go to are there any um favorite you know sort of resources in terms of books that you turn to or or
anything like that or anything interesting that you’ve read that you think would be of interest to a
community in that area um so there’s a good book called machine learning yearning
um which is all about machine learning problems best practice um yeah so that’s quite good that we’ve
everyone kind of kind of circulated around a certain um a monster data scientists so we
really like it and so that’s probably yeah the main book that I would recommend in terms of data science
and in technology as we’ve mentioned before it’s kind of a an environment where you’re allowed to you know learn
on the job and and you know keep improving your skills and and moving
forward are there any you know not necessarily at the moment but is
there anything in the in the future that you would like to you know um other courses that you think you might want to
take into the future or other areas that you might move into as you progress in your career
so I the term data scientists is kind of evolving I mean I’ve only been in it for
a couple of years this is just from what I’ve heard from people who’ve done it for a bit longer but we definitely do a lot more data engineering now as we
definitely often have to kind of figure out how to do that part as well and and
that can be really interesting and like learning how to deploy what we’ve done so it’s
accessible from different kind of um well for different people from different areas
um I would really like to do more machine learning I think it’s really really
interesting um and that kind of like the main areas
really um we’re definitely moving more onto using Microsoft to show so that’s
another resource we will want to get into data science I think that’s been very uh very asked for in the community
we can use Microsoft to share um and yes I use that more I’ve not used it a
lot um and yeah be kind of more in tune with where that’s going and
kind of the flexibility that gives me to stay a scientist
woman in how do you think companies can encourage more women in into the industry and you
yourself you said that you you know found out about your job a career is fair do you think that you know more
University open days partner schemes what what is it that you think companies should be doing
yes I think Korea has been a really really good I think making
I think it’s probably improved a bit more now but making people know that date science is like a thing because I didn’t even I didn’t really know when I
found out about data science I think it was it was like being done but it wasn’t definitely wasn’t a great option whereas
I think I think now it has become one um I think for women in particular I think
it’s important to make it seem less intimidating than it than it is because it’s really not and I
think a lot of people in Tech use a lot of big buzzwords and they they
yeah it almost seems like they’re talking a different language but in my head the way I kind of see that as if
someone’s you know using all these words and confusing people that’s their their problem that they’re
doing something wrong they’ll do their job properly they should it’s important to be able to communicate well and not
use those of jargon and confuse other people um so yeah just like maybe try to make people
more aware of you know it’s not it’s not you it’s not your fault loads people don’t understand what these things mean
um I always try and do it with the graduates that we’ve got always tell them like no no I don’t know what that means either it’s fine don’t worry about
it just Google it asks us questions that’s super important um
so yeah maybe we’ll even more University events I think that’s good I think there’s so many
people at University who don’t know what they want to do and they think data science is actually really
or maybe I think at least in the past I think that’s kind of been people have ended up for data science but they’ve
not really been 100 sure what they they want necessarily and I think that’s okay to not know straight away what you want
to do um so more talks at universities um and kind of highlighting like the cool
stuff that data science has done like I think I think I mean maybe this isn’t in a good light but stuff for the Cambridge analytica
and things like that being in the news and it actually sounds really interesting and I think that’s kind of what sparked my
um kind of Interest I was like this sounds really cool like that I don’t I don’t even realize this is possible and um
yeah the impact that you actually make within your role and I think you’re right that is something that within Tech
as a whole people don’t realize the the impact that they they can have on society and and uh day to day and so
you’re absolutely right there and hearing about it a careers fair and she said you took a completely different
degree that had lots of transferable skills into Tech and so you know if you
hadn’t bumped into those people if your friends hadn’t told you uh about the options there and you might have ended
up in engineering and then actually before you know later down the line this this isn’t for me and so you’re right I
think it’s the visibility there as well making sure that companies get into your news and talk to the students
yeah definitely like having more jobs available throughout the country I feel like London is becoming like a huge hub
for data science and there’s people like me who don’t want to live in London at all so it’s like I mean yes I love
Bristol but um I think if there was and it was a perfect job for working from home but
not everyone wants to always be working from home they’re about to go into the office and stuff so and then maybe some
expansion to maybe more Northern cities rather than just keeping it in this one
and help and well we are out of time I’m afraid and um but thank you so much for I mean
as mentioned I didn’t want to use the word boring today but you did at the start and thank you so much for helping
to break down that barrier um you know and and basically um bust the myth that that data science
going into that area a career in that area um you know could be quite dry your day
doesn’t sound like that at all and I think that’s something that our community would really find valuable
here in today so thank you so much for for coming in and um sharing your insights Hannah no problem thank you for
having me thank you and as always everybody thank you so much for listening and we hope to see you again
next time

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