Can You Get a Job After a Data Science Bootcamp?

Absolutely! The entire bootcamp concept is to give you the knowledge you require to start a new career. A bootcamp certificate on your resume shows that you’ve put in the work to acquire the skills you need to be employable. True, your certificate isn’t a golden ticket that’s going to get you a six-figure job right out of school, but your bootcamp will very likely include some type of career services that will help you find employment. Your boot camp is obviously going to want you to secure a data science role. That is, after all, its raison d’être. 

What Job Prospects and Career Paths are available for Data Science Bootcamp Graduates?

As a data science bootcamp graduate, you’ll be able to enter the thriving (and sexy, according to the Harvard Business Review) world of data science. The field is a broad one, and the people who make up job titles have had a field day creating names for data science roles. Thus, you’ll encounter not only Data Scientist and Data Analyst, but also titles like Decision Scientist, Big Data Analytics Consultant, Business Intelligence Analyst, Financial Analyst, Statistician, Database Administrator, Data Engineer, and Machine Learning Engineer. Different sets of duties do correspond to all these titles, but, titles notwithstanding, you’ll be working with data in one capacity or another. For example, while Data Scientists are engaged with the regressive models that predict a company’s future, Data Analysts are more like statisticians who examine data with an eye to explaining past performance.

Those two concepts, illuminating past performance and predicting future business events, break down the data science field into two macro-categories. Within them lie a variety of jobs (to go with the list of titles above), depending on how you specialize and to which part of the data science process you become attached. You may become an expert in machine learning, for example, and, thus, most of your on-the-job duties will involve working with artificial intelligence. On the other hand, you may end up working with business intelligence software for data visualization, or in any other number of niches. They’re doing a lot with data these days, and coming up with new ways to use it seemingly every day, whence the wide range of opportunities the field provides.

Are Data Science Bootcamps Good for Beginners?

Although there are exceptions, most bootcamps are designed for beginners with no background in computer science beyond the ability to operate one. Indeed, that rather is the entire point of bootcamp education: to train beginners so they’ll be employable in a new, more lucrative, field. There’s no need to be shy about not knowing a mean from a median when you begin a data science bootcamp: you’ll find out pretty quickly, probably on your first day of class. The remarkable thing about a bootcamp is the way in which it can take you from square one all the way through to such complex topics as machine learning in not too much more than a month.

It’s not where you start, but where you finish: even if you had no prior experience with data science when you began your bootcamp, you’ll end it with sufficient knowledge to be able to assume an entry-level role in the field. Your training is going to play an essential role in getting you hired, although any work experience you may have is going to improve your chances as a job candidate. Whatever you did before you signed up for a data science bootcamp taught you how to be a good employee and how to work on a team. Training plus experience plus your apparent willingness to learn should establish you as a strong candidate for any entry-level job in data science. 

What Career Services Do Data Science Bootcamps Offer?

Different bootcamps offer different types of career services. Most providers will pair you with someone who can work with you 1-to-1, be it a dedicated career counselor, mentor, or whatever else your school opts to call it. At Noble Desktop, students receive a number of sessions with a mentor with experience working in data science. The time with your mentor is yours to spend as you like: there’s no cookie-cutter pattern that needs to be followed, so, if you need more help with one thing and less with another, you can adjust your mentoring sessions accordingly.

Some schools also offer career services departments that actively seek out job opportunities for which you can apply, although this type of assistance is generally to be found only with the more expensive bottcamps. Other providers have alumni networks upon which they can draw to locate vacant positions, while others bring in alumni and data science veterans to address their students and give them a sneak preview of the job search process and what working as a data scientist is like.

Whatever the frosting and sprinkles on top, the actual career services cake is preparing you for the job market by working with you on the documents that lie at the heart of any job search, namely your resume and portfolio. There is more than one way to arrange the salient facts of your professional experience into a cohesive and impressive whole. An expert’s input can be invaluable on what to include and where to put it, even if you’re going to have to tailor your resume for each new application. Your portfolio is the thing that shows HR officers that you know about the technical side of data science from your time in class. It generally features projects you worked on in school, and, again, an expert opinion on how it all should be arranged and where it should be featured is invaluable. In addition to this, any career services department worth its salt will also initiate you into the mysteries of the cover letter, and offer coaching for those interviews (behavioral and technical) you’ll be getting in droves.

What Jobs will a Data Science Bootcamp Qualify Me For?

You’re not going to be able to start at the top in data science (nor in anything else, for that matter.) Entry-level jobs in the field are usually labeled junior positions, although that’s just a term companies use to arrange their employees into neat boxes. Among the job titles for which you’ll be eligible with a bootcamp education are Junior Data Scientist, Junior Data Engineer, Junior Data Analyst, and further, slightly more specialized positions such as Junior Database Administrator and Junior Machine Learning Analyst.

These roles are beginner versions of frequently encountered job titles, and are designed to bridge the gap between school and work. You’ll learn from your superiors how data science works in the real world. (An example: in bootcamps, data is usually pre-cleaned before it’s worked on, or, simply because of time constraints, is presented to students as almost workable. In the real world, unstructured data is just that: a big hodgepodge of all kinds of information, and sorting through it will probably take 75% of the time spent on a real-life data project.) Thus, these aren’t precisely miniature versions of more senior roles: they’re learning positions, as well as occasionally probationary, in that the company that hires you wants to make sure that you’ll fit in and be able to learn on the job.

Can I Freelance After Completing a Data Science Bootcamp?

There are such animals as freelance data scientists, although they don’t usually break free of their corporate shackles before they’ve acquired at least two years’ experience working in the field. You can’t set out a shingle that says “Numpy the Panda, Data Scientist” right after finishing your bootcamp and expect clients to flock to you. Still, there is definitely a market for freelancers, either to work on special projects or to provide data analysis to companies that can’t afford a full-time data science department.

Freelancing has many advantages over salaried employment: you gain the freedom to work when you want and (often) where you want, especially as a lot of freelance gigs today are remote. That much freedom comes at a price, however, and that price is steady employment. Some people love the freelance lifestyle, but, if you have more risk avoidance than you have risk tolerance, you’re not cut out for being your own boss. If freelancing is your goal, however, you’re going to want to find a bootcamp with a career services department that can help you plant the seeds for the professional network you’re going to need to secure clients when the time comes for you to break out on your own. You should also try to secure a starter job that will set you up with the knowledge and experience to embark on a freelance career. Most freelancers have a particular niche; you’re going to want your work experience to correspond to that niche as closely as possible.

Are Data Science Bootcamps Good for Upskilling?

For someone who is already gainfully employed, a bootcamp is a highly effective way to increase your skill level with an eye to a promotion or a shift in career emphasis. Take the case of someone who’s got experience as a programmer and a degree to match: shifting to data science is a potentially good move, as jobs in the field are abundant despite the fierce competition for them. Despite the education and experience you already have, however, there’s still a skills gap that needs to be filled if you’re to make the switch, and a bootcamp can close that gap, probably more efficiently and in less time than any other method.

You should, however, have a very clear picture of the skills you need to acquire, and then align yourself with a bootcamp that teaches them. Bootcamps are often designed for beginners, and, thus, may not cover the more advanced material you want to learn as an upskiller. You may, in fact, not really need an A-to-Z bootcamp, but, perhaps, a few individual classes in what you need to learn. Many bootcamp providers offer such classes, which sometimes coincide with the more advanced modules of their bootcamps. Noble Desktop, for example, offers a Python for Data Science & Machine Learning Bootcamp that is much briefer than the certificate program that culminates with those modules

Your employer may even send you to such classes (and pay for them) to upskill current staff rather than taking on new employees. If such an opportunity presents itself, you should definitely take it. No one ever died from having too many marketable skills.

What Does a Data Science Bootcamp Offer Over Other Means of Finding a Job?

A data science bootcamp is designed with one purpose in mind: teaching you the skills you need to get a job. This applies across the bootcamp spectrum. Bootcamps differ in how they teach you and prepare you for the job market, but they all share the same common goal. You’ll learn the skills that are currently in demand, to such an extent that many providers regularly alter their curricula to keep pace with evolving hiring trends.

Undergraduate college degree programs, on the other hand, exist primarily to teach. Their goal is to create graduates who have attained a certain level of knowledge in their chosen field. You go to college to learn, and not necessarily to learn a trade. Although college students today generally have a future career in mind, not every major is designed to dovetail into a specific professional field. With the cost of a college education having gone through the roof, there is a movement towards more marketable degrees (undergraduate business degrees are a comparatively new innovation), but it’s a point of contention as to whether you go to college to get an education or to get a job when you’re through.

That’s not a dichotomy you encounter with bootcamps, which are unequivocally designed to get you a better job than the one you’ve got. Universities generally offer some degree of career assistance, but you’re going to be on your own after you exit university. That’s not going to be the case with a bootcamp, some of which even continue to offer career services throughout their graduates' professional lives.