Best Resources to Find Team Members for Any Kaggle Competition
So much has been said about Kaggle on this site. We talked about why Kaggle is the best place to get new hard skills (here is this article), we talked about the advantages of Kaggle over other sandboxes and educational sites (you can read by clicking on the link). Now, I want to talk about how to find helpers for your team to successfully complete the competition on Kaggle.
If you are reading this text, then it is hardly necessary for you to explain what Kaggle is and what competitions we are talking about, so we will not waste time on this. However, before I list the resources where I personally was looking for a team for the competition, I want to say that the team is definitely needed. At first, I was confident that I could handle everything on my own. However, no matter how genius you are, you simply won’t be able to do everything physically (to achieve the result, of course). Therefore, do not ignore my advice and find helpers for yourself.
KaggleNoob
Slack has a great channel (available via link) that I read from time to time. This is just a collection of useful resources, links, books, materials, videos, tutorials, everything in the world for learning Data Science and improving your skills. When I saw a post with a link to this channel in Slack seven years ago, I thought that the channel was dead and no one had written anything there for a long time. How wrong I was.
KaggleNoob - Slack
The channel is very active, on average there is one post per day, which means that it is still administered and maintained by someone. Personally, I use this resource to watch various webinars from obscure authors. I really like the presentation of little-known authors, it’s easier for me to associate myself with them and the learning process is easier. But the channel can also be used to find contest helpers on Kaggle.
Don't look at the name, this channel is not only for beginners and students. In my experience of reading these channels, there are many more experienced experts here. The community, as well as on Kaggle itself, is very friendly here and if you don’t find accomplices here, you will obviously find those who will tell you and give advice on how to participate in competitions correctly, what you should pay attention to and what helpers you should look for.
What else would you like to pay attention to? To the meetup chat, where workshops take place every week. To be honest, I managed to get to only one online meeting and only for 10 minutes (I live in a cardinally different time zone and because of this it is difficult for me to attend them), but I was delighted with the presentation of the material, the host and the general atmosphere. I won’t go into it much, since the article is not about this, but it’s easier to see it yourself once than to describe it a hundred times.
Reddit is generally a place where, in my opinion, you can find anyone, anytime, anywhere. The Kaggle community is no exception to this rule. At first glance, it may seem inactive, and perhaps it really is. With such a large following, this community has one post every few days, sometimes even once a week. It also confused me when I decided to look for a team there.
Kaggle Community on Reddit
I was wrong. Despite such low user activity, posts are regularly read by a lot of people, and despite the fact that no one comments or upvotes your posts, this does not mean that no one will write to you in private messages. After my post, it seemed to me that I was conducting an interview and taking a specialist to work with me.
It was about a year ago, and then 6 people answered me with a desire to unite and participate in the competition. They told me about their experience, what they can do and so on. Just like at the interview, as if I were hiring them. Although, I was actually looking for guys with whom I could have fun, do some coding and have a laugh.
This applies to all resources on the list, and especially to the Reddit community - be open. If you are looking for a team, do not be a bore and demand something from those who write to you. Most likely, with 80% probability, these are just beginners who can code a beautiful horizontal bar at most. Great. Have a great time with them instead of teaching them the basics of mathematical statistics.
Discussion Tab
This is probably the most obvious way to find a team to compete on Kaggle is Kaggle itself, or to be more precise, in the discussions tab, you can simply write a post that you are looking for a team and want outside help. Kaggle algorithms do not require any third-party promotion and your post will always find its reader. If in doubt, you can of course duplicate the link in the Kaggle community on Reddit.
Kaggle Discussion
However, no matter how strange it may seem, such posts in the discussion section collect the least response from the audience, that is, it is more difficult to find a team on Kaggle itself. But this is my personal experience, you may have better luck.
A much more efficient way, I think, is to invite you to join the team manually. For example, according to my datasets, beautiful and useful dashboards are constantly being made, so why not write to the author of this notebook that you really like this dashboard, and you want to invite him to the team. Once again, it all depends on your communication and how you know how to work with people and what you expect from them.
Another banal option that you should use if you are looking for a serious team and experienced professionals. There is no group here, I advise you to just make a post with all the necessary hashtags for which you can be found and clearly indicate which candidates for the team you are considering.
You can't do it the way you do in the discussions tab on Kaggle or in the community on Reddit. Here everything should be clear, point by point - describe who you are looking for, what a potential team member will have to do, who he will have to work with, describe the dataset, describe the task in your own words. In a word, immerse a potential team member in the task in the post as much as possible, without forcing him to follow the link, because many people will see the post itself, and at best one out of 10 people will follow the link to Kaggle, which reduces your chances of finding a partner.
Linkedin is a business social network for business people who value their time and use this social network for a reason, so if you want to find a serious candidate, be a little collected and write all the information in 5–10 sentences. This will increase your chances of finding the one you are looking for.
Conclusion
A very important conclusion! I brought four resources for a reason - I believe that each of them suggests its own audience. If you want a serious team with a serious attitude to win and claim high places, then you definitely need to visit the Slack channel or make a post on Linkedin. If you, like me, just want to chat with people, laugh, code and drink beer while doing it, then the other two options are more suitable for you. Find the audience you need in the right places and everything will be great for you. You will have a fun and useful time at the same time.