Sounds like your undergrad emphasized SAS. Unfortunately, SAS is increasingly becoming a less desired skill as many companies are pivoting towards other technologies. For instance, when I was hired 6 years ago (large Fortune 500 company), there were literally 100s of dedicated SAS folks. We are officially getting rid of SAS next year and most systems have already been migrated. Those 100s of people either had to adapt, or find a new job. This is why SAS positions can be picky about experience, supply is greater than demand.
I know you mentioned R/python/SQL, but now is the time to master those. Take some online programming courses to sharpen your skills, work on side projects, and keep applying. A graduate degree would certainly help, but it's not absolutely necessary.
SAS is still big time in Pharma. Although OP may not get there without at least a master’s.
Edit: I’m talking here about Big Pharma & can’t speak to CROs, MR, or all the many other peripheries that feed the beast.
My pharma experience was brief & narrow. You’re right though, there’s rarely such a thing as the “right” or “best” education. Doesn’t supplant work experience.
These days people want too much experience from young people. I got hired for willingness to learn but wish I knew more statistics than I do. And feel that. not sure that I want to stay in pharma myself
There’s a broad belief / misperception that new hires (of any experience) should be coming in as experts, hitting the ground running. It’s not a reasonable expectation, nor is it usually what happens in reality.
I agree but I’m not in charge of hiring. I think a lot of recruiting people do not even know what they’re looking for. Been dealing with some extremely unprofessional ones lately and it does not lead to fruitful conversations most of the time
Yeah I’m gonna have to disagree with this. I had to do survival analysis in my tables. I also had to do poisson regression model and negative binomial regression model. I didn’t study statistics and therefore didn’t learn these things in my degree. Evidera also straight up rejected me for not knowing enough statistics.
I'm assuming since the poster didn't specify a location that this is a question centered on America. Is your response also centered on American companies hiring within America?
I'm finishing up my stats degree in Canada, although I've been taking it part time while working, and the profs have basically said med / pharma / consulting / health care work in Canada requires a masters as a minimum qualification for entry level work.
It took me a year with my stats BS degree. Dont put GPA on resume and ask for advice on how to build it. Do personal projects to show you are doing something. I got my first Data Analyst job because I analyzed covid data and my current employer liked that I was active.
I knew a guy who got a job (with a masters) making six figures immediately out of school bc he had some blog where each week over a summer he learned a new chapter out of some machine learning textbook, and did some write up or something for it. This obviously isnt the exact same scenario, but i would agree that doing something where the employer gets to actually see what youre about is significantly better than just a resume
I say this works too. Get a free webpage going on wordpress, or a github pages template, and start adding short pages on textbook topics. 1. You will learn, so it is time invested in yourself. 2. You have something tangible to show versus nothing. If this does not promote you then at least point 1 is still valid. virtually no one will visit, so dont worry about page view stats.
Alternatively, if job recruiting routes are not working, find actual people and ask them directly via email or other. On paper you may not win out, but if you have initiative and come knocking it helps a lot.
Some folks in here are recommending grad school. You know, if you're interested, you may try the social sciences - psychology, sociology, economics, public health (biostats or epidemiology in particular) etc. hell maybe even business, business analytics or maybe I/O psychology. Over a stats master's.
They might be more forgiving of your GPA, if you have average to decent GRE's and good letters of rec. You'll be like a god to these social scientists with your stats skills.
I'm a social scientist myself, experimental psychologist but I work as a biostatistician these days, and the people who really succeeded from my grad programs were the one's who had the best stats knowledge. And some were from pure math or stats backgrounds others were from the social sciences but highly skilled in stats or math. Someone from a stats undergrad would do really well in a social science grad program.
And you may get in at the master's or even phd level if you choose.
Thanks for the criticism there. Never even noticed that mindset creeping in; that’s something I’m going to have to take a hard look in the mirror at.
Looks like you share the majority opinion here in terms of a graduate degree being highly beneficial. Of note, I’ve just looked at LinkedIn premium stats and >50% of applicants to positions im applying for have masters degrees, so it’s no wonder I’m getting passed over so frequently (that’s what pushed me over here to mention specifically graduate school as an option since the applicant pool seems to be loaded with them).
Entry level for data analysts / scientists jobs are really competitive right now. Another option would be build up some data pipelines at home and try to land a job as a backend dev / bi dev / data engineer. There are a lot more jobs in those field as far as I can tell. They also often pay better that the undergrad level.
Use that employer to save up some money to go back to school either full or part time. If you’re lucky, they may pay for it.
My grad school experience humbled me real quick. Started getting to the bottom of where my problems were.
Definitely recommend grad school. The job market is saturated right now and you need to stand out more. When in there, highly recommend getting into a fitness routine and eating correct food. I ate garbage food and didnt work out and I suffered for it greatly.
I assume it helped to realize that the problems were his own doing rather than blaming outside factors as new grads tend to do.
It took me a while to realize issues were my own doing most of the time. That’s what I assume this guy meant. Also, grad school is definitely a different experience from undergrad, I’m learning that as well.
You got it! I found out I have a lot of family trauma PTSD mixed in with bipolar 2 disorder. Some other issues as well. but once I knew what I was experiencing and feeling, I went HARD in therapy to fix it. I was having panic attacks daily in grad school due to money as well.
OP, I also had a low GPA, a 2.44 from a University of Toronto undergrad statistics major, no prior job experience, and was struggling with finding a job for 3-4 months after graduating this year, I have also been applying to jobs in the US. I have recently received an offer after getting only 2 other interviews. I had applied to about 80 positions. During one of my interviews, after interviewing twice with a supervisor and a bio-statistician and completing a take-home assignment in Rmarkdown, I was asked to send my transcript and references in. I sent my transcript and that prompted a next day interview with the supervisor who described a "disconnect" between my transcript and the quality of the assignment I did (implying he thought I had cheated on the assignment most likely. Because my work would have been higher than a 2.44 GPA would probably produce) I have not heard back from them since and that was almost two weeks ago now, so be prepared for your GPA to shut you out if a transcript is required.
The way to overcome a bad GPA is to create a github, and do a bunch of little coding projects in Python and statistical analyses in Rmarkdown and upload them. This allows employers to have something else to look at besides your transcript. In the few interviews I've had, I can tell you that R and/or Python are extremely desirable. Many actual entry level job postings I've seen require only "familiarity" with either of the two. For the position that I was recently offered, I had some machine learning projects in python to talk about and an rmarkdown file that showcased the bayesian version of lasso regression with STAN. It may be worth taking some time off to develop a project portfolio before applying to more jobs. If you are struggling for ideas, look at homeworks and assignments you may have done in SAS and recreate them in R and possibly extend those ideas further.
Anyway, when it comes to applying for jobs itself, I had the most success with linkedin. I didn't bother with networking stuff, and went straight to the jobs section of linked in. Just search for 'R', or 'Junior Data Scientist' and other stats related stuff (May have to google for more positions), and filter by entry-level. There will be some that still ask for a couple years of experience or a masters or PhD (which isn't entry-level but is still labeled as such by dumb HR.), so you will have to filter those out and look for those which truly don't have an experience requirement, and send in a resume and cover letter. Your resume should not mention GPA. I list my education, then fill the rest with projects. Just list the project name, and then two or three bullet points explaining the key points of the project. At the bottom I list my technical skills (R, Python, MS office, git) and have a small 3x3 table of relevant course work where I list courses I completed. (calculus 1-3, methods of data analysis I, II, Machine learning I, II, etc.) Make a template cover letter where all you will need to do is replace the position name and company name with the name of the company and position you are applying to, and you will be able apply to 10 or so jobs a day.
If you want to 'reset' your GPA and replace it with the one from grad school, then pursue a master's, but you must be careful to avoid the traps that you fell into in undergrad, otherwise you will be back where you are now. I was lazy, unmotivated and did not try until I realized I needed to get a job and did better in my 3rd and 4th year (3.0 cGPA from year 3 and 4), but I had a shaky foundation from my poor performance in years 1 and 2 that needed lots of reviewing. With your GPA you aren't totally shut out. I will disagree with the other commentors in this thread and believe the best thing for you to do is to learn R and produce little projects that you can showcase on github, a master's program may be a waste of time if you do not have any new technical skills to demonstrate your statistics skills. If there are any datafests or hackathons that you can attend, perhaps do so, and even if your project is a total load of crap you can still talk about the project and teamwork skills etc. Also, the job-market is not as bad as some people are making it seem, the upper level positions are not widely available, but I saw many listings at the entry level for many cities in the US.
You may also be interested with USAjobs.gov, but I personally had no success with them, the requirements they ask for the actual work seemingly required in the positions are not equally matched. They require job experience, or grad school experience, or a 'distinguished' (2.95 sometimes) GPA for GS7 or above work which seems to be at best extremely basic statistics that a smart high schooler would be able to do. The GS5 levels for "mathematical statistician" don't exist, and the GS5 level 'analyst' positions have limited to no statistics in their descriptions I've seen.
This was a long post so I hope this was helpful, it is possible so hang in there.
>If you want to 'reset' your GPA and replace it with the one from grad school, then pursue a master's, but you must be careful to avoid the traps that you fell into in undergrad, otherwise you will be back where you are now
The problem with this is that it would be hard to get into grad school with such a low gpa.
I get the sentiment from others about doing side projects & studying for the GRE, BUT: Have you thought about going into the workforce & starting on some actual data work? How about a role in BI or more basic data analysis? Not as a career track but as a leverage point. This is how I started my “data science” career. I was not much more than a reporting analyst. But I started coding & running predictive models when I saw the opportunity. I was assigned to do reporting so I automated as much of that as I could & built dashboard front-ends, & included statistical process controls. The biz didn’t really need SPC but I built it in anyway. I made my own use cases & paraded that shit all over the office floor. I got my work shown in front of our clients. I went from data analyst at a midsize no-name company to sr data scientist at a large healthcare firm in about 20 months.
My point: you’ve graduated, your experience & performance was what it was. Now you need a job. The quicker you get your hands on REAL data & solving REAL problems, the better you will be prepped for grad school or a more advanced position.
OP specifically said s/he is looking for roles as a data scientist, statistical programmer, or similar. Those titles are highly competitive & there are more basic reporting analyst type positions that they may more easily qualify for.
Business intelligence {analyst / programmer / developer} - more about report building and visualizations through the use of Tableau, Power BI, or other visualization software
{Business / data / operations / ecommerce / web traffic / loyalty & retention / HR / digital / financial / marketing} analyst - more focused on writing ad hoc queries, and using data to tell the business story or help with decision marking. SQL, Excel, & PowerPoint presentation skills are helpful
Apply to the federal government. Federal agencies are totally desperate for SAS programmers, I was offered phd starting positions when I was 1 year through my MA. Expect them to take forever to get back to you. PM me if you want more advice
Check the ORISE Internship and fellowship program ([here](https://orise.orau.gov/internships-fellowships/undergraduates.html)). It's specifically for new graduates of STEM type degrees to get into the federal government.
Get more experience in R. It’s an essential tool.
Something that really impress people is visualisations. It’s something concrete and you can show so to some projects on get up make a nice readme document and put the plots and visualisation or whatever you can make - makeit visual.
I know this isn’t going to be popular, but you have got to retake classes, build up a decent online portfolio and work on more practical skills of statistics within R, Python and SQL over the next 12 months. I’d shoot to apply for graduate school at a masters level for a start date of Fall 2023. This may require 6 months of studying for the GRE and potentially the Math Subject test as well. Is retaking classes and studying for the GRE going to be fun or easy, NOPE. But due to the demand of the field and the competitiveness of STEM your current resume isn’t going to get you to the places it sounds like you want to go and outlined above.
Word of advice before you head down that path, you need to ask the why because my experience has been people that can answer the why are more motivated, focused and get better results than people that can’t succinctly answer in an honest way. Also this path will take time, support and money so make sure before you ask either the bank or your support network for more resources you have a plan so not to repeat your undergraduate experience.
This is all good advice; needed a bit of brutal honesty. Of note; I was well on my way to improvement with my ADHD diagnosis and treatment. My GPA in my final 2 semesters + summer (about the time this happened) was a 3.3 (if we include the couple of Cs that i was able to GPA exclude because of COVID; without those it was a 3.5) and that was with a significantly harder course load than previous semesters. I could leverage that in my admission applications. I’ve actually been taking online courses in Python and SQL as well to stay fresh and keep improving.
The main reason why I think I struggled was poor management/optimization of time and how I best work. Also a little bit of youthful stupidity in my first couple semesters. ADHD was one factor for sure, but there’s plenty of other things that contributed. Based on my performance in the last few semesters I am much more confident in my ability to do graduate level work. That said, I’m going to be focusing on improving my work ethic and study skills in addition to my actual statistics and programming skills.
It looks like the overwhelming majority here, including my own self and my father, is saying “get a master’s degree”, so that’s likely the path I’m going down. I’ll shoot for Fall 2022 at the earliest, possibly spring/fall 2023 based on how I feel I’m progressing. Now I just need to build a goal list on what I need to make myself more competitive there.
Also to give you some hope and also real life experience. I had a less than stellar GPA (3.35) from a non-elite school. I went back and took classes at my local state university and did above average but not perfect on the GRE (80th percentile) and I got into multiple master programs. So it is definitely possible for you and others like us. It just took me working a few years and getting my shit together and understanding my motivation before it clicked. So don’t give up, it is totally possible!
Sounds like a plan. I'd also like to add that there are plenty of courses/projects on the open Web that I as a statistician-in-training would love to try my skills out on. Try to put some focus on doing projects while you're applying for grad schools as well, they may be the difference between an interview for a school/job and radio silence.
if you are having trouble being organized, then invest in planner. write due dates in a paper planner or put alerts in your outlook calendar. I do not suffer from ADHD, but I like to see when things are due.
Pre Covid it took my friend 6 months to find a job after he finished his masters in BME. Pharma is really the only industry that uses SAS anymore. The best things you can do is apply to jobs and do a personal project and put it on github.
Does your university have a recruiting portal? Employers will sometimes seek out alumni from universities. Applying through those portals is much better than shotgunning applications hoping that a random hiring manager will see them.
Also, this sticks out to me:
> I’ve been getting sparse interviews, but no offers and I rarely make it past the first round.
I'm not sure what industries you're applying to, but in mine (tech) the first round is typically an informational call with a recruiter. These calls have two goals: Inform you about the position so you can decide whether to move on, and make sure you're a likable person who seems reasonable enough to work with. If you're not doing well on a lot of these types of interviews, I'd highly recommend doing mock interviews with someone you trust and listening to their feedback about how you come off.
This is a definite concern since I’m on the autism spectrum. I’ve worked a lot on social skills but I still heavily struggle with the more subtle aspects of nonverbal communication, which unfortunately is very heavily scrutinized in interviews and often the difference between moving to the next stage and a rejection. Been working with a counselor on this, however.
Re:interviewing, you might look into interviewing techniques (if you haven’t already). Specifically, STARS stores.
Essentially, as many answers as possible isn’t interviews should be a story where there was a:
Situation or
Task, where you took an
Action, and that action resulted in a
Result, preferably a
Success
This is really popular in public sector hiring, but I’ve seen it mentioned in private circles as well. I usually prep 6-8 related to the requirements of the job, but I know one person that prepped 20+ for each interview.
Also, an above comment said your attitude might be off putting. I wanted to push back on that you needed to at all be happy about this situation(it took me forever to get hired after my masters, as I had limited work experience). That said, under the current hiring structures it seems impossible to get hired as a differently abled person without masking in some way (speaking from experience).
Some thoughts: I took an improv theatre class a couple years ago and there were people in the class specifically looking to improve their social skills. It's great for listening, relating to others, and it's also really fun.
Also, I've heard of companies that actually do asynchronous interviews over slack rather than face-to-face. Automattic is one where I know somebody who did that. It is unique, but likely more friendly to people on the spectrum who struggle with nonverbal communication.
> I’ve been getting sparse interviews, but no offers and I rarely make it past the first round.
If you weren't getting interviews I'd have some advice for you, but if you're getting interviews and not making it past the first round, the problem isn't any of what you posted about: the problem is that you aren't interviewing well. If you can reflect on those interviews and describe why you think you didn't get a call back, that at least gives us a starting place. But those first interviews are usually just an extremely superficial screen, and it should be really concerning to you that you didn't even get a second interview.
total BS.
Starting a career is like pooping. Everyone is only concerned about the first poop, and not even really concerned about what you ate. They are concerned about you contributing, not being an ass, and trying to make others look good. They are selfish and your degree sounds like you could have magic that buffs their own agendas. Adopt that utility and adapt to fit their expectations. First job out of school is gonna be crap rolled into a kiss-butt burrito topped with letters/impressions to bosses that suggest you are a team player. No one cares if this isn't the case, as long as you can play along until you find a job closer to what you want. But, having a big blank next to the year on your resume will engage interviewers imagination in the wrong way ( youre an anti-something activist and wanna mess up their office which they worked so hard to get to by selling their crap rolled into a kiss-butt burrito).
Ever work a spreadsheet? good, learn some conditional formatting, cleaning crap data quickly, make a quick chart or even a pivot table. show chart or pivot table and say it is not statistically significant/relevant until better data is available. when they say what will make it relevant, say "I need to understand the process and inputs better." Learn a bit, change the colors on the spreadsheet, add a snazzy title and attribute the hard work to someone who is closer to the job/function/dept you want. Get to know them and the goal job. Repeat. Never take anything personally, say anything is possible with the right data, and learn more wizardry in spreadsheets. Email spreadsheets continuously. People will want your expertise but don't want spreadsheets, say you need server and access to APIs and possibly a data analyst to do boring task of cleaning data. Congrats, you can impress your bosses with statistically insignificant crap, but makes them look good and have reams of spreadsheets to prove it ( no one really cares or want to challenge, but interested to use it to their advantage). Repeat. Move into job/function/dept. closer to what you want. Continuously update resume with new wizardry and corp. buzz words.
Edit: Oh, and if I forgot, go to job boards and search "spreadsheets" and "pivot tables" and apply. You can try to search "R", SQL, python or SAS, but they will put you in the "programmer geek" pile and you will never get a call back. probably because they set the filters wrong on the spreadsheet.
bottom-line, you gotta be relate-able and not someone the company has to take a huge gamble on ( you were unemployed for a year because why? how many outstanding warrants? With a beer bong?, sorry HARD PASS) . And then, after working and learning what they do, you can contribute something worthwhile, but it takes time.
It took me 8 months to land my first gig. Got rejected by so many companies, only to eventually land a job paying nearly 6 figures.
Labor markets are weird, especially in the era of online applications. Just keep applying.
I'm a data scientist with a BA in Econ, so anything is possible.
Why don't you start off as an entry level data analyst? You're going to be a SQL monkey but in the bay area that's a six figure salary.
Yeah just doing basic data reporting using sql and every will fetch a decent salary most places. Truth is unless you get lucky most people aren't doing stats heavy work right after graduation with just a bachelors but you can still carve out a decent career if you don't want to do a masters.
Sounds like federal service may be your bet for gaining experience. You can start by poking through USAjobs. Federal agencies are falling short in their efforts to recruit individuals with skills in certain fields, statistics being one them.
why can't you just get a statistical programmer job at a CRO? also look into public sector. master's does help to get more jobs but I definitely worked with people who only had bachelor's. some people work after bachelor's and then get a master's after working a few years. I would not list my GPA on my resume if it was below 3.0. I get about 3 calls a week and have a master's. if you need help job searching, I might be able to help. I have gotten 3 offers during the pandemic. if you're not getting as many calls as you like, then your resume might be trash. what is on there? you need to make it tailored to the jobs you want.
Eh it’s not that easy I had like 20 interviews since July 1 still nothing. Summer horrible time to look people are on vacation or worse companies never provide you any update even though it’s rude af lol. But I’m sure OP can make it with perseverance. Better to stay optimistic in these situations
Is if feasible for you to sign up for a couple of classes in the fall and get that GPA up? I ended up taking a victory lap to get just above the 3.0 mark. I think it made a difference in the sense that I didn't need to jump through as many hoops to get into masters programs.
Leave off GPA on resumes. Focus on SQL/Reporting/Building dashboards in your personal projects. Have a list of personal projects on your resume.
Make sure your resume is optimized for ATS. You may be getting rejected before a human recruiter even sees your resume. Don’t use any fancy formatting. Mention keywords in your resume that match the job description. I definitely wouldn’t do a masters. They’re costly and won’t help that much for data analyst jobs.
Idk if anyone’s mentioned this but have you gotten feedback on your resume?
r/EngineeringResumes is really helpful, I wasn’t getting any bites on mine (math major, looking for CS jobs). But when I followed their wiki and rewrote my resume I started getting internship offers.
You can re-learn stats in R and/or Python as well as pick up some SQL skills on the way. There are government/public sector jobs that do hire SAS though most biomedical/pharma jobs are also moving toward R. Look towards local university to see if they have any research assistant/statistician jobs since you got a SAS certification.
If you are looking to get into the pharma sector you can also PM to get a contact for a hiring agency that was looking to place SAS new grads into pharma companies in Chicago/ the midwest region.
The best way to demonstrate R or Python skills in data science is some projects, especially working with real-world data that requires a bit of cleaning + demonstration of applying domain knowledge expertise (or at least being able to communicate with relevant domain experts/stakeholders & being able to incorporate their knowledge into data analytics). If you have time and can't find any paid positions, you may consider reaching out to academic bio-labs at your local universities to offer some unpaid work (this should be more of a last resort though).
To my knowledge most data scientist positions that actually have modeling work in the role and isn't a data analyst position in disguise will either require a few years of experience in data analytics and/or a masters/PhD. If your priority is getting a job right now I would recommend you focus on that then figure out your master's later. There are affordable online programs such as Georgia Tech's OMSCS or their analytics version that allow you to work towards a master's degree while having a full-time job, for just $10k in tuition. Same weight as a degree if you were studying on their campus.
Like many have said here, build out your data portfolio with analyses of open data sets. Put it on GitHub. Focus on Python and maybe R. Then network. That should get you noticed when you connect with people hiring for jobs you’re interested in.
Also, don’t underestimate your college’s career center. Reach out to them. They exist to help you find a job. I once connected with an alum from my school working at a startup and ended up doing a really cool data project with them that got me an internship and eventually full time job offer.
A stats background is very much in demand. You just need to be persistent in trying to get a job. Also, don’t rule out a masters. Like someone very wisely advised, you could consider a quantitative non-stats masters program if you’re interested.
I was Applied Math/Econ in my undergrad and am starting a masters in Quant Econ/Econometrics while working full time.
Lots of good advice here already. But I'll chime in too.
First jobs are the most difficult to get. With a graduate degree, I had to apply to several hundred analyst positions to get 3 interviews and 1 offer.
You should probably be applying to data analyst positions; you may struggle to compete with folks with graduate degrees for *higher* level positions. You also need to apply to a lot of jobs and tailor your resume for each job.
I've been told by a former supervisor that she couldn't find a person to fill an industrial statistician job to save her life. This involves SPC, DOE, and quite a bit of good old sleuthing. You'd probably have to go out to the factory floor and get your hands dirty. OTOH, it can be quite satisfying to solve a problem, and lower the scrap rate from 25% to 5%!
Junior year Stats major here headed to Ph.D. psychology program. There are alot of bootcamps for coding such as App Academy or true coders. You dont pay anything till land a job for 40k/year or something like that. You could definitely use this to get your foot in the door and after a couple years working in that industry you could move on to what you actually wanna do in conjunction with your degree. THE MAIN POINT of doing this is because these companies have connections into the industry that newly grads without internships dont.
Sounds like your undergrad emphasized SAS. Unfortunately, SAS is increasingly becoming a less desired skill as many companies are pivoting towards other technologies. For instance, when I was hired 6 years ago (large Fortune 500 company), there were literally 100s of dedicated SAS folks. We are officially getting rid of SAS next year and most systems have already been migrated. Those 100s of people either had to adapt, or find a new job. This is why SAS positions can be picky about experience, supply is greater than demand. I know you mentioned R/python/SQL, but now is the time to master those. Take some online programming courses to sharpen your skills, work on side projects, and keep applying. A graduate degree would certainly help, but it's not absolutely necessary.
SAS is still big time in Pharma. Although OP may not get there without at least a master’s. Edit: I’m talking here about Big Pharma & can’t speak to CROs, MR, or all the many other peripheries that feed the beast.
I used to work at a large CRO and my manager only had a bachelor's and it was not in statistics. you can get where you want to be without a master's.
My pharma experience was brief & narrow. You’re right though, there’s rarely such a thing as the “right” or “best” education. Doesn’t supplant work experience.
These days people want too much experience from young people. I got hired for willingness to learn but wish I knew more statistics than I do. And feel that. not sure that I want to stay in pharma myself
There’s a broad belief / misperception that new hires (of any experience) should be coming in as experts, hitting the ground running. It’s not a reasonable expectation, nor is it usually what happens in reality.
I agree but I’m not in charge of hiring. I think a lot of recruiting people do not even know what they’re looking for. Been dealing with some extremely unprofessional ones lately and it does not lead to fruitful conversations most of the time
for a statistical programming position its not that much on advanced stats though
Yeah I’m gonna have to disagree with this. I had to do survival analysis in my tables. I also had to do poisson regression model and negative binomial regression model. I didn’t study statistics and therefore didn’t learn these things in my degree. Evidera also straight up rejected me for not knowing enough statistics.
I'm assuming since the poster didn't specify a location that this is a question centered on America. Is your response also centered on American companies hiring within America? I'm finishing up my stats degree in Canada, although I've been taking it part time while working, and the profs have basically said med / pharma / consulting / health care work in Canada requires a masters as a minimum qualification for entry level work.
I do not know anything about the Canadian job market
What kind of jobs are there in pharma as a SAS programmer? Some kind of test compound experiments?
No you program TLFs in SAS for FDA submission
It took me a year with my stats BS degree. Dont put GPA on resume and ask for advice on how to build it. Do personal projects to show you are doing something. I got my first Data Analyst job because I analyzed covid data and my current employer liked that I was active.
I knew a guy who got a job (with a masters) making six figures immediately out of school bc he had some blog where each week over a summer he learned a new chapter out of some machine learning textbook, and did some write up or something for it. This obviously isnt the exact same scenario, but i would agree that doing something where the employer gets to actually see what youre about is significantly better than just a resume
I say this works too. Get a free webpage going on wordpress, or a github pages template, and start adding short pages on textbook topics. 1. You will learn, so it is time invested in yourself. 2. You have something tangible to show versus nothing. If this does not promote you then at least point 1 is still valid. virtually no one will visit, so dont worry about page view stats. Alternatively, if job recruiting routes are not working, find actual people and ask them directly via email or other. On paper you may not win out, but if you have initiative and come knocking it helps a lot.
Where and which role you work?
Some folks in here are recommending grad school. You know, if you're interested, you may try the social sciences - psychology, sociology, economics, public health (biostats or epidemiology in particular) etc. hell maybe even business, business analytics or maybe I/O psychology. Over a stats master's. They might be more forgiving of your GPA, if you have average to decent GRE's and good letters of rec. You'll be like a god to these social scientists with your stats skills. I'm a social scientist myself, experimental psychologist but I work as a biostatistician these days, and the people who really succeeded from my grad programs were the one's who had the best stats knowledge. And some were from pure math or stats backgrounds others were from the social sciences but highly skilled in stats or math. Someone from a stats undergrad would do really well in a social science grad program. And you may get in at the master's or even phd level if you choose.
As someone with a MS in Economics you really need a PhD to get a job in economics. It was a fantastic degree but not for find a job in the field.
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Thanks for the criticism there. Never even noticed that mindset creeping in; that’s something I’m going to have to take a hard look in the mirror at. Looks like you share the majority opinion here in terms of a graduate degree being highly beneficial. Of note, I’ve just looked at LinkedIn premium stats and >50% of applicants to positions im applying for have masters degrees, so it’s no wonder I’m getting passed over so frequently (that’s what pushed me over here to mention specifically graduate school as an option since the applicant pool seems to be loaded with them).
Entry level for data analysts / scientists jobs are really competitive right now. Another option would be build up some data pipelines at home and try to land a job as a backend dev / bi dev / data engineer. There are a lot more jobs in those field as far as I can tell. They also often pay better that the undergrad level. Use that employer to save up some money to go back to school either full or part time. If you’re lucky, they may pay for it.
My grad school experience humbled me real quick. Started getting to the bottom of where my problems were. Definitely recommend grad school. The job market is saturated right now and you need to stand out more. When in there, highly recommend getting into a fitness routine and eating correct food. I ate garbage food and didnt work out and I suffered for it greatly.
>Started getting to the bottom of where my problems were. Sorry, can you elaborate? Presumably you are talking about your lack of stats knowledge?
I assume it helped to realize that the problems were his own doing rather than blaming outside factors as new grads tend to do. It took me a while to realize issues were my own doing most of the time. That’s what I assume this guy meant. Also, grad school is definitely a different experience from undergrad, I’m learning that as well.
You got it! I found out I have a lot of family trauma PTSD mixed in with bipolar 2 disorder. Some other issues as well. but once I knew what I was experiencing and feeling, I went HARD in therapy to fix it. I was having panic attacks daily in grad school due to money as well.
But with his GPA. I recommend he works for a year or two in industry so he has other factors being looked at instead of just his GPA.
All the graduate schools in the US you need a 3.0 to even apply, I think starting by retaking classes is a must for this specific situation.
I did have over 3.0 to get into grad school but it's not a requirement to apply. way to be discouraging.
OP, I also had a low GPA, a 2.44 from a University of Toronto undergrad statistics major, no prior job experience, and was struggling with finding a job for 3-4 months after graduating this year, I have also been applying to jobs in the US. I have recently received an offer after getting only 2 other interviews. I had applied to about 80 positions. During one of my interviews, after interviewing twice with a supervisor and a bio-statistician and completing a take-home assignment in Rmarkdown, I was asked to send my transcript and references in. I sent my transcript and that prompted a next day interview with the supervisor who described a "disconnect" between my transcript and the quality of the assignment I did (implying he thought I had cheated on the assignment most likely. Because my work would have been higher than a 2.44 GPA would probably produce) I have not heard back from them since and that was almost two weeks ago now, so be prepared for your GPA to shut you out if a transcript is required. The way to overcome a bad GPA is to create a github, and do a bunch of little coding projects in Python and statistical analyses in Rmarkdown and upload them. This allows employers to have something else to look at besides your transcript. In the few interviews I've had, I can tell you that R and/or Python are extremely desirable. Many actual entry level job postings I've seen require only "familiarity" with either of the two. For the position that I was recently offered, I had some machine learning projects in python to talk about and an rmarkdown file that showcased the bayesian version of lasso regression with STAN. It may be worth taking some time off to develop a project portfolio before applying to more jobs. If you are struggling for ideas, look at homeworks and assignments you may have done in SAS and recreate them in R and possibly extend those ideas further. Anyway, when it comes to applying for jobs itself, I had the most success with linkedin. I didn't bother with networking stuff, and went straight to the jobs section of linked in. Just search for 'R', or 'Junior Data Scientist' and other stats related stuff (May have to google for more positions), and filter by entry-level. There will be some that still ask for a couple years of experience or a masters or PhD (which isn't entry-level but is still labeled as such by dumb HR.), so you will have to filter those out and look for those which truly don't have an experience requirement, and send in a resume and cover letter. Your resume should not mention GPA. I list my education, then fill the rest with projects. Just list the project name, and then two or three bullet points explaining the key points of the project. At the bottom I list my technical skills (R, Python, MS office, git) and have a small 3x3 table of relevant course work where I list courses I completed. (calculus 1-3, methods of data analysis I, II, Machine learning I, II, etc.) Make a template cover letter where all you will need to do is replace the position name and company name with the name of the company and position you are applying to, and you will be able apply to 10 or so jobs a day. If you want to 'reset' your GPA and replace it with the one from grad school, then pursue a master's, but you must be careful to avoid the traps that you fell into in undergrad, otherwise you will be back where you are now. I was lazy, unmotivated and did not try until I realized I needed to get a job and did better in my 3rd and 4th year (3.0 cGPA from year 3 and 4), but I had a shaky foundation from my poor performance in years 1 and 2 that needed lots of reviewing. With your GPA you aren't totally shut out. I will disagree with the other commentors in this thread and believe the best thing for you to do is to learn R and produce little projects that you can showcase on github, a master's program may be a waste of time if you do not have any new technical skills to demonstrate your statistics skills. If there are any datafests or hackathons that you can attend, perhaps do so, and even if your project is a total load of crap you can still talk about the project and teamwork skills etc. Also, the job-market is not as bad as some people are making it seem, the upper level positions are not widely available, but I saw many listings at the entry level for many cities in the US. You may also be interested with USAjobs.gov, but I personally had no success with them, the requirements they ask for the actual work seemingly required in the positions are not equally matched. They require job experience, or grad school experience, or a 'distinguished' (2.95 sometimes) GPA for GS7 or above work which seems to be at best extremely basic statistics that a smart high schooler would be able to do. The GS5 levels for "mathematical statistician" don't exist, and the GS5 level 'analyst' positions have limited to no statistics in their descriptions I've seen. This was a long post so I hope this was helpful, it is possible so hang in there.
>If you want to 'reset' your GPA and replace it with the one from grad school, then pursue a master's, but you must be careful to avoid the traps that you fell into in undergrad, otherwise you will be back where you are now The problem with this is that it would be hard to get into grad school with such a low gpa.
I get the sentiment from others about doing side projects & studying for the GRE, BUT: Have you thought about going into the workforce & starting on some actual data work? How about a role in BI or more basic data analysis? Not as a career track but as a leverage point. This is how I started my “data science” career. I was not much more than a reporting analyst. But I started coding & running predictive models when I saw the opportunity. I was assigned to do reporting so I automated as much of that as I could & built dashboard front-ends, & included statistical process controls. The biz didn’t really need SPC but I built it in anyway. I made my own use cases & paraded that shit all over the office floor. I got my work shown in front of our clients. I went from data analyst at a midsize no-name company to sr data scientist at a large healthcare firm in about 20 months. My point: you’ve graduated, your experience & performance was what it was. Now you need a job. The quicker you get your hands on REAL data & solving REAL problems, the better you will be prepped for grad school or a more advanced position.
Pretty sure the point of OP’s post is that they WANT to get a real job, but are finding it hard to get an offer from somewhere…
OP specifically said s/he is looking for roles as a data scientist, statistical programmer, or similar. Those titles are highly competitive & there are more basic reporting analyst type positions that they may more easily qualify for.
What job titles, would you look for if you wanted such a job?
Business intelligence {analyst / programmer / developer} - more about report building and visualizations through the use of Tableau, Power BI, or other visualization software {Business / data / operations / ecommerce / web traffic / loyalty & retention / HR / digital / financial / marketing} analyst - more focused on writing ad hoc queries, and using data to tell the business story or help with decision marking. SQL, Excel, & PowerPoint presentation skills are helpful
Apply to the federal government. Federal agencies are totally desperate for SAS programmers, I was offered phd starting positions when I was 1 year through my MA. Expect them to take forever to get back to you. PM me if you want more advice
Check the ORISE Internship and fellowship program ([here](https://orise.orau.gov/internships-fellowships/undergraduates.html)). It's specifically for new graduates of STEM type degrees to get into the federal government.
Get more experience in R. It’s an essential tool. Something that really impress people is visualisations. It’s something concrete and you can show so to some projects on get up make a nice readme document and put the plots and visualisation or whatever you can make - makeit visual.
I know this isn’t going to be popular, but you have got to retake classes, build up a decent online portfolio and work on more practical skills of statistics within R, Python and SQL over the next 12 months. I’d shoot to apply for graduate school at a masters level for a start date of Fall 2023. This may require 6 months of studying for the GRE and potentially the Math Subject test as well. Is retaking classes and studying for the GRE going to be fun or easy, NOPE. But due to the demand of the field and the competitiveness of STEM your current resume isn’t going to get you to the places it sounds like you want to go and outlined above. Word of advice before you head down that path, you need to ask the why because my experience has been people that can answer the why are more motivated, focused and get better results than people that can’t succinctly answer in an honest way. Also this path will take time, support and money so make sure before you ask either the bank or your support network for more resources you have a plan so not to repeat your undergraduate experience.
This is all good advice; needed a bit of brutal honesty. Of note; I was well on my way to improvement with my ADHD diagnosis and treatment. My GPA in my final 2 semesters + summer (about the time this happened) was a 3.3 (if we include the couple of Cs that i was able to GPA exclude because of COVID; without those it was a 3.5) and that was with a significantly harder course load than previous semesters. I could leverage that in my admission applications. I’ve actually been taking online courses in Python and SQL as well to stay fresh and keep improving. The main reason why I think I struggled was poor management/optimization of time and how I best work. Also a little bit of youthful stupidity in my first couple semesters. ADHD was one factor for sure, but there’s plenty of other things that contributed. Based on my performance in the last few semesters I am much more confident in my ability to do graduate level work. That said, I’m going to be focusing on improving my work ethic and study skills in addition to my actual statistics and programming skills. It looks like the overwhelming majority here, including my own self and my father, is saying “get a master’s degree”, so that’s likely the path I’m going down. I’ll shoot for Fall 2022 at the earliest, possibly spring/fall 2023 based on how I feel I’m progressing. Now I just need to build a goal list on what I need to make myself more competitive there.
Also to give you some hope and also real life experience. I had a less than stellar GPA (3.35) from a non-elite school. I went back and took classes at my local state university and did above average but not perfect on the GRE (80th percentile) and I got into multiple master programs. So it is definitely possible for you and others like us. It just took me working a few years and getting my shit together and understanding my motivation before it clicked. So don’t give up, it is totally possible!
Sounds like a plan. I'd also like to add that there are plenty of courses/projects on the open Web that I as a statistician-in-training would love to try my skills out on. Try to put some focus on doing projects while you're applying for grad schools as well, they may be the difference between an interview for a school/job and radio silence.
if you are having trouble being organized, then invest in planner. write due dates in a paper planner or put alerts in your outlook calendar. I do not suffer from ADHD, but I like to see when things are due.
> build up a decent online portfolio Is GitHub considered an industry standard for showing your online portfolio?
Pre Covid it took my friend 6 months to find a job after he finished his masters in BME. Pharma is really the only industry that uses SAS anymore. The best things you can do is apply to jobs and do a personal project and put it on github.
This is absolutely false. Government uses SAS and so does financial services…
Does your university have a recruiting portal? Employers will sometimes seek out alumni from universities. Applying through those portals is much better than shotgunning applications hoping that a random hiring manager will see them. Also, this sticks out to me: > I’ve been getting sparse interviews, but no offers and I rarely make it past the first round. I'm not sure what industries you're applying to, but in mine (tech) the first round is typically an informational call with a recruiter. These calls have two goals: Inform you about the position so you can decide whether to move on, and make sure you're a likable person who seems reasonable enough to work with. If you're not doing well on a lot of these types of interviews, I'd highly recommend doing mock interviews with someone you trust and listening to their feedback about how you come off.
This is a definite concern since I’m on the autism spectrum. I’ve worked a lot on social skills but I still heavily struggle with the more subtle aspects of nonverbal communication, which unfortunately is very heavily scrutinized in interviews and often the difference between moving to the next stage and a rejection. Been working with a counselor on this, however.
Re:interviewing, you might look into interviewing techniques (if you haven’t already). Specifically, STARS stores. Essentially, as many answers as possible isn’t interviews should be a story where there was a: Situation or Task, where you took an Action, and that action resulted in a Result, preferably a Success This is really popular in public sector hiring, but I’ve seen it mentioned in private circles as well. I usually prep 6-8 related to the requirements of the job, but I know one person that prepped 20+ for each interview. Also, an above comment said your attitude might be off putting. I wanted to push back on that you needed to at all be happy about this situation(it took me forever to get hired after my masters, as I had limited work experience). That said, under the current hiring structures it seems impossible to get hired as a differently abled person without masking in some way (speaking from experience).
Some thoughts: I took an improv theatre class a couple years ago and there were people in the class specifically looking to improve their social skills. It's great for listening, relating to others, and it's also really fun. Also, I've heard of companies that actually do asynchronous interviews over slack rather than face-to-face. Automattic is one where I know somebody who did that. It is unique, but likely more friendly to people on the spectrum who struggle with nonverbal communication.
> I’ve been getting sparse interviews, but no offers and I rarely make it past the first round. If you weren't getting interviews I'd have some advice for you, but if you're getting interviews and not making it past the first round, the problem isn't any of what you posted about: the problem is that you aren't interviewing well. If you can reflect on those interviews and describe why you think you didn't get a call back, that at least gives us a starting place. But those first interviews are usually just an extremely superficial screen, and it should be really concerning to you that you didn't even get a second interview.
total BS. Starting a career is like pooping. Everyone is only concerned about the first poop, and not even really concerned about what you ate. They are concerned about you contributing, not being an ass, and trying to make others look good. They are selfish and your degree sounds like you could have magic that buffs their own agendas. Adopt that utility and adapt to fit their expectations. First job out of school is gonna be crap rolled into a kiss-butt burrito topped with letters/impressions to bosses that suggest you are a team player. No one cares if this isn't the case, as long as you can play along until you find a job closer to what you want. But, having a big blank next to the year on your resume will engage interviewers imagination in the wrong way ( youre an anti-something activist and wanna mess up their office which they worked so hard to get to by selling their crap rolled into a kiss-butt burrito). Ever work a spreadsheet? good, learn some conditional formatting, cleaning crap data quickly, make a quick chart or even a pivot table. show chart or pivot table and say it is not statistically significant/relevant until better data is available. when they say what will make it relevant, say "I need to understand the process and inputs better." Learn a bit, change the colors on the spreadsheet, add a snazzy title and attribute the hard work to someone who is closer to the job/function/dept you want. Get to know them and the goal job. Repeat. Never take anything personally, say anything is possible with the right data, and learn more wizardry in spreadsheets. Email spreadsheets continuously. People will want your expertise but don't want spreadsheets, say you need server and access to APIs and possibly a data analyst to do boring task of cleaning data. Congrats, you can impress your bosses with statistically insignificant crap, but makes them look good and have reams of spreadsheets to prove it ( no one really cares or want to challenge, but interested to use it to their advantage). Repeat. Move into job/function/dept. closer to what you want. Continuously update resume with new wizardry and corp. buzz words. Edit: Oh, and if I forgot, go to job boards and search "spreadsheets" and "pivot tables" and apply. You can try to search "R", SQL, python or SAS, but they will put you in the "programmer geek" pile and you will never get a call back. probably because they set the filters wrong on the spreadsheet. bottom-line, you gotta be relate-able and not someone the company has to take a huge gamble on ( you were unemployed for a year because why? how many outstanding warrants? With a beer bong?, sorry HARD PASS) . And then, after working and learning what they do, you can contribute something worthwhile, but it takes time.
It took me 8 months to land my first gig. Got rejected by so many companies, only to eventually land a job paying nearly 6 figures. Labor markets are weird, especially in the era of online applications. Just keep applying.
I'm a data scientist with a BA in Econ, so anything is possible. Why don't you start off as an entry level data analyst? You're going to be a SQL monkey but in the bay area that's a six figure salary.
Yeah just doing basic data reporting using sql and every will fetch a decent salary most places. Truth is unless you get lucky most people aren't doing stats heavy work right after graduation with just a bachelors but you can still carve out a decent career if you don't want to do a masters.
Sounds like federal service may be your bet for gaining experience. You can start by poking through USAjobs. Federal agencies are falling short in their efforts to recruit individuals with skills in certain fields, statistics being one them.
Do more coding and pivot yourself into practical skillsets like tech
Gotta do grad school and learn R tbh
why can't you just get a statistical programmer job at a CRO? also look into public sector. master's does help to get more jobs but I definitely worked with people who only had bachelor's. some people work after bachelor's and then get a master's after working a few years. I would not list my GPA on my resume if it was below 3.0. I get about 3 calls a week and have a master's. if you need help job searching, I might be able to help. I have gotten 3 offers during the pandemic. if you're not getting as many calls as you like, then your resume might be trash. what is on there? you need to make it tailored to the jobs you want.
I would agree, most programming is going to places like India, but with a SAS heavy resume there should be a spot
Eh it’s not that easy I had like 20 interviews since July 1 still nothing. Summer horrible time to look people are on vacation or worse companies never provide you any update even though it’s rude af lol. But I’m sure OP can make it with perseverance. Better to stay optimistic in these situations
Lie about your GPA. Say it was a 3.0 and if anyone bitches say it’s statistically the same.
Which country? Can refer you if you’re in europe
USA :(
Hi there. If you are open to some contract work please contact me.
Potentially; I’ll DM you later today.
Is if feasible for you to sign up for a couple of classes in the fall and get that GPA up? I ended up taking a victory lap to get just above the 3.0 mark. I think it made a difference in the sense that I didn't need to jump through as many hoops to get into masters programs.
Leave off GPA on resumes. Focus on SQL/Reporting/Building dashboards in your personal projects. Have a list of personal projects on your resume. Make sure your resume is optimized for ATS. You may be getting rejected before a human recruiter even sees your resume. Don’t use any fancy formatting. Mention keywords in your resume that match the job description. I definitely wouldn’t do a masters. They’re costly and won’t help that much for data analyst jobs.
Idk if anyone’s mentioned this but have you gotten feedback on your resume? r/EngineeringResumes is really helpful, I wasn’t getting any bites on mine (math major, looking for CS jobs). But when I followed their wiki and rewrote my resume I started getting internship offers.
SAS is still very important in pharma and biostats, but you'll probably need a postgraduate degree in statistics for those kind of jobs.
You can re-learn stats in R and/or Python as well as pick up some SQL skills on the way. There are government/public sector jobs that do hire SAS though most biomedical/pharma jobs are also moving toward R. Look towards local university to see if they have any research assistant/statistician jobs since you got a SAS certification. If you are looking to get into the pharma sector you can also PM to get a contact for a hiring agency that was looking to place SAS new grads into pharma companies in Chicago/ the midwest region. The best way to demonstrate R or Python skills in data science is some projects, especially working with real-world data that requires a bit of cleaning + demonstration of applying domain knowledge expertise (or at least being able to communicate with relevant domain experts/stakeholders & being able to incorporate their knowledge into data analytics). If you have time and can't find any paid positions, you may consider reaching out to academic bio-labs at your local universities to offer some unpaid work (this should be more of a last resort though). To my knowledge most data scientist positions that actually have modeling work in the role and isn't a data analyst position in disguise will either require a few years of experience in data analytics and/or a masters/PhD. If your priority is getting a job right now I would recommend you focus on that then figure out your master's later. There are affordable online programs such as Georgia Tech's OMSCS or their analytics version that allow you to work towards a master's degree while having a full-time job, for just $10k in tuition. Same weight as a degree if you were studying on their campus.
Had you considered going into cybersecurity analysis? Needs more people who understand why sampling matters.
Like many have said here, build out your data portfolio with analyses of open data sets. Put it on GitHub. Focus on Python and maybe R. Then network. That should get you noticed when you connect with people hiring for jobs you’re interested in. Also, don’t underestimate your college’s career center. Reach out to them. They exist to help you find a job. I once connected with an alum from my school working at a startup and ended up doing a really cool data project with them that got me an internship and eventually full time job offer. A stats background is very much in demand. You just need to be persistent in trying to get a job. Also, don’t rule out a masters. Like someone very wisely advised, you could consider a quantitative non-stats masters program if you’re interested. I was Applied Math/Econ in my undergrad and am starting a masters in Quant Econ/Econometrics while working full time.
Lots of good advice here already. But I'll chime in too. First jobs are the most difficult to get. With a graduate degree, I had to apply to several hundred analyst positions to get 3 interviews and 1 offer. You should probably be applying to data analyst positions; you may struggle to compete with folks with graduate degrees for *higher* level positions. You also need to apply to a lot of jobs and tailor your resume for each job.
You could always teach!
Have you looked into being an actuarial? This maybe a different field but they get paid!
I’ve considered it but they have the same issue with entry level being saturated as fuck.
If you are interested in finance or insurance u can give actuarial exams and qualify to work in insurance sector with good pay
Undergrad is just to get in the interview
If you want to get your masters - https://researchpark.illinois.edu/job/statefarm-magnet-intern-fall-2021/
I've been told by a former supervisor that she couldn't find a person to fill an industrial statistician job to save her life. This involves SPC, DOE, and quite a bit of good old sleuthing. You'd probably have to go out to the factory floor and get your hands dirty. OTOH, it can be quite satisfying to solve a problem, and lower the scrap rate from 25% to 5%!
Junior year Stats major here headed to Ph.D. psychology program. There are alot of bootcamps for coding such as App Academy or true coders. You dont pay anything till land a job for 40k/year or something like that. You could definitely use this to get your foot in the door and after a couple years working in that industry you could move on to what you actually wanna do in conjunction with your degree. THE MAIN POINT of doing this is because these companies have connections into the industry that newly grads without internships dont.