How I landed an internship in AI

** For motivational purposes only! I see a lot of posts on here from people without “traditional” machine learning, data science, etc.. backgrounds asking how they can break into the field, so I wanted to share my experience.**

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My background: I graduated from a decent undergraduate school with a degree in Political Science several years ago. Following school I worked in both a client services role at a market research company and an account management role at a pretty notable fintech start-up. Both of these roles exposed me to ML, AI and more sophisticated software concepts in general, and I didn’t really care for the sales side of things, so I decided to make an attempt at switching careers into something more technical. While working full time I began taking night classes at a local community college, starting with pre calculus all the way up to Calc 2 and eventually more advanced classes like linear algebra and applied probability. I also took some programming courses including DSA.

I took these classes for about two years while working, and on the side had been working through various ML books and videos on YouTube. What worked the best for me was Hands-on Machine Learning with Scikit Learn, Keara’s and Tensorflow.

I eventually had enough credits where I was able to begin applying to MS in Data Science programs and was fortunate enough to get accepted into one and also get a position in their Robotics Lab doing Computer Vision work.

When it came time to apply for internships, it was a BLOODBATH. I must have applied to over 100 roles with my only responses being video interviews and OA’s. Finally I got an interview for an AI Model Validation internship with a large insurance company and after completing the interviews was told I performed well but they were still interviewing several candidates. I ended up getting the offer and accepting the role where I’ll be working on a Computer Vision model and some LLM related tasks this summer and could not be more fortunate / excited.

A couple things stood out to them during the interview process.

1, the fact that I was working and taking night classes with the intent to break into the field. It showed a genuine passion as opposed to someone who watched a YouTube video and claims they are now an expert.

2, side projects. I not only had several projects, but I had some that were relevant to the work I’d be doing this summer from the computer vision standpoint.

3, business sense. I emphasized during my interviews how working in a business role prior to beginning my masters would give me a leg up as intern because I would be able to apply the work of a data scientist to solving actual business challenges.

For those of you trying to break into the field, keep pushing, keep building, and focus on what makes you unique and able to help a company! Please feel free to contact me if you would like any tips I can share, examples of projects, or anything that would be helpful to your journey.