I love living in the Netherlands. It is well organized and oh boy, have you seen their bike lanes? Everything seems fine but wait until you are a non-EU student who wants to work.
Until last year the maximum number of hours you can work was strictly capped to 10 hours/week. It has become a little better now by addition of 6 more hours but it is still quite difficult for you to get a job as a non-dutch non-EU student.
But I have a job now so why am I telling you all this?
Because one Sunday morning I got tired of it. Companies in Nijmegen do not seem to want candidates that can only commit to such less amount of hours. I am studying Bachelors of Artificial Intelligence which is quite technical and it shouldn’t be hard to find a job, right? Well, Nijmegen is quite a small city so it was quite difficult for me.
I sent my CV and motivation letter to almost 20 companies. I only got an interview response from one of them. For this particular company, I mentioned that I am an A.I student and that I can help implement state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm. Note that I am applying as a Web Developer for this job because I had a few years of experiences working as one. Turns out we are in such high demand that I got hired as a Data scientist instead!
It has not been easy. Data science is not a mature field so there are no best-practices for all kind of job. I had to teach my self a lot of things but I must say that it has been quite a ride. It has not been the easiest to adapt to a completely different role but it as definitely been worth it. I love working as a Data scientist!
Teaser: In my upcoming post, I will talk about what I have learnt so far working as a Data Scientist.