Data Analysis Job Opportunities - please help!!

[speechfan222]

I am starting a masters program in Sociology in just a few weeks. Once I receive my MA degree, I would like to go into the data analysis/statistics field. 

I have been looking for data analysis positions to view the requirements and what the jobs entails. I have noticed most positions require several years experience. I am new to this field and do not have any experience. Would submitting a cover letter with my skills and abilities be enough to become employed without experience? I would like to work in the field now while completing my degree so that I can gain experience, but it seems impossible being able to gain experience without having any to start with. 

Im somewhat worried that I wont be able to get a data analyst job once I receive my degree because I dont have the required experience. 

Please help!! Im worried....

Edited August 2, 2017 by speechfan222

[speechfan222]

@Comparativist, why the bad reputation on my post? I am worried about not having experience and just thought I would ask...

Edited August 3, 2017 by speechfan222

[statictica]

In graduate school, experience means conducting research and publishing. If your goal is to get into the data science field, you need to learn as many different methods and statistical programming languages as you possibly can. In addition, you need to be able to figure out which methods work best with he type of data your "clients" have. 

You talk about your skills and abilities but don't mention what they actually are. I'd encourage you to ask yourself the following and learn more about them:

- What do you actually mean by "data analysis"? This is such a big term and means different things to different people.

- Are you proficient in R, Python, SAS, Java, MATLAB, Perl? If not, you will have a hard time getting a data science job. Knowing one or more of the following is the single most important step you can take to try your luck in data science. 

- If yes, are you familiar with the data visualization, web scraping, big data, and machine learning frameworks within any of the above? If not, look into Python's NLTK, R's plotly, and the basic modeling code for any or all of the above to find one that you like and start coding away.

- Are you actually good at statistical analysis? Knowing how to do social network analysis or exponential random graph models and being an expert in them are two very different things. Ask yourself why you want to get into data science in the first place. If you don't have a compelling reason to do so, you might want to look into something different.

- Is a masters in sociology actually enough to compete with all the PhDs from various fields for these jobs? Places like the CDC hire data scientists from different fields depending on their research agenda, which means you will be competing with public health, sociology, political science, statistics, and applicants from other fields for a data analysis job. Most of these people have doctorate degrees, which means they have at leaast two to three times more research and data analysis experience than you do with an MA. Sorry to say, most places will hire recent PhDs over MAs any day.

Anyway, hope this helps.