[hnthrwaway17283]

>As a hiring manager in the data science/ml world in healthcare, I generally think of degree programs in "data science", "machine learning", "artificial intelligence", "deep learning", etc as being less valuable than degree programs in the corresponding fields

What if the data science degree is essentially equivalent to a computer science degree? The program I was admitted to permits students to enroll in graduate-level computer science courses, such as algorithms, networking, and systems, which contribute to the degree requirements.

Would you still hold a bias against those individuals? The data science program I was admitted to is essentially a computer science degree augmented with some statistics and AI courses.

I believe it would be misguided to categorize all data science degrees under a single label and to discriminate against hiring from these programs based on false assumptions.

[reureu]

I'm obviously painting in broad strokes, and for sure "data science" as a degree has become more mainstream over the years. Personally, I tend to interview everyone I can fit into my schedule that's been handed to me by a recruiter. And I have hired grad school dropouts, bootcamp grads, no grad school, graduates of DS programs. There's so much variation across with all of these things that it's difficult to make a highly sensitive and highly specific rule based off education alone.

I'm just saying that I seem to have more luck with people coming out of those traditional programs. But, also, as you add more jobs to your resume, the specifics of your education matters less and less.

[hnthrwaway17283]

Thanks for the reply.

>I'm just saying that I seem to have more luck with people coming out of those traditional programs.

Would having a master's in data science and also a traditional undergraduate STEM degree be beneficial?

>as you add more jobs to your resume, the specifics of your education matters less and less.

In my case, I'm attempting to move from a non-technical role to a technical one, with my master's degree serving as my gateway into the field, since my previous job experience isn't relevant. Do you have any tips on how to make my resume stand out to recruiters?

[reureu]

There's really two parts to worry about: getting an interview, and then passing the interview.

The getting the interview part is difficult: some places will more liberally interview candidates, and others more heavily screen them. The three things that you can change to improve your odds here are tailoring your resume to use more words and phrases from the job description (trying to game any AI or human resume screener), networking to try to bypass the screening stage altogether, and casting as wide of a net as possible. Networking can be anything from having a social media presence, going to various forms of dev events, talking to friends about open roles they've heard about, or even cold emailing people you're interested in (although, if you do this, you'll probably have more luck asking to zoom/coffee for career advice than asking if they have a job available for you). And then, regarding the role you're targeting, I moved into increasingly technical roles starting as a data analyst-- I know not everyone would agree with this approach, but it worked well for me. I was a really technical analyst, who became a data scientist, who worked up the ranks, and then started moving between DE/MLE/DS roles. But this was also back in the days when "data scientist" was a new term, and before it got so watered down-- so maybe with title inflation, my original "data analyst" jobs might be "data scientist" jobs today? Anyway, my point is that I think it's easier to slowly slide in to your ideal role than it is to try to hop directly into it.

The passing the interview part ends up being so much about how you communicate and frame work that you've done. It sucks because this ends up inadvertently screening out really smart/good people that struggle with this kind of thinking (and screening in people who are good at talking but suck at doing e.g., many MBAs). But once you're talking to a live person, I think emphasizing how your degrees (both grad and ugrad) have really prepared you for exactly the role in front of you. You can also often take non-technical experience as evidence of certain components of the technical job requirements. Like, I worked in a restaurant when I was a teenager, and you better believe that prepared me to deal with many concurrent demands from many different sources, and required me to think on my feet about the priority/order of operations. So, when I was earlier in my career, I got really good at answering questions along the lines of "you know, I haven't done this work in a single role, but I have experience doing everything you're asking for over multiple roles..."

But it sounds like a lot of the issue you're running into is just getting in the door to begin with? Unfortunately, I think so much of it comes down to luck-- just keep applying to as large of a variety of jobs as possible, and network as much as you can.

[hnthrwaway17283]

Thanks for these detailed answers!

[relyativist]

I am an expert with medical imaging domain, and doing research on AI on medical data. However, recruiters in most cases skip my CV because of not relevant ML/CS degree or previous experience.