Recommendations For Noob In Data Degree

@all

I appreciate the feedback.

I generally am loving the field. Even if I have to change jobs later in life, I think it’s ok. Lots of ppl have to do that. I cannot imagine any college major right now that will keep you in the same field for 30 years giving how fast tech is advancing.

Some ppl were asking ‘what are you looking for?’.
>> job security is ofc desirable.
>> I kinda just want a job that won’t keep me in poverty. My first degree unfortunately was one of those ‘meme’, ‘basket weaving’, ones I did for passion when I was 18 and told to pick what I liked.

Plans:
>>I hope to get internships or something before graduation to get pragmatic insights into what is needed of me. I appreciate I have a learning curve changing fields, but I am up to the challenge,

Someone mentioned taking applied calc. I will look to do that next term. Ty!

Oh and I’m not just going to ‘drop out’ like someone seems to be suggesting. I qualified for a full ride due to my GPA and extracurricular stuff, but it requires I work for my university at the same time. Fortunately, it is in-field (kinda). At least I’m getting excel practice. So I would have to pay the tuition all back if left half way through. It’s cheaper for me just to finish lol.

I do want to say further that my uni has been incredibly supportive of me on my endeavor and I am debating going the PHD route too. I genuinely enjoy research.

That is completely and utter BS, and I'm going to explain how this works.

When I want to expand my headcount by one or replace someone who just left, I need to write a hiring requisition. This is a document that explains the position what I am trying to hire, the business need for the position, the requirements and pay range for that position. I can get the Senior Vice President / Executive Directory approval on most anything by just being good with management speak, but getting a decent salary range approved by HR quickly turns into a challenge. HR has a standard set of criteria I need to fill out, two important ones being education and years of experience. That is then followed by list of "skills" that end up turning into key word searches.

Now if I put "High School" or "Some College" under the Education field, they will immediately code the position to a junior salary band. I will then have to enter into a ridiculously annoying fight having to ultimately spend political capital to get the HR Directory to make an exception, and I would have to do this for every single hire. So what I do instead is put "4 Year Degree or equivalent work experience", I then set the years of experience according to the seniority level I need. Taken together these two allow me to set a competitive salary band for the position. The side effect is that you get really weird stuff like positions asking for 10 years experience in a technology that is two years old. The important part here is that bolded part, it allows me to substitute one year of experience for one year of education. A four year degree counts for +4 years of experience when it comes to me negotiating pay bands with HR. Otherwise that degree means absolutely nothing to anyone in the hiring process. We do not care, it's a nice piece of paper you can hang behind your desk and make watercooler talk about. What we care about is technical competence and proven work experience. We are paying you money, that could of gone to someone else, to accomplish tasks and provide some sort of work that we've identified a need for. We do not have unlimited budget and have to fight with every other department for head count, this makes us heavily incentivized to try to get the person who can accomplish the most.

If you are wanting to know about how to get into a field, ask hiring managers or technical interviewers what they look for. If you are in one career field and want to switch, you need to find a way to get documented work experience as that is the first and more prominent thing people are gonna look for.

@Saevel

Thank you for the reply. Part of my boot camp is resume reviewing/writing, getting set up on Linked In (I have an account there but never used it), and I believe some interview prep. I'm hoping they prep us more on the interviewing part and what not so I can build some confidence in that regard. I'm really excited to finally switch into something tech related as I've been burned out from Sales for quite awhile. It's great to read everyone's banter here and to soak up what I can. Thanks!

CompTia is like the "basic" level if your going with certs, it's basically "I know the correct words in the correct order". Snagging A/Net/Security just requires a little studying if you don't already have the experience. Some of the basic security ones might help the resume a bit but it's really going to be years of applicable experience and your ability to navigate an interview.

Certifications used to be all the rage, but then people started figuring out that people were just collecting em like pokemon and didn't actually know the material behind them. It's where the whole CE credit system came from, but that's a different discussion.

Practicing interviewing yourself in front of a mirror, it helps a bit. I can't overstate how important building some sort of experience value is though. Even if you have to resort to volunteer working for some school or charity on your spare time.

Here are a few of the generic questions I'll toss at candidates.

*) Since technology is constantly changing, tell us about a time you were in a position that required you learn something new and the results of that journey.

*) Explain to us a situation where you made a mistake, what was the mistake and how did you resolve the situation.


Those aren't trick questions, everyone who has done any amount of real world work has "war stories" from insane stuff they've had to do. We've all made mistakes and had to adapt, those are the important skills not that a person knows X Y or Z.

While you do have a good point, recruitment process changes from company to company, and even from country to country.

In my ccuntry/company, im pretty sure the best starting poinnt are estate company, that promote a public selection based in a general test, that will cover from basic knowledge like language and general stuff, till specific things.

Plus for jobs that require higher education, a certificate from a certified education institute is required.

Btw, next sunday i will undertake that general test to work for a estate bank for a data science camp. Starting salary is like 4k a month (with bonuses, probably 60k a year) for a 7h day work, with very high stability.

Wow those are some good interviewing questions! As of right this minute I do not have anything Cyber related I could answer with. I'll really think on these questions to come up with some answers to prep. Now if this related to hardware, I could probably come up with a number of scenarios!

Very important that you be able to translate that work experience. "I did my paper on blah" or "my Thesis was in applied meh" only matters to academic positions, the rest of us file it into the "good for you, now what can you do for me" bucket. In the private sector we don't hire based on "oh you went to this or that university and had this amazing GPA", but "how can you provide value to this company" and "is that value worth the money you are asking or can we get something better elsewhere".

I'm speaking for IT in general as I've been doing this for a couple decades now. Country and companies will have their own nuance and people have to learn to the play the game.

I'll second this and I've worked in cybersecurity for a long time, and done many many interviews. Once you get past HR to engineering, no one cares.

In over two decades and multiple interviews, some in research labs, my degree came up ONCE in an interview. The only reason it came up there was because it was in a lab attached to a university, they had salary brackets that were tied to your degree level. If you didn't have a masters then they wouldn't approve a salary above xyz until you got one. They offered me the job but I declined because I had no desire to deal with that *** and it was 50% of the closest offer I got.

No one cares. It might be a subject of curiosity if you are otherwise competent and got a degree in gardening or something, but degree is the last thing I look at and most folks are same way. In fact it isn't even listed on my resume, I just put that I got a degree and where I went on the bottom of the second page, that's it. Some of the worst candidates I had in were CS PhDs

This does work differently in academia, though. I'd strongly suggest just avoiding that entirely.

It's worth remembering that most people are massively incompetent or don't care. If you care and show the ability to learn new things, that's 80% of the interview. Not being a *** is somewhere in that range too and you'd be surprised how many people fail at that. Admitting when you don't know something and trying to BS it is another major failing point in most interviews I've done. People who are competent in this field are able to switch tasks effectively and learn new things quickly without having to be hand held, sometimes in uncomfortable or awkward situations. This applies to most jobs, so just showing you care, having a basic good mentality, not being a ***, admitting what you know and don't, then showing you can figure it out and being honest is the bulk of most interviews I have done.

I will add this: If you can show up with some kind of work sample or something, it goes a long way but what this looks like varies significantly depending on the job and company.

I'll add this too:

If someone cares a lot about your degree and/or certifications in this field: you probably don't want to work for or with them anyway. The amount of bloated egos I've seen due to this from people who are completely inept is staggering and they are usually a pain in the *** to work with.

As another anecdote, I was told all through college that my GPA would follow me everywhere and it's all employers cared about. The only time it came up was my first interview, we laughed about how bad it was and they hired me anyway. I'm not saying flunk out or do bad in school, but it never comes up despite what you may be told. It can impact your prospects for grad school, though, if that's something you want to do for some reason.

Relevant to discussion.

This is just general advice I give everyone:

• Stick to what you know, admit what you don't - We aren't impressed if you try to BS some answer. I had a guy once reading a book when I came up to interview him, I knew it was theater by the way he replied when I walked up, but I knew the book VERY well. I asked him basic questions covered well before the chapter he was on and he kept trying to BS the answer. I didn't care that he didn't know, I cared that he acted like he did and kept feigning competence. These were VERY basic questions on the subject matter that were covered by multiple pages, like what is a calling convention

• Don't be an *** - if you walk into an interview and say "you can't afford me" in the first 5 minutes, that's a bad look. Yes that's happened and it's happened more than once

• At least have SOME base understanding of the subject - I'm not going to be disappointed if you can't answer a question, but if you come in for a job on low level development and don't know what a compiler is, that's a problem. Yes, that happened.

• Saying "I don't know" is perfectly viable, just tell me how you would find out - This may be mean but I've asked interview candidates to solve problems we were trying to solve. I tell them that's the case when I ask, but not knowing an answer is fine

• The way you explain your background shows how much you care - If you tell me about all your degrees and certs, ok cool, what did you do to learn practical, useful information? Do you have a lab in your house? Did you read books? It doesn't have to be super intense, just show it's something you care about. Almost everyone I've hired cared enough to work on things in their spare time or can explain projects they worked on outside of school/work

• They may present you with problems in the interview. You don't necessarily need the right answer or they won't necessarily be solvable. It's more about your mindset and thought process, along with how you react to being given the problem.

• Be honest. Seriously. Don't lie. If you lie to me in an interview, that's an immediate pass.

• Don't bring up your sex life.

The vast majority of cybersecurity is not heavily CS based. Like I said earlier, a lot of the technical side is running tools, interpreting and reporting results for most places. It's not great in a lot of cases but it is what it is. The parts that are CS heavy are often things you wouldn't get from a degree program anyway and everyone learned on their own even if they had a degree. It can be an advantage or a crutch, but there is nothing stopping you from figuring it out on your own except your own motivation.