Igraduated in 2018 with a Ph.D. in Operations Management and Operations Research. I had close to zero experience in programming, let alone Python. I was on the lookout for a job, and my first choice was getting into academia. But for some reason, it wasn’t working out. So, I started applying in the industry as well.

I reached out to a senior of mine who helped me get a foot in the door in the company he was working with. The role was that of an Operations Research Analyst. A week before the interview he told me I had to learn machine learning and a library called scikit-learn. I didn’t even catch the name the first time! He said I had to learn how to code in Python! Ding!

And the dings kept coming when he said I should learn about so and so algorithms. I was having an information coma!

Thankfully for me, I was interviewed mostly on Operations Research and Revenue Management, which I thought went fairly well. There were not many questions on machine learning except ‘what algorithm would I use if I had numerical as well as categorical variable?’

I swear, a couple of days ago, all these terms would have meant nothing to me, but now my job was hanging by the balance on those very terms. Luckily for me, I had learnt about the Radom Forest model, and blurted it out… and I got the job! 😅

The first job

I soon started my probation at my company, and was learning about the product, the algorithms in use and all. The training was for a month. I was supposed to take my senior’s place as he was quitting the company. A week before his last working day, he told me I was supposed to work on the implementation of a project in using ML, to enhance a module in the product! Okay!

So without wasting a lot of time, I started with a Python course on Coursera, offered by the university of Michigan. The course helped me gain some understanding of Python. I was suddenly not afraid to code. In the meanwhile, I had to check out this scikit-learn business. So I also took a course on Machine Learning, read up on a lot of blogs on each topic.

The freelance project

Five months into my job, I was gaining confidence in SQL, Python, Machine Learning, and the product itself. I went on to LinkedIn and described my job role and responsibilities clearly, and optimised my profile with the right keywords, a clear ‘about me’, and all my skills in detail.

By the end of the fifth month, I had a message in my LinkedIn inbox. It was from a serial entrepreneur who wanted an Operations Research Expert to help him on his Supply Chain Analytics startup. He was working on mid-mile logistics optimisation. He wanted to solve some key operational problems that he was trying to solve. I showed him a working POC (proof of concept) of two fo the problems, and asked him to pay me if he liked my work, and wanted me to work on his third problem. And…

…He never came back! I felt extremely hurt for having spent hours on discussions with him, getting the data, cleaning it all manually, and then brainstorming on the right solution approach and actually getting results. But noone could take away the experienc from me. So I brushed off the disappointment, and simply updated on my LinkedIn profile and updated the work I did under the Projects section.

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