Project Overview
- I took up mentoring aspirant data analystis, scientists and machine learning engineers on part time, parallel to my full time role at Kyndryl
- This role involved starting with an initial set of toy projects and using them to familiarize the mentees with major ML concepts
- And then progressing to coach them on real world business problems that come through Apziva as the consultant
- My mentees ranged from CS undergrads trying to break into the industry for the first time to chemists and biotechnician's trying to change industries
- In addition to this role with Apziva, I also took part int Kyndryl's Corporate Social Responsibility programs to deliver lectures on Data Science and ML topics to universities
Skills
Customizing coaching plan based on individual's interest
While the real world problems had to be implemented to client's specification, the initial learning exercises were open ended and I coached the candidates based on what their career goal was - training to build more business metrics related stories from the data, to training to go beyond off-the-shelf tools
Bringing results in steps
For beginners, the goal is to make improvements in steps, rather than overwhelm them with very advanced requirements at the start, which may discourage them. So the improvements I asked for were to push the candidate's abilities while respecting their pace and capacity, since a lot of them also held other jobs / were attending school
Cross-domain skills
For those coming from different domains, figuring out together how they can apply their past expertise and framework of thinking to a multi-skilled roles such as Data Scientist and Data Analyst