Katie Bauer!

When it comes to growing junior DSes, the good news is that it’s generally easy. Their inexperience means they won’t have had the opportunity to try many techniques or frameworks before, so each project will broaden their horizons and give them exposure to something new.

If your junior has the right level of support for the work they’re tasked with, much of a junior’s growth will happen naturally as a part of doing their job.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan for them, though. If you’re willing to make the investment, juniors are a tremendous opportunity to intentionally shape the future of your team, org and company.

This could be a shorter term concern, such as bringing in someone with relevant subject matter expertise but few data science-specific skills.

Or it could be a bigger multi-year strategy, such as growing a new generation of data scientists to step up when some of your current senior folks inevitably seek other opportunities.

You can’t make anyone into anything--sometimes a junior will just not have the will or the skill to get to a certain endpoint--but the surest way to grow them into an effective data scientist is to have them work on the problems your organization actually needs to solve.

Even if the junior says they aren’t interested in growing the direction you’re nudging them, these types of projects will help them understand what moves the needle for their stakeholders.