E is for Eskwelabs Issue 048 - Workplace Wonder, Data Is the Future’s Darling 💼✨
In our forty-eight issue, we approach the topic of one’s career from the perspective of Eskwelabs graduates, HR professionals, and those currently employed.
We created this newsletter to keep our alums, partners, and anyone interested in learning skills for the future of work updated and connected to our ever-growing family. If you want to read our previous issues, you can check them out here.
Hi everyone, Francine here! 👋 We’re MARCHing onto the final March issue before we hit our summer-themed ones for April and May. I’m writing happily to you, despite the sweat pouring down my forehead haha—it’s 30+ degrees Celsius in Metro Manila! Eskweloves, we hope you’re keeping cool wherever you are. Speaking of heat, today’s hot topic is about one’s career. We’ll approach it from the perspective of Eskwelabs graduates, HR professionals, and those currently employed. There’s something in here for everyone. Enjoy! 💖
What’s in this newsletter:
🖥️ Dissecting the elements of the Fellowship that prepare our learners for a data science career
📊 Hearing from a Bootcamp learner’s experience with the Industry Apprenticeship
🙌 Learning how data empowers HR professionals
📥 Sharing tips that’ll boost your meeting, presentation, and emailing skill set at work
READING TIME: 8 minutes
⭐ Data Science
🖥️ Dissecting the elements of the Fellowship that prepare our learners for a data science career
Congratulations to our Cohort 8 Fellows for recently graduating from our 12-week Data Science Fellowship! 🎉
The Fellows tackled topics such as Exploratory Data Analysis with Python, Natural language processing, Network analytics, Unsupervised Machine Learning models, SQL with BigQuery and Spark, Statistics for evaluating model performance, Web scraping, and more. Seriously, this is not even half of their entire curriculum yet. 🤯
But there’s more to an Eskwelabs program than an internationally-accredited curriculum. Based on feedback from our Fellows, here are the 5 core elements of the Fellowship that make it a priceless experience:
Cohort format
A common realization among alumni is how much the community element made a big difference in their learning journey. Classmates became friends for life and colleagues in the making.
Mentorship
Fellows have emphasized the value of real-time feedback from their mentors. This is what separates Eskwelabs from online courses with only pre-recorded classes, as some Fellows have shared. Aside from academic support, mentors provide emotional support throughout the program as well.
Data sprints
“Learning by doing” is a big deal in Eskwelabs and it comes to life for our Fellows in the data sprints—these are 2 week chunks within the 12-week Fellowship where they create various projects. Fellows have expressed their appreciation for finally understanding the entire data project pipeline because of the Fellowship.
Personal development: Confidence
Fellows gained confidence in themselves by having Eskwelabs as their data science foundation. We’ve given them a taste of what it’s like in the industry, whether it’s through the learning format (data sprints) or the people we introduce them to (industry experts)!
Industry experts
We invite data practitioners to events for our Fellows like the Demo Day Showcase and the Fireside Chats. Fellows get exposed to how they would need to present and defend their capstone projects during Demo Day, and they’d get exposed to the journeys of other data scientists via the Fireside Chats.
Sign up for the Data Science Fellowship 🖥️
You can also kickstart your data science journey with Eskwelabs. Or if you know someone interested, help make their career goals a reality by sharing this newsletter with them.
Admissions corner 📝
Cohort 9 of the Data Science Fellowship starts on May 16, 2022
For those ready to dive in
Assessment Review session: April 6, 2022
Deadline of assessment exam: April 17, 2022
For those who want to learn more before signing up
Open House event: March 29, 2022
⭐ Data Analytics
📊 Hearing from a Bootcamp learner’s experience with the Industry Apprenticeship
Hans Xavier Wong, a Cohort 4 alum of our 8-week Data Analytics Bootcamp (DAB), is one of the first Eskwelabs learners to experience the Industry Apprenticeship! 💪
Through the apprenticeship, DAB alumni get to extend their bootcamp experience. Here’s what they have access to:
An opportunity to help grow the local innovation ecosystem (Specifically startups from AIM’s Dado Banatao Incubator)
A data project mentor who’ll guide you
Work stipend for the project you’ll be doing
More thoughts from Hans:
“So far, it was great being able to work on an actual data team! Seeing first hand how to work with real-world problems, and much richer datasets was enriching. I greatly enjoyed working with the team and with Payruler, I was able to learn a lot from both.
Working in a real-world setting, where I could directly apply the toolkit provided by the bootcamp to unique business problems definitely helps give me a clear idea of where I am, and where I have to go. Learning on the job, researching, and contributing ideas in a team setting also helps hone the soft skills that you don't really get to do in a structured learning environment. More than anything, I'm grateful for these experiences that help my professional development…” —Hans Xavier Wong, Data Analytics Bootcamp Cohort 4 Alumni
Sign up for the Data Analytics Bootcamp 📊
You can get started on your data analytics journey (or also upskill with data skills in your existing work) by enrolling in our bootcamp. And if you know friends or colleagues who are thinking about this too, send them this newsletter.
Admissions corner 📝
Cohort 6 of the Data Analytics Bootcamp starts on May 2, 2022
For those ready to dive in
Assessment Review session: March 31, 2022
Deadline of assessment exam: April 7, 2022
📖 3 Ways Data Empowers HR Professionals
In this issue, we’ve talked about how the Data Science Fellowship and the Data Analytics Bootcamp prepares our learners to launch into the industry or to upskill in their current career. To keep in theme, we’d like to put a spotlight on a blog post we did that explains how data analytics and other related technologies help human resource professionals become more effective at hiring and maintaining their organization’s talent pool. 🚀
While it’s important for our graduates to be career-ready post-bootcamp, HR professionals can also level up their current way of working using the data skills we teach. ❤️
The blog cites 3 ways data can empower HR professionals. We provide further explanations plus share video tutorials related to these:
Automating Repetitive Tasks
Personalizing Employee Engagement and Learning
Predicting Employee Performance or Retention
🤔 A question for our Eskweloves who are HR professionals: Culture fit or culture add?
🌱 Career Development Corner
We curated these links for you, our Eskweloves, because we believe that soft skills matter just as much as technical ones. Enjoy reading and feel free to send these links to your friends, classmates, and colleagues!
MEETING SKILLS
💬 How to stop the same people from doing all the talking and other strategies to keep your meetings on track (TED) | 9 min read
PRESENTATION SKILLS
💻 7 Zoom mistakes you might still be making — and how to raise your video skills (TED) | 13 min read
🎨 What “good” looks like in presentation design (Medium) | 4 min read
EMAILING SKILLS
✏️ 5 tips to writing emails that will always get you a reply (TED) | 9 min read
📥 How to Write Email with Military Precision (Harvard Business Review) | 8 min read
That’s it for our forty-eight issue of the newsletter! Thanks for reading! 🤗
Have something to share? We encourage you to give us feedback and ideas (you may do so here) and if you like it, please share it with a friend!
Have a good Sunday! See you again in your inbox next, next week!
💌 Cheering you on always,
Francine
Learning Community Manager at Eskwelabs