How to Further Your Career as a Big Data Professional

Big data is the call of the hour. It is the huge amount of continuous data that is available to organizations and companies for analysis and interpretation so that meaningful trends can be extracted from it.

Businesses today are looking towards Big Data for correct business insights. The number of such companies is growing each day. So the number of opportunities for these professionals in the internet dominated world of today is also growing.

Knowledge of Math and Statistics is a Must:

A degree in Math and Statistics can work to your advantage in getting a job in this field. According to information available 86% professionals in the segment possess a master’s degree and some also have a Ph.D.

Technical Skills that are Needed:

You need to possess certain technical skills for a career in this arena. Knowledge of how to set up data infrastructure, of doing data analysis and creating data visualization is necessary. You must also develop experience of SQL and MySQL. These are database querying languages. You must know Programming languages too. Java, C, Scala and Python fall in this category. You must be familiar with different Big Data tools such as Pig or Hive. Hadoop is the latest in Big Data and you cannot do without knowledge of this. You must also be comfortable with machine learning techniques and related tools along with data wrangling and munging.

Possess an Understanding of Business requirements:

You must possess expertise in recognizing and developing new business opportunities from the huge volumes of Big Data by correlating with the strategy and needs of the company that has hired you. You will assist in personalizing advertisements. You will have a fixed target regarding the business growth in mind and analyze the data accordingly.

Data Analysis of Huge Data sets Required:

You must have the ability to work with datasets in gigabytes or terabytes. These huge datasets cannot be handled and worked upon with standard tools. As a data professional, you will work with unstructured data that is continually streaming in from video or audio files or from the social media.

Personal Traits that Work:

More important than anything in this field are your personal traits. These will make you stand out in the Big Data industry.

Curiosity of the mind:

Most needed in this arena is a curious mindset. It is curiosity which makes you question and look for answers. Analysis of Big Data provides answers to many a business problem. Curiosity to discover and uncover more and more from huge data sets is a necessary requirement.

Problem Solving Attitude with a Creative Bent:

A passion for solving problems that arise will serve you well in this particular industry. The goal is to determine a pattern from the huge datasets you will be working with. How creatively you can work to uncover a hidden trend and solve the problem for your company will determine your success here.

Scientific Temperament:

For a Big Data job you need to develop a scientific temperament apart from the qualifications. Data science involves experimentation. If one thing doesn’t work you need to try another. You need to be relentless like a scientist and continue to try different things to reach your goal.

Intellectually flexible:

It is important to be intellectually flexible because you cannot limit your thinking to just one pattern. You must be open to many schemes and be ready to alter your approach towards the problem and with this your assumptions too.

Team Work:

Coordination and team work among all members working on a project is must to make sense out of such huge data sets. It is essential to be a team player rather than a solo performer for success in the field of Big Data analysis.

Amalgam of Skill Sets is a Definite Plus:

The industry has several different requirements from a professional. If you are an amalgam of skill sets, this will boost your career prospects further. You must develop expertise in data mining, modeling and advanced coding. You can work in varying roles here. As Big Data Scientist you will be busy in algorithms programming. You could be a Hadoop developer or take up data visualization. You can work as an Information Architect also and be involved in organizing of storage systems, data warehouses and databases.

A Jack of all is welcome in this field. Of course you must develop mastery too and acquire proper qualifications to make your journey on the career path of Big Data a resounding success.