The Indian government on Tuesday announced that the whole country would be locked down for the next 21 days to break the COVID-19 chain. And not just India, the world is witnessing an unprecedented situation as people are recommended to work from home because of the lockdowns of cities in various countries. COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill due to its proliferation and potential to further afflict humans. However, this has opened up the doors for working professionals to learn new data science skills and enhance their capabilities.

Professionals often complain about lack of time for learning new data science skills, but with the current situation, where people are maintaining social distance as well as working from home, professionals will have the time to learn new skills. While COVID-19 is negatively impacting the world, it is also providing ample opportunities for aspirants to upskill.

Catch Up With The Data Science Landscape

Data scientists usually limit themselves to the projects they are doing in their organisations, resulting in enhancing their skills required for that particular project. Even in their free time, they learn skills that would empower them to effectively complete the projects they are doing in their companies. Although this enables developers to master a few data science techniques, they should also focus on other technologies within the landscape. This will assist them in their personal growth as well as keep themselves updated with the new developments in the market.

For instance, if you are working on projects related to computer vision, you would have mastered various techniques associated with that technology. But, at the same time, you might be missing out on other technologies such as NLP. Undoubtedly, one cannot learn all the skills of data science, but being aware of other technologies within the space gives you an edge over others. Consequently, you should take advantage of the current circumstances and increase your expertise in space.

Make A Career Switch

Due to the never-ending demand for data scientists in organisations, professionals want to make a transition to the data science domain. For such aspirants, it was difficult to manage the time as mostly they were caught up with their office work. Therefore, even with an interest in data science, they used to struggle to learn and make the career switch due to time constraints. But, this doesn’t mean that they can learn everything in a few weeks and immediately land a job in data science.

Rather, it would allow one to get started with data science, which, in turn, help them in implementing those techniques to simplify their work in the current profile. This can then draw the attention of higher officials about your data science capabilities, which can lead to a career switch to data science. 

Upskill For Promotion

Professionals who are working on entry-level data science jobs such as data analytics, data engineer, business intelligence, among others, can leverage the situation and increase their ambit and get into the core data science landscape. Since they already possess basic knowledge of the space, it would be fairly easy for them to quickly learn various machine learning and deep learning skills to get a promotion. If utilised properly, the current circumstance will only expedite their career growth in the data science field.

Freelancing 

Although freelancing opportunities might decrease for a while as businesses are taking an economic hit due to the lockdown, the demand for freelancers will restore once businesses are functional post-lockdown. Consequently, this is the right time to learn various data science skills and build portfolios, which will demonstrate your expertise and assist in getting a data science freelancing work. 

Personal Projects

Since the self-quarantine will be off in a few weeks, data scientists can work on new projects, which they always wanted to do but couldn’t because of numerous reasons. This is the right opportunity to start your personal data science projects, and in turn, learn new skills along the way. Besides, one can also participate in Kaggle competitions or other popular hackathons, to upskill and test their knowledge.