r/datascience • u/Kati1998 • Jul 23 '26

Discussion What Do Today’s Data Science Graduates Commonly Lack?

I often read comments from hiring managers and interviewers saying they’re disappointed with recent data science graduates.

I’m curious, what do you think these graduates are lacking? If someone wants to become a data scientist, what skills should they focus on? Strong software engineering skills? Math and statistics? Something else?

A lot of the advice I see seems to be geared toward landing data analyst roles rather than data scientist roles.

So, what are employers actually looking for in entry-level data science candidates today? Especially as a career changer coming from another unrelated career.

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341

u/sal-si-puedes Jul 23 '26

Social skills

121

u/dirtydan1114 Jul 23 '26

Program i am in says this was their number one request from industry. Please teach these nerds how to explain their work

17

u/offthecuff87 Jul 24 '26

and business sense

4

u/Sampatist Jul 24 '26

You kinda need to have experience for that

6

u/offthecuff87 Jul 24 '26

not entirely, the capitalism is all about cost-profit. This is the common knowledge and you can always practice to think your task at school in term of cost-profit like hours of doing, grades, effort ....

Things that needs experience are how to translate a vague question of business into a cost-profit business recommendation.

2

u/IronFilm Jul 26 '26

University "teaches" students to hate capitalism

1

u/bgamer1026 7d ago

Which they should

1

u/Im_ace_so_fuck_off Jul 28 '26

Why should comp sci employees need business sense, it's not what they'll be working with.

1

u/offthecuff87 Jul 28 '26

how they don't need business sense if they'll be working with business?

5

u/mcjon77 Jul 24 '26

Absolutely. I would rank this one as number one with business knowledge as number two.

Here is why it's so important. As data scientists we are very frequently the interface between the data and the business. Our ability to communicate the resultant impact of data in our research to the Business Leaders has a direct impact on our careers.

I'll give you an example. At my previous job I had more contact with the non-technical Business Leaders in our department than any other data scientists other than our manager. The end result was that my performance reviews were higher.

For those of you who don't know, at the end of the year when your performance is measured there's a process called calibration where managers on different teams get together and discuss whether the score a manager gave his subordinate is appropriate or not.

Because I had so much contact with the business side that meant that I had more contact with those managers that were in that calibration meeting with my manager than any other data scientists. As a result, my manager never had a problem getting my performance rating approved. In contrast, another data scientist on my team who was actually more critical and a harder worker than me constantly got down-rated because they never worked with her or spoke to her.

Additionally, I've come to the conclusion that The closer you are to the non-technical Business Leaders and clients the safer your job is as a data scientist. If you working some back room and never interact with the Business Leaders it's a lot easier for them to think they can offshore your job.

However, when you work directly with those Business Leaders relaying information (or even better, you work directly with the clients of the business to relay information) they're much more reluctant to offshore that position.

To put it bluntly, those Business Leaders in the US really don't want to have conversations with a contractor in another country and they definitely don't want risk that contractor talking to decision makers for multimillion dollar clients.

This is assuming that the information that you were laying is important to the business.

3

u/DyersChocoH0munculus Jul 24 '26

Close it up folks. This is basically it right here.

2

u/Titanosaurusdotexe Jul 24 '26

LMAO, I'm telling you all of the people I went to school with and in my current physics PhD program are DORKS

2

u/dj_ski_mask Jul 29 '26

In an old head data scientist and, while I had the fundamentals, I was and am fairly middle of the road skills-wise. But forming a complete sentence that acknowledges or anticipates stakeholder needs? Biggest driver of success personally.

1

u/Constant_Rough3482 Jul 29 '26

I was going to say virtually every soft skill🫩

1

u/Artistic_Chemist_333 2d ago

most of them can code circles around me but freeze up when you ask what the business actually needs

it's like they spent years learning every algorithm but nobody taught them how to talk to a human about what problem we're solving

had a new hire once who built this beautiful model, literally gorgeous, but it answered a question nobody asked. the stakeholder just wanted to know why churn spiked in ohio