Why Should Big Data Professionals Go For Certifications?

As big data industry is growing the wide between the demand and supply of big data professionals is increasing. The gap is more vividly visible in data scientist jobs where there is a dearth of skilled professionals and demand too high to be ignored. This is where certifications come in to your aid. Certifications help both the applicant and prospective employer to decide whether a person is a right choice or not. So let’s tackle the question of why certifications are important and then move on to who should go for the certifications.

Data Science Careers And Data Scientist Jobs In The Market

Data Science certifications are for you if you have been working as a data analyst in a big data industry or you are from an IT background, or has been employed as big data architect then going for data science certifications that will take your career to a next level. While there are numerous certifications available in the market, what certification you choose is dependent on your educational levels and your experience.

Data Scientist jobs are quite high in demand not just because there is a dearth of data science certifications but there is a lack of certified big data professional fulfilling the requirements cited by recruiters. Since the big data industry is in its nascent stage, most of the times it so happens that the human resource department and managers don’t know what are they seeking in a candidate and hence if you are applying for a data scientist job, a data science certification will help the prospective recruiter in making a decision in your favor.

Why Data Science Certifications?

Big Data Science Certifications or Data Science certifications have numerous purposes again depending on your education qualification, technical and non-technical skills and your experience in the big data industry. Since a job of data scientist is quite a crucial job dealing with the important data (both structured and unstructured), a data science certification from a reputed certification institute will make you stand in a good stead. So what all are the certifications available in the market.

Big Data And Data Science Certifications

Once you have decided to go for big data science certifications, it is now imperative to understand each and every certification program at length and then decide which one is best suited to your needs, educational levels as well as experience. While some of the certification programs offer an introduction to both the background and theoretical principles, there are others that may help you in getting a hands-on training on big data technologies like Hadoop. Then there are some courses that may cover both basic and advanced big data analytics methods and then there are others that are focused on how to confront business challenges to leverage big data.

So the basic idea is to choose a certification that will match your requirements and offer you what you are seeking from the certification. However, do remember that whatever certification you choose, just ensure that all your goals are met to forge a data science career. Like mentioned earlier there are numerous credible certifications in the market, here we are listing few popular and credible big data certifications. Have a look.

1. Dell EMC: Dell EMC offers the Data Science and Big Data Analytics open course that prepares you for Data Scientist Associate (DECA-DS) Certifications. The open course focusses on both data science and data analytics and is a training-cum-certification course with real-world use cases thus ensuring that students get hands on experience of working in a big data industry.

2. Cloudera: Cloudera offers courses in big data applications with a prerequisite that you are experienced in Apache Hadoop. Other requirements include – good knowledge of java and experience in SQL along with basic familiarity with Linux.

3. Hortonworks: Hortonworks offers a three-day course Applying Data Science Using Apache Hadoop. The course includes Machine Learning and Natural-Language Processing also known as NLP. The course includes numerous practical analytics tools and programming languages thus giving the applicant the real feel of the big data industry. Data architects, software developers, data analysts can apply for the course. The course has some prerequisites though – you should be well-versed with one programming/scripting language, should have a good knowledge of statistics and/or mathematics along with basic understanding of big data and Hadoop principles.

4. DASCA: Data Science Council of America or DASCA, as it is known, offers two main Data Science Certifications – PDS or Principal Data Scientist, SDS or Senior Data Scientist. These certifications are targeted at the senior data scientists who want to take their career to the next level. PDS is a certification program specifically designed for experienced Data Science professionals seeking more challenging roles. SDS is a credential targeting senior Big Data Analysts and Engineers seeking a career as Data Scientist.