Dear Mentor, I am preparing for getting a job in the data analysis industry and majoring Applied Data Science and minoring Economics abroad. Yet due to the COVID-19, I decided to have a gap year unintentionally and came back to my home country. As you can guess by now, I am interested in the data analysis area, especially finance and consulting. And my final goal is to be a data analysis specialized in the finance and consulting area. It became a significant motivation for changing my major from Business to Applied Data Science in a sophomore year. 

©️Ian Schneider

You might have heard most of the international students have struggled at getting a job this time and i am one of them. Plus, the pandemic made us lose our position in the job market. So, I decided to utilize the gap year for my career goal, yet I do not know how and what I should prepare. 

For these reasons, I would like to ask your suggestion from an expert’s perspective: How did you prepare for your career? How did you get your internship positions? To what extent should I prepare languages such as R, Python, and SQL? Thank you for your consideration in advance, and I am glad to contact you to ask the priceless ideas.

I am looking forward to hearing from you! Thank you

Thank you for reaching out. I'm sure this is a stressful time for you but I think your year off can be an amazing opportunity for you to stand out to future employers if you spend it well. Now let me try to answer your questions.

How did you prepare for your career? 

Actually I changed fields so many times. so i guess  I'm quite a terrible example. That said I have learned some things along the way so I can share some advice on the topic.

I started off with chemical engineering, realized I didn't want to work in a plant in the middle of nowhere, then switched to Genomics during grad school, went back and forth between business and science, got my MBA, then landed in tech doing strategy, BD, and now doing corporate VC work. 

I sometimes envied the friends who always knew what they wanted to do as it will save you some life crises. My high school bestie(best friend) wanted to be a pediatrician and 20 years later that's what she's still up to. At the same time you can't beat the flexibility of playing it by ear. So while it's great to have a plan, you don't have to have all the answers now as you might change direction several times in the future. You also want to be open to new opportunities. 

In retrospect, starting by studying a quantitative field first was a good decision. After majoring in engineering, I felt well equipped with problem solving and good learning habits that made it easy to pick up business skills even later in life (started my MBA at 31). For entry level jobs, usually companies recruit directly on campus so not being well connected is not that big of a deal while you're still in school. That said network becomes increasingly important as you become more experienced and I learned that during my MBA. I got my current job thanks to a friend's introduction and I am currently trying to network my way to my next job.   

 ©️John Schnobrich

How did you get your internship positions? 

I did 2 internships during my undergrad, and both were through family and friend's connections. I wasn't too picky about what I did as long as I got to do it overseas so one was in Montreal in machine translation and the other in Tokyo in logistics. There weren't too many internships in ChemE to begin with anyway. 

I also did a 1 year coop in Japan through a program jointly run by the EU and Japan. I had no connection there but I prepared a killer application (the Tokyo internship helped) and was super fortunate to be granted one of 12 spots out of  about 1000 applicants that year.  

Don't be shy to ask your relatives and their friends for internship opportunities or introductions - this is how most people get started and it's not like Penn State can easily hook you up with an internship in Korea. Leverage your alumni networks as much as possible. If you went to a good high school in Korea some of your seniors may be able to help. So go ahead and ask people for calls and coffee chats to get some advice. 

To better target your networking, do some research first to list which of your companies of interest have an internship program and then get on linkedin and identify potentially helpful people in these organizations. Whenever you cannot get a warm intro to someone you are trying to reach, it's ok to "cold call" with a message along the lines of  "I noticed we went to the same high school and I was wondering how your experience at company XYZ has been like. I'm considering applying and it would be great to have a quick phone chat to understand your day to day job as data analyst and maybe get tips for preparing an attractive application". Most people are happy to help, you'll be surprised - and before you know it you'll be the one helping your juniors out too

 ©️Charles Deluvio

To what extent should I prepare?

I would really have to be working in this specific industry to answer that question so I don't want to risk saying something irrelevant, but I'd see 2 ways to find out:

- The most obvious one is asking people who work in this field

- The easier one to start with if you have no connections yet is to analyze the requirements sections of the job descriptions you are interested in (you will find many on LinkedIn, indeed.com, or Korean job portals and here is Itdda for you!)  

If I really had to vote for one language over the others; I'd go for python for versatility. I work in tech and I see a high demand for python devs (especially applied to AI and machine learning). It's also used a lot for quant trading. So as such it's a great skill to have. But don't take my word for it, get other opinions as well. 

While you are looking for internships, you can do a coding project on your own which will not only increase your skills but become a good talking point in your resume. Development will make you very employable not just in finance and consulting but also in fin-tech companies or other startups. And who knows, maybe you will end up with entrepreneurship experience if you push your project far enough. 

I hope that's helpful. Don't hesitate to reach out again if something wasn't clear of it you have more questions. 

It was really an honor to communicate with you. Especially, sharing your personal stories guided me to plan for my career. Once again, thank you and I hope you to be well in the pandemic.