- Karina Datascientist's Newsletter
- Posts
- Should Your Portfolio Project Be About Penguins?
Should Your Portfolio Project Be About Penguins?
Karina Samsonova
January 16, 2026
The other day, someone asked me to suggest a data analytics project for the defence industry.
His reasoning? "Everyone else does retail projects. I want to stand out."
I understood his thinking. Stand out from the crowd. Show specialisation. Differentiate yourself.
But here's the problem: he just narrowed his job opportunities by 95%.
Today, let's talk about portfolio projects, specifically, which industries to focus on and why your "unique" project might actually be hurting your chances.
The Bird Migration Project
A few years ago, I was helping interview candidates who'd just graduated from a data bootcamp.
One candidate stood out immediately and not in the way he'd hoped.
His final project was an analysis of bird migration patterns.
It was detailed. Well-researched. Clearly a passion project. The visualisations were beautiful. The analysis was thorough.
And I had absolutely no idea how to connect it to business value.
"So... how would you apply this to, say, customer behaviour?"
He struggled to answer. Because he hadn't thought about it. He'd just analysed what he loved - birds.
It was cute. It was interesting. It showed technical skills.
But it didn't show business thinking.
These type of projects I call practice/learning project - great for building skills, but not your flagship project.
The Penguin Clustering Problem
Another time, I reviewed a portfolio with a clustering analysis of penguin species.
Again, technically solid. The candidate clearly understood K-means clustering, feature engineering and model evaluation.
But penguins?
Super niche. Complicated. Interesting for a research paper.
Completely disconnected from any business context.
When I asked "Why penguins?" the answer was: "It's a popular dataset in the data science community."
That's not a good reason.
The Defence Industry Request
Back to the person who wanted a defence industry project.
His logic: differentiate by going niche.
My response: you're not differentiating, you're limiting.
Here's why:
How many defence companies are hiring data analysts? Maybe 10-30 globally that you'd realistically apply to.
How many retail, fintech, healthcare or marketing companies are hiring? Thousands.
By specialising your portfolio in defence, you're saying to 95% of potential employers: "My skills might not be relevant to you."
Even if your goal is to work in defence, you still need to get your first job somewhere. And that somewhere is probably not defence. It's likely retail, finance, healthcare, or tech.
I'm saying this from experience. I currently work in telco, and most of my colleagues have always worked in this industry. They've niched down completely.
In the UAE where I live, there are only two telco companies. And we all have non-compete clauses in our contracts, meaning we can't work for a competitor for a specific period after leaving.
So if you want to change jobs, you're stuck. You've become a telco expert, but you've also limited yourself to two potential employers in the entire country.
On one hand, niching down makes you an expert. On the other hand, you're trapped.
That's the risk of specialising too early.
Build broad, transferable skills first. Become an expert in customer analytics, churn prediction, or forecasting - skills that work anywhere. Then, if you want to specialise in an industry, you'll have options.
The Industries You Should Focus On
I'm a big advocate for portfolio projects in these industries:
1. E-commerce / Online Retail
Why it works:
Everyone understands shopping online
Clear business metrics (conversion, revenue, customer lifetime value)
Universally applicable (every company sells something)
Rich datasets available
Direct connection to revenue
Example projects:
Customer segmentation and targeting
Product recommendation analysis
Shopping cart abandonment analysis
Seasonal sales trends
Customer lifetime value prediction
2. Fintech / Financial Services
Why it works:
Every company has financial data
Universal concepts (revenue, costs, profit, risk)
Shows you understand business fundamentals
Demonstrates attention to detail (finance = precision)
Directly ties to business outcomes
Example projects:
Fraud detection
Credit risk analysis
Customer churn in banking
Transaction pattern analysis
Budget forecasting
3. FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods)
Why it works:
Retail fundamentals everyone understands
Supply chain concepts are transferable
Shows understanding of inventory, demand, pricing
Applicable to any company with physical products
Example projects:
Demand forecasting
Inventory optimisation
Price elasticity analysis
Market basket analysis
Supply chain efficiency
4. Digital Marketing / SaaS
Why it works:
Every modern company does digital marketing
Clear, measurable KPIs (clicks, conversions, ROI)
Shows understanding of customer acquisition
Demonstrates ROI thinking
Example projects:
Marketing campaign effectiveness
A/B test analysis
Customer acquisition cost analysis
Email campaign optimisation
User engagement patterns
Why These Industries?
The skills are transferable.
Customer segmentation in e-commerce? Same concepts apply to:
Banking (segment customers by risk/value)
Healthcare (segment patients by treatment needs)
SaaS (segment users by engagement)
Telecom (segment by usage patterns)
Demand forecasting in FMCG? Directly transfers to:
Staffing needs in services
Capacity planning in manufacturing
Inventory in any retail
Resource allocation anywhere
When Niche Projects Make Sense
There ARE times to do industry-specific projects:
1. You're already in that industry
If you're a nurse trying to transition to healthcare analytics, absolutely do healthcare projects. You have domain expertise that's valuable.
2. You're targeting one specific company/industry
If you know you want to work at a pharmaceutical company and nowhere else, then yes, do pharma projects.
3. You have multiple projects
If you have 3-4 solid, transferable projects AND you want to add a niche one as #5 to show specialisation, go for it.
But your first project? Your only project? Make it transferable.
Choose projects that show:
You understand business problems
You can analyse data to support decisions
Your skills transfer across industries
You think about ROI and impact
E-commerce, fintech, FMCG, digital marketing—these aren't boring. They're broad and universal.
And please, for the love of data, no more penguin clustering projects.
Unless you're doing a PhD in zoology. Then, by all means, cluster away.
Keep pushing 💪,
Karina
Pandas Cheat Sheet
Grab your freebies if you haven’t done already:
Data Playbook (CV template, Books on Data Analytics and Data Science, Examples of portfolio projects)
Need more help?
Just starting with Python? Wondering if programming is for you?
Master key data analysis tasks like cleaning, filtering, pivot and grouping data using Pandas, and learn how to present your insights visually with Matplotlib with ‘Data Analysis with Python’ masterclass.
Building your portfolio?
Grab the Complete EDA Portfolio Project — a full e-commerce analysis (ShopTrend 2024) with Python notebook, realistic dataset, portfolio template, and step-by-step workflow. See exactly how to structure professional portfolio projects.
Grab your Pandas CheatSheet here. Everything you need to know about Pandas - from file operations to visualisations in one place.
 | Data Analyst & Data Scientist |