Shyam Muralidharan

What was taught in the class is something that is still helping me to a large extent in my current profile.

How did you land up taking the PGP-BABI course from Great Lakes?

A friend of mine suggested Great lakes because it is a better ranking institute. I explored the course curriculum to the basic extent. Although I didn’t have any idea about analytics at the time, I was convinced that this course will see me through.

Tell us something about your learning experience at Great Lakes?

My journey through Great Lakes was very interesting to begin with. In the very first class, we were introduced to the wonderful professors who were going to teach us. Later, we took the statistics course from Dr. P.K. Vishwanathan, which was great. I looked forward to attending the classes and building my skills under his guidance.

How did your career transition take place from a non-analytics role to an analytics role?

Even before I finished my course, I got an opportunity to do an internship in ORMAE (Operations Research Machine learning & Analytics Experts LLP) which is a start-up based out of Bangalore. So I did my internship there. They gave me no stipend but I was fine with it since I wanted the experience and exposure to the industry. The project they wanted me to handle was one of the most critical projects of the company. They already had a senior consultant with them in the US and they wanted a strong team based out of India. They were very satisfied with my performance on this project and offered me a full time role. I had to quit my then current organization and join ORMAE as a full time employee.

As a person new to Analytics, how did you equip yourself with the skill set?

I knew nothing about Analytics earlier. The course and the professors took us to an extent wherein they taught us concepts in the exact industrial context that it was to be learned in. Career support sessions where interview questions were shared and industry sessions, for example, the one we had with Mr Kunal Jain (Founder and CEO, AnalyticsVidhya.com) were extremely helpful. He talked about some of the practical and trending techniques that are going around and the solutions that we can build. He also guided us on how a professional can make a parallel shift to Analytics other than answering the industry-based questions that came up in the class. The Professors, especially Dr. R.L. Shankar, Dr. P.K. Vishwanathan, Dr. Bharadwaj, and industry trainers like Raghav Shyam and Vivek (who taught us Tableau) have taught at the global level. Every session with them meant more exposure to the world of Analytics.

How did the capstone project help you?

The capstone project was one of the course highlights for me. Our mentor, Dr Monika Mittal, spent a lot of time taking us through the different topics we were supposed to work on, and made sure we understood our work well. Working with the capstone project was in sync with my current work profile. What was taught in the class is something that is still helping me to a large extent in my current profile.

What is your advice to professionals aspiring to make it to Analytics roles?

Analytics is a wonderful thing and you don’t need to have coding experience or prior knowledge about it. You can start with being attentive in all classes. Some websites can strengthen your knowledge further and the professors will clear your doubts that are likely to come up. The onus is on you to put the extra effort and practice after each session. The professors are extremely forthcoming and you can always approach them for anything at all. It would also help to not get bogged down by negative reviews on an assessment as it will help you grow.