It’s back to school, and teachers are breaking the ice with the age-old question to new students: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Doctor? Lawyer? Chef? Astronaut? These jobs are soooooo 2023.

Let’s shine the spotlight on a new and exciting career: The Data Scientist.

What they do

Helps organizations and businesses make sense of the growing amount of data they collect. They analyze and organize all this information and present it in clever, easily understood ways. They and their team can also use this data to find patterns and predict future behaviors—including purchasing.

How they can help

Advises their team what they should be asking customers/clients/employees and how to format questions and develops algorithms that will tease out critical data and preferences.

What tools they can use

More senior than a data analyst, teams will rely on them to be the subject matter expert, staying on top of innovations and tools to make the job easier and their results more robust. This may include machine learning, programming, and modeling as well as data visualization tools like PoweBI and Tableau.

How they got there

Courses of study that prepared them for a job include data science, computer science, programming, statistics, but many online learning resources are also offering certificates.

Where you can start

Professional development sites like Udemy and Coursera host courses that will help you get certified in data science. Google is offering a data analyst professional certificate while IBM is offering a certificate for data scientists, each of which can be completed in 6 months (budgeting 10 hours a week, to be completed at your own pace).

Next time someone asks what you want to be when you grow up, you’ll have your answer!