Taking a break from work can be as freeing as it is overwhelming, depending upon your reasons and circumstances.

For Manisha Verma Malhotra, who is a mother and a professional trainer in data analytics from Jalandhar, the journey to find a job was not an easy one. She was a freelancer working from home for 4 years to bring up her child and had experience in teaching and training. There were multiple roadblocks, that time and again prevented her from pursuing a career in Big Data. She went through a struggling phase and faced many challenges to pursue her passion of working in the field of Big Data. She faced many rejections before identifying the right track. She got rejected for being a mother to a small child, and also for being a freelancer. Overcoming all these obstacles, she started focussing on her dream and decided to upskill to become a part of the Big Data industry. She got enrolled in the PG Program in Big Data, as she realized the need for a formal, structured educational program in the subject to be able to get a job in the field. She is now working with Mindspeed, as a technical trainer for Cognizant in Data Analytics.  

Taking a break from work can be as freeing as it is overwhelming, depending upon your reasons and circumstances. In any case, getting back can have its own arrangement of difficulties. Thoughts regarding how to face recruiters and whether one’s skills would be obsolete in the quickly changing job market torment aspiring professionals going on sabbaticals. The most intriguing trend that has emerged in the course of the most recent couple of years is the segment of mostly women and a few men who have taken vacation breaks. These are women who have taken a maternity break and after a couple of years want to return to their professional life. For these individuals, formal education delivered online is a gift that helps them fill the gap created and gets them ready for the second innings of their career. 

upGrad data shows that there is an increasing trend in women going for online courses. In fact, data suggests that the percentage of women is far higher than men with growth in enrolment for female candidates surpassing the growth for male candidates by a factor of around 4 folds. The trend seems to hold steady in 2019, with upGrad witnessing a further increase in women enrolment, with over 27% of women enrolment in the first 2 months of the year. When upGrad started its journey in 2016, the percentage of women enrolment was a meagre 9%. 

The bigger elements adding to the development of online education are its deep penetration, accommodation of learning framework, a necessity to upskill and career breaks. The other factor adding to the development is the convenience that online courses offer to the learners where they can learn from any hand-held gadget at any time that’s suitable for them. When one chooses an online program, learners need encouragement. There is the tendency of getting distracted by other priorities in life, family responsibilities or something as simple as laziness. Personalized Student Mentors, dedicated to each student during the course, take care of this.  

Data science and machine learning rank among the top-most emerging jobs in the market right now. With exciting opportunities brimming for women on break/sabbaticals in a range of emerging roles, there is no better time than now to upskill and make a career transition in the field of Data Science.  

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house