Chi Wang
“Just be exploring and curious, life for me is all about changes and diversities”
Chi was originally from Edmonton and finished his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Alberta. Currently Chi works at Deloitte in the Omnia AI business unit as Data Science Engagement Manager. At his spare times, Chi has diverse interests in basketball, both playing himself and watching Raptors’ games, photography, and disco.
When Chi graduated in 2011, Data Science was not really a thing as compared to now where Data Science has become a very valuable tool to have in almost every industry. While studying Electrical Engineering, Chi often wondered what is the career he really liked to do. He shared with us that back when he chose electrical engineering, it was a wise binary decision suggested by his fathers: either become an engineer or a doctor. Chi decided that he liked engineering more and went from there. Yet Chi knew that he still wanted to explore different fields and perspectives and apply what he learned to come up with solutions later on.
After graduation, Chi landed with the TELUS Graduate Engineering Leadership Program (GELP), which is now the TELUS Graduate Technology Leadership Program, where he had the opportunity to rotate between 3 different roles in 3 years at 3 different cities. He summarized his experience from TELUS GELP program as an efficient and valuable experience that allowed him to check off the things he likes or dislikes and then craft his next steps. For him, working at Deloitte and the field of Data Science greatly aligned with his personal goals of constantly learning new things from different perspectives.
Chi also shared with us the three take-aways he wish attendees could knew:
1.Try new things to figure out what you like and more importantly, don’t like.
It is the best navigate through what your interests are at the early stage of your career. When you can, trying rotations could really help to refine your goals and drive more satisfaction later on in your career life. You will unlikely to have regrets on “what if I take this route or that path.” Going into consulting can accelerate this process since the environment fosters you to try different things.
2. Data science is about math and stats, but also story telling, team work and business sense.
Although math and stats are interesting, they only tell one side of the story on how you came up with a great solution. It is also important to tell the rest of the story like why should people care about your great solution and what value it can bring.
3. Now more than ever, you have the full control over your skills and career trajectory.
You can find a plethora of resources online on websites like Coursera to learn the technical skills. There may be other factors to get a degree, but just learning skills and applying them don’t require a degree. For Chi himself, he took a month and half off from work and read a textbook from Stanford University (The Elements of Statistical Learning).
Check out the full video below for more details about Chi’s career journey and the most recent project he have been working on. A full list of the Q&As and time sequence is also outlined for you:
What is 12 Coffee and Introducing Chi - 00:05
Dive into Chi’s career journey and how he thinks the experiences at TELUS and Deloitte are different. - 07:12
The latest project Chi has been working on - 18:09
Take-aways from Chi’s stories - 20:13
Q&As - 30:02
1: what are the things that Deloitte’s Omnia AI seeks in a fresh graduate, do they look for a particular tech stack or some kind of project etc? - 30:05
2. How much does data analytic skills play a role in breaking into consulting industry? What’s the most common data science project you met as a consultant? - 35:55
3. How do you leverage business acumen and technical skills as a data scientist manager? Can you please provide some advice how to continually develop our skills in data science?- 42:53
4. As your career has advanced from entry level to mid/high level, how has the job search and interview process evolved? How have you had to position yourself for higher level roles? - 48:12
5. Do you think introverts can also become consultants? - 45:00
6. Could you share what your day to day responsibilities are like?- 51:52
7. What do clients usually want to achieve the most regards to AI implementation into their workflows? How does the outcome differ from initial expectations? - 59:11
8. What differentiates Omnia AI and Deloitte from other tech consulting services like Accenture and IBM? - 1:02:34
And lastly what is Chi’s favorite coffee? - 1:06:00
12 Coffee with 12 industry leaders: All your career questions answered
