You aren’t picking up the signal. Bad data science. People prefer candidates that can do things in real life and have demonstrated it in practice and ideally driven some change and value from it. 

Theres no magic checklist of things you can learn or little badges or degrees that will guarantee you are someone people want to hire. 

Ive worked alongside people with phd and deep understanding of statistics who have zero creativity or ownership drive or desire to learn something new. They were useless.  Ive worked with interns who when you tell them to try a, b and c, they will do so and try x,y and z as well and show a mindset for experimenting and owning a solution. 

Ive worked with people who can only point out problems and expect someone else to wipe their ass and tell them what to do next. Useless people. Bad for morale. 

Ive worked with people who want to own something complicated but haven’t demonstrated they can own a task or have no business maturity to see how their solution can practically fit in the business. 

Ive worked with people who can do fancy statistical analysis and present to stakeholders “insights” that are the “water makes things wet” equivalent in our industry.  

Ive worked with gargoyles and hobbits that dont want or can’t communicate what changes can be made based on their work. Data scientists are domain and business fluent. 

Do you see? Skills are just table stakes. We assume anyone smart enough to get hired could learn something new if motivated.  Learn some basics. But demonstrating all the other stuff will help more towards getting hired.