My ZS Data Science Challenge Experience

One month ago, this day I was sitting at the airport, waiting for my flight back home while reminiscing about all the events, experiences and phases of this ZS Data Science Challenge.

Phase 1: The Online Data Science Challenge

I had completed my third year and it was my summer break. Since the placement season was around the corner, I was honing my coding skills at interviewbit.com. It was early July when I saw that ZS is organizing a Data Science Challenge through interviewbit where top performers will be given PPOs, and of course some amazing prizes to top 3 in first and second rounds. I saw this as an opportunity to pursue my desire to be a Data Scientist and hence I registered for the competition.

Round 1:

It was evening July 19/2019 when the competition began, and as soon as the data set was available, I dived right in to explore the data. The problem statement was a simple classification problem, but I realized that it demanded more data analysis and data preprocessing than applying the model. So it is very important to first understand what kind of data you’re dealing with because there were a lot of missing values in each feature of the data. That being said, I made my submission a few hours before the round 1 ended.

The Results:

A few days after round 1 ended, I received an email telling me that I was one of the top performers in the Online challenge and had to submit all my files. And just a day after that this is what I received:

This where things get interesting, I was invited for Round 2 of the challenge at the ZS Bengaluru office.

Phase 2: The Data-thon

I must say, ZS was very considerate for taking care of our travel and stay arrangments so gracefully. They paid for the flight tickets, cabs, ad even got us a 5-star hotel to stay in :) These gestures show how well they must be taking care of their employees. So, I landed in Bengaluru late evening on August 1, and from there I was taken to the hotel with 2 new friends I made there at the Airport.

Day 1, Let the games begin :

After having our breakfast, we were taken to the ZS Office where we received a warm welcome along with a goody bag :) After series of fun introductions and interacting with some amazing professionals at ZS, we were explained the problem statement and were put into the office setting to solve the problem within 6 hours.

It was a NLP problem and yes it was both fun and challenging to solve it. Did I mention that there was free food and beverages during the entire duration :)

After that we had a fun session where we were given clay, yes you read it right, CLAY! and we as groups of 5 had to make something for the theme “Graduation year”. At first, we were not so impressed but it really turned out to be fun. Wrapping up the activities of the day, we all had dinner together at the office and then headed back to the hotel. The next day we had to present our solution to the panel. Sitting at the back of the bus, I and my roomie had a conversation. He told me that we need to do well. Yes, I said, we have the entire night for that. As soon as we headed back to the hotel, we started working for the next day’s presentation.

Day 2-ish, Panel Presentation, and Knowledge Cafe :

I and my roomie stayed almost all night preparing, sleeping barely an hour and a half. While having breakfast, me and him motivated ourselves by reminding ourselves that “Yes we did well and we know it, we prepared well and we know it, we’ll go in confident not because it’s required but because we believe in our abilities.” That day we had 3 knowledge cafes. While a few students were presenting their work to the panel, others were attending the knowledge cafe. Knowledge cafe is where the ZS Data Science team professionals showed us their projects and work. My presentation went well and yes I was relieved somewhat. After we were done with the presentations and knowledge cafes. It was time for Lunch. Again we ate together at the office and then it was time for prize distribution. Total 6 prizes were given to the top 3 in Round 1 and Round 2 while giving a certificate to everyone.

Also, as I mentioned before, the top performers would be given a PPI, and yes we had to wait for a few days to know the results. Finally, it was time to leave for the airport. We bid each other and left for our respective destinations.

Those 3 days were amazing, I met a few esteemed and professional people at ZS, interacted with ZS Data Science team professionals, made new friends, learned new things, laughed with people and got to experience the ZS work culture. With that being said, in my heart, I felt as if a new journey waits ahead of me and though I was terribly tired and dizzy but felt great satisfaction and joy in my life.

Phase 3: The last mile

I remember this one so vividly, it was August 8, Thursday 4:50 pm, while I was mentoring the juniors in their labs, when I got a call from my TPO, congratulating me for receiving PPI. My interview got scheduled on August 14 and in the meantime, I prepared well for it. And yes, not just me, but my roomie also got the PPI and yes, we both got the PPO after the interview! I was so happy that I got the role I wanted and it was my dad who was the happiest person when he heard of my PPO.

I’ve written this blog for two reasons. First, to express my gratitude towards ZS for organizing such an amazing Data-thon and all the amazing people who had played their part in this journey. Second, to tell people that what you want in life may not come the way you want it, just keep your intents and actions coherent and let life guide your way. Networking is an important factor too, keep in touch with people with similar or related interests, have meaningful conversations and keep an eye out on opportunities if any. Also, never overestimate or underestimate yourself, stay at the center and believe in your abilities. I think that’s all for now. If you need the code I wrote for the challenge or want to discuss anything regarding the same, feel free to reach out to me :)