This writing is for those who seek redemption! For those who see the following requirements in their dream job:

Min Qualification – Graduate from a top-tier Engineering institute

This isn’t to diss Engineering programs or their students. However, it is to bring in a sense of reality amongst us others who are competing alongside them for similar jobs.

How can we differentiate ourselves if we want to step into the tech world – be it in any industry? How can we build an edge over the others?

Tech is not going way. It is only going to take a larger piece of the cake and also make the cake even more voluminous. I would like to put a disclaimer here that I have not worked in a tech company yet. I have however worked with and invested in a few of them and currently pursuing a program in data science. More on that later…

So, to everyone else – do not lose hope! There is between 40%-50% employment in the tech-space for non-engineers. Be it product manager, strategy, marketing, operations, business development, or accounting. The possibilities are wide and varied. What I would like to urge you to do is to have a general understanding of the industry and sub-industry (for example):

Technology

Fin-Tech

Robo-Advisory

So how do we go about this when we have no practical experience? We need to start with theoretical knowledge that can form a base for you to work on practical examples and in-turn help dig for more information.  To give you an example, I was researching about Robo-advisory and I found a beautiful course on Coursera that gives an amazing background on this space with several case-studies. That got me to further read-up on the examples shared and through this I discovered several other companies in this space. Take that FIRST STEP!

This push and pull technique of gathering information can be used with several other ways to build the necessary acumen. Further, given that technology’s main goal is to make life simpler, having a real passion and sense of understanding of your purpose in your dream company can help truly sync your goals with those of the companies.

Coming to the real deal:

1. There are ample data science and analytics courses out there. I have thoroughly studied and researched several. These made my shortlist: IIT Roorkee and TSW, IIIT and UpGrad, Eruditus and IIT Delhi, Great Lakes/UT Austin and Great Learning

2. Coursera has several courses on Fin-Tech and Technology. This is one I did: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/wharton-fintech