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Securing employment is a key concern for all students, data scientists included. With the help of a revamped student seminar series, students in the Department of Statistics can sharpen their skills, get expert advice, and walk into any interview ready to impress.
In fall 2024, Department of Statistics faculty members Nicholas Rios and Abolfazl Safikhani revamped a weekly student seminar series to incorporate vital professional development lessons. Among other things, they aim to bolster students’ presentation skills and provide opportunities to practice.
Throughout the fall, Rios interspersed professional development among the seminar’s usual topics of research resources and development, delivering advice to about thirty students each week. He began with lectures on techniques for improving public speaking, from posture to voice projection, a vital component of professional success in both academia and public and private sector roles.
“The secret is that everyone's nervous before a talk, and that energy is good,” said Rios. “You want to turn nervous energy into some sort of positive energy.” Focusing on breathing can allow speakers to channel their stress, reduce anxiety, and present their material slowly enough for their listeners. Drawing from extensive experience in choir, theater, and mock trial, Rios taught students how to breathe properly to reduce stress and project their voices effectively.
Rios also covered practical aspects of presentation skills, such as enunciation, emphasis, and energy. Rios noted the challenges of the English language, especially for non-native speakers, and stressed the need for clear and engaging communication. Maintaining energy and enthusiasm, he noted, is crucial for keeping the audience engaged and making the presentation memorable.
"If you're not excited, then no one in the audience will possibly be excited,” he said, explaining the risk of a monotone speech. “And if they were excited, you've ruined it.”
In addition to public speaking, the seminar's fall professional development topics included resume building and searching for internships. With the help of the Statistical Graduate Student Association, one seminar featured a panel of students who had successfully completed statistics-related internships.
Spring seminars are continuing the professional development theme by offering students more opportunities to practice presenting research topics of their choice. While students presented five-minute lightning talks throughout the fall semester, the spring semester seminars feature two student presentations of about 15 minutes each followed by Q&A sessions.
Looking ahead, Rios intends to maintain a similar cadence to the student seminars, focusing on professional development topics in the fall and encouraging students to exercise their skills in the spring. In fall 2025, he plans to incorporate additional professional development topics such as techniques for succeeding in various kinds of job interviews.
As data scientists, statistics students can end up in a variety of industries, so they may encounter different styles of interviews throughout their career, Rios noted. Certain banking interviews may require a candidate to perform calculations in a very short timeframe; big tech interviewers might prefer to test a candidate’s facility with the latest machine learning tools; and, of course, non-technical job interviews present challenges of their own. The student seminar series can help them prepare for the professional world with confidence.