How to Build Your Personal Brand as a Data ScientistYoel ZeldesBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingDec 30Personal branding is a thing now. It always has been, but I believe it’s been getting more and more attention recently. More people are aware of its importance, including the employers. Giving you a big paycheck, assuming you’re good, is obvious. Providing opportunities to flourish and build your personal brand is something an increasing number of companies are trying to seduce you with.While working in the algorithms group at Taboola, I was encouraged by the company to share my knowledge with the data science community. It has motivated me to embark on a journey to build my personal brand as a data scientist, and I want to share how I did it with you.Choosing Your Path WiselyThere are many paths you can choose in your journey to build your personal brand. The problem is that your time is limited. There’s a lot of uncertainty about each path and its outcomes, so it’s best to make educated decisions.There are several criteria by which I judge each path:How likely is it that I’ll get to the finish line? This is the most important criterion when you just start building your brand. If you fail on the first path you tried, it’s gonna be a motivation killer, and you’ll quit.How much time will it take?Together with the previous criterion, it enables you to better manage your time. Maybe it’s ok to choose a risky path, given it’s only gonna take you a small amount of time.Will I learn something new?Data scientists have to position themselves as experts in their domain. In order to be an expert, you must keep learning all the time.What will the final product be?At the beginning of your journey, the product can be mild — maybe a nice blog post for beginners. As you gain more experience, you should put more emphasis on doing more meaningful things. Maybe a blog post about an advanced aspect of ML, or even trying to win a Kaggle competition.Will I enjoy walking along the path?At the end of the day, we do what we do for fun, right? :)So which paths exist?The Roadmap1..BloggingFor me, it’s the path of choice..The advantages of having an active blog are many..But how do you choose what to write about?The most obvious option is to write about something you worked on as part of your job..Most people do interesting things..The sad thing is, they’re not aware of it..They think their daily tasks won’t be interesting to others..I claim it to be not true.Another option is to write a post about a paper you’ve just read..I believe providing value is important — merely summarizing a paper can be done by almost anyone..You must make your post unique..I love to write code that accompanies the post, for instance..In fact, most of my posts are Jupyter notebooks.. More details