Alper Koca

Study programme: Information Management Automotive (BSc)

Employer: AGCO Group

Position: Business Performance Data Analyst


How did your school career run and what interests did you have as a younger person?
After primary school, I was unfortunately sent to Hauptschule and after only one year I had the opportunity to transfer directly to Realschule because my grades were above average. Afterwards I went to the Realschule in Kempten for five years and finished my secondary school leaving certificate here in 2011. Thereupon I decided to go to the Fachoberschule (FOS) and finish my (technical) Abitur here. Here I chose the technical branch and obtained my vocational baccalaureate in 2013. After a lot of research about universities of applied sciences in my area, I finally decided to study at the HNU. Thus, in the winter semester 2013/14, I started the study programme Information Management Automotive (B.Sc.). This will help you in your later career choice and therefore you can get to know different employers already during your studies.


For what reasons did you decide to study at HNU?
I decided to study at HNU mainly because of its international orientation and because of this special hybrid degree programme Information Management Automotive (B.Sc.), where I also obtained my Bachelor of Science. Another reason was also that HNU is very close to Ulm, because I like this city very much.


Semester abroad: In which country were you and what did you experience during this time?
I had the opportunity to spend a total of 1.5 years abroad during my studies at HNU. I completed a voluntary internship + my thesis in SC, USA at the BMW Group from Feb 2017 to Feb 2018. Afterwards I decided to do another internship in the Asian area and was able to complete my (graduate) internship at Daimler Trucks Asia in Tokyo, Japan for six months (March 2018 to August 2018). Both experiences were absolutely indescribable and also contributed a lot to the fact that I was offered a permanent position as Data Scientist from October 2018.


What tips would you give students of your programme?
I would definitely (!) recommend students to complete an internship abroad or a semester abroad for at least six months. Even if the standard period of study is postponed by six to twelve months, you will definitely have more advantages in retrospect. Furthermore, a longer stay abroad will broaden your horizon considerably and your English skills will be perfected. Another tip is that you should definitely aim to become a working student (from the 3rd semester).


What was your first job like and how did you hear about it?
My first job is also my current job. After my studies I started as a Data Scientist at the AGCO Group in Marktoberdorf, BY and I have been working there until now. As a Data Scientist you work (as you can see from the name), a lot with data. Some activities are for example: Data Mining, creation of predictive models, dashboarding, artificial intelligence and many more... I became aware of the job through my internships abroad, because I spent 1.5 years abroad (as described above) and completed my internships and my thesis in the field of data science. I was thus able to expand my knowledge considerably and also gain initial work experience.


What is your advice to all graduates who are looking for their first job?
My advice to graduates:innen is that you should already have gained initial experience through various internships/workstudy placements before you start your professional career. Furthermore, your CV/letter should always be up-to-date and also be available in English, as nowadays some companies (especially in the IT sector) prefer an English language application. My last advice would be to be motivated and not to send out copy-paste mass applications.


Please describe your daily work routine. Which projects are you working on and which tasks do you particularly appreciate?
My everyday work as a data scientist looks like this: Part of my time is used to define the requirements for different projects and to track progress through daily scrum calls. Another part is definitely programming. In the area of Data Science mainly the languages R and Python are used. Here the knowledge is used to mine different data (data mining), to prepare the data (data cleansing) and to create different predictive models with the help of machine learning algorithms and statistical methods. Finally, the results have to be presented and different BI tools are used. I mainly use tableau, but Power BI or QlickView is also very often used. The last part of my daily work is again done in different meetings, in which we present the current results and do the handover to the customer. Since I work as an in-house data scientist, our customers are always different departments within the same company, such as marketing, sales, distribution, production, etc.


What are your professional goals for your future?
My next goal in the near future is to complete a Part-Time Master programme, which I am aiming for in parallel to my current employment. I would like to build on my current activities as a data scientist and am planning a master's degree in data science/artificial intelligence. In addition, my further goal for the distant future is to obtain an MBA degree so that I can also take on the roles of a manager in my later professional life.


How would you complete the beginning of the following sentence?
HNU... "prepares students excellently for their professional life."