How to Get an Analytics Job
Welcome to How to Get an Analytics Job, the podcast where you build the foundation for your dream career in analytics. The goal of this podcast is to tackle the shortcomings of modern education in the analytics space by giving you advice from those actively practicing the art and science of working with data.
Our guests have included data professionals from Google, Amazon, Home Depot, PlayStation, Nordstrom and Truist (just to name a few) spanning roles from entry level, to senior, manager, VP and even a few CEOs. This has enabled us to keep a close feel for the pulse of the analytics space.
How to Get an Analytics Job
How to Get an Analytics Job Podcast ep. 136 | Featuring Molly Welsh, Business Systems Analyst
Hello and welcome back to the how to Get an Analytics Job podcast. So today we're going to be talking about the importance of building industry friends and the amount of opportunities that can bring you. I'm also going to be talking to my guest about SQL what you need to know, what's the best way to learn it and how does it show up in a day-to-day workforce. And then also she is going and getting an MBA to advance her analytics career. So our guest is Molly, who, coincidentally, is actually the first person back. What was it five years ago? Yeah? Five years ago, five years ago Getting getting.
Speaker 1:I helped you get your first analytics job. Um. So I know some of the guests have probably you've been on quite a few times over the years yeah, there was an episode with Gary Fly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, and I'm not sure if that was my only episode or not, but I do remember that one specifically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I feel like you've been on In the chats heavily. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the YouTube chats.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, you're a great kind of resource that I can like. I want people like you because I mean, you can't see it, but we got a Greensboro College student kind of running behind the scenes, craig, over there. Craig's killing it. Just like having someone that's five years into their career interacting with someone who's looking to get their foot in the door. Like you were saying off air that you were a little bit nervous, but like just giving your authentic opinion about you know what's been your experience is hugely insightful for someone like Craig.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I really, I would just say jump into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, especially your first job, I wouldn't worry too hard about is this the perfect fit or not, because ultimately you're not going to know until you start gaining some of that experience. Like you know, what is it that you're looking for in a position. What kind of management style do you prefer? What kind of workflow style?
Speaker 1:do you prefer what size company?
Speaker 3:What size company?
Speaker 1:You know like there's pros and cons. If you're working in a huge company, you're a cog on a very large wheel, but if you're in a small company, you might be the only person who knows analytics in the entire company yeah, only person who knows analytics in the entire company. So, and there's a lot of in-between ground there too, right? Well, I mean, I guess let me ask you this have you worked? It sounds like well. How many jobs have you had in?
Speaker 3:analytics over the last five years is it? Is it two or three? My third yeah okay, so my first two were uh jumps, and they were all so different from each other, right?
Speaker 1:what, but that's like I feel like that's great advice, though, because the first job you got you, I think you probably you didn't like it, for you don't have to be explicit, but like X, y, z, reason.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I enjoyed it. I was working agrochemicals first and doing data mining and it was a very generous title. I definitely learned a lot, but there wasn't any sort of like. I wasn't using any sort of SQL, I was using Microsoft Excel. That's it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:And I got pretty good with Excel and automating things within Excel and then I made a big leap to. So I stayed there for a year and after a year I made a big leap to a CPA firm as a data scientist, where I just was diving right into APIs using Python.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess, let me from a third-party perspective. I remember you during that time and you were so stressed. I was so stressed. So, like I hear the advice of, like you want to jump in with both feet, there are downsides to that approach. Yeah, because, like you were going from like Excel to Python, I mean from like data miner to data scientist. Yeah, which, like I mean, kudos to you.
Speaker 3:I mean you like you.
Speaker 1:You like stuck it out and like got on top of it. Yeah, um, because it sounds like the well. I mean, I remember talking to you during that time and you were like just it was like drinking water out of a fire hose.
Speaker 3:However, I will say and I do think that this is important, regardless of what field you're going into and what type of position is just really being honest about what you are capable of. So I had just done I think it was like a data boot camp online and did like a eBay web scraping project that I didn't even know was technically it's not illegal, but like you're not supposed to do that, right? And I was like yeah, this is what I can do and I'm using Python's like or Python, the pandas library. So I was like okay, I can, I can clean data and kind of went into my interview just being honest about that and trying to be as confident as I can. So they knew where I was at, but they were ready to be like cool, you know how to run some code, let's throw you into the deep end.
Speaker 3:But I did have a really great boss and a lot of guidance there, and I think it was a learning experience that I wouldn't have been able to teach myself on my own.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, I mean, if you think about it, like the accountability there, you either figure this out or you get fired. You know that it's a little bit more than like oh, I found a free YouTube resource, like that's the accountability there's kind of tough. I mean, I guess you can pay for content or you could sign up for like a you know college or boot camp, and like, having that money on the line of like I'm paying for this, if I don't get it done, if I don't finish it, I'm just wasting my time and my money. Yeah, but you did it on like super hard mode. It's like I'm going to lose my job and my income, which I mean that is kind of a cheat code. What were you going to say?
Speaker 3:Well, I was going to say, to be fair, I jumped into this position that felt very advanced from where I was coming from, for sure, but I was more like running the code and making tweaks to it and then editing, like when the code would fail I'd have to troubleshoot it, which was still very difficult, as opposed to like I didn't get the job and then they expected me to write this elaborate code.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 3:At some point I had to do that. That was stressful.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I kind of feel the same way or similarly about SQL. I think I built it up in my head a little bit I don't want to do SQL, I don't really like coding. But I'm realizing now because I have recruiters approaching me fairly regularly and one of the questions that keeps coming up and up is do you have SQL knowledge? And I guess, before we get into the topic, I want to kind of elaborate. You can be an analyst and work in Excel. Like financial analysts, I think pretty much across the board, unless you're at like a very high level, are mostly in Excel. Like financial analysts, I think, pretty much across the board, unless you're at like a very high level, are mostly using Excel.
Speaker 3:Anything I do in SQL or Python ends up getting exported to Excel anyway.
Speaker 1:So you don't have to learn SQL. I feel like that's like sacrilege. Like you know, you go on LinkedIn and everyone's posting about SQL, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not relevant for I would say, like non-tech brick and mortar, like you know, if you work at a grocery store, they're probably not having the people that are actually digging through the data. Most of that heavy lift is going to be in Excel. There are going to be like business intelligence people, people who kind of run the behind the scenes, but it's mostly like a self-service to where you have a GUI. For example, microstrategy is an example of that. You sign into it and then it's got a list of folders and it's like all right, I want state attribute and I want sales, and then you just click and drag it in there and then hit export and then it's in Excel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so after my data scientist position, I'm now a data analyst, so it's kind of a funny transition there. But now I work at a tech company and I would say it is very it's funny. I'm a data analyst, but I don't do analytics.
Speaker 1:What does that mean?
Speaker 3:well, when I think of analytics, I think about power bi, I'm thinking about, like, pulling all of this data and then creating insights from it, as opposed to now, where I am, I do a lot of tech support, I do a lot of data mapping, um so like etL. Yeah, that's like yeah.
Speaker 1:Essentially. Yeah, I mean that's so. You're basically like creating the sandbox in which you know an analyst who might even be using Excel is coming in and like knows the business? So there's kind of that, that spectrum of you know. Do you sit more within the systems side of things or are you more kind of in the business, influencing decisions?
Speaker 3:Yes, and even to like be a data scientist or do traditional analytics, I would agree with you that, like you, probably don't have to use SQL if you don't need to be accessing these large data sets yourself, if you can get somebody to pull that data for you you can do all the analytics outside of it for sure, especially like Tableau Power BI.
Speaker 3:It's funny those are tools that I use to put on my resume and I've done the projects but, I, would be if I went for my next interview and they asked me if I could you know if I use Power BI and Tableau. I'd say I've used it before and I feel confident that I could you know, it's like riding a bike.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, I mean, BI tools are like.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it might take me a while.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it's kind of 80-20, right, like there's in Power BI or Tableau or whatever. I'm confident that if I gave you an hour, you could probably connect to a data set, pull it in and build out a very simple interactive dashboard Like it. You know, maybe an hour is like too zealous.
Speaker 3:Maybe if I gave you a day, I did make a map at my current position that ended up not being used at all, but that was kind of relearning it, where I think I spent an hour at least relearning how to do it. But then, once the data was in there, it took about 15 minutes to make the map.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was about to say it's more of a refresher. It's so much easier, if you've already learned something, to go back and refresh yourself, as opposed to like learning it the first time, because I feel maybe there's a certain level of anxiousness or anxiety around. I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know if I can get this done versus oh, I did that a year ago, oh, okay. Well, it looks like they've had a new update, so this button has moved from this side of the panel to this side of the panel. You know, I mean, that's a different type of a challenge then.
Speaker 3:And would you say that a lot of analytics jobs are heavily using Power BI and Tableau? Like, from what I have heard, you can get an analyst position and just be pushing out dashboards all day. Essentially, it's still like a super. Yeah, it's a very in-demand skill to have. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, I feel like there are jobs where that's like you are a Power BI developer and that's the main thing that you do. But you know there's a there's a whole gambit of jobs, kind of within the analytics Space. You know cuz like financial analysts are probably not doing that. Like the CFO of whatever company they're working for is probably he's probably 30, 40 years into his career. He's been working with Excel from day one. So like that is what they're, that's the tech stack they're using. That's like just kind of what's been established there's so much to Excel too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's crazy. I feel like I learn new things to do in Excel just by scrolling on Instagram or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's interesting because Excel gets a bad rap. But it's like if you were a good problem solver and you have some business domain, you can generate millions of dollars worth of value from the work that you do. It's kind of weird to think about. It's like why do some of these analysts make so much money? Well, it's like they, if they didn't weren't in that role or their role didn't exist, maybe the company would be a million dollars less profitable.
Speaker 3:You know like you can't measure what you don't track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. Well, and then also. But I feel like a lot of analysts get hyper fixated on the technical stuff and maybe I'm falling into that with my kind of worry around. Like you know, I'm eight years into working in analytics and I haven't really gotten deep into SQL. Gotten deep into SQL.
Speaker 3:The thing about SQL also is it's kind of like Excel, where there's so much that you can do with it. And I found myself to be this way too when I first started learning to query, where I kind of thought, oh, I've got my select order by statement, I got it, I got it. And then now in my role, now there's uh, we use sql server as our data warehouse, essentially, and it's so much to it, and sometimes I'll just go read through the code for fun, trying to understand it yeah but like it's, you know I'm not writing any sort of stored procedures or anything like that, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:I feel like that's where your SQL skills get super advanced. I feel confident. Like you said, you think that I could learn relearn Tableau or something within an hour. I could teach you to write to query data just as quickly, okay. And then you could go into your job.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I guess kind of where this thought is is. You know, right now I'm working for a pretty large company. Back nine months ago, when I was interviewing you know, I had three potential jobs that I wanted to get. One of them was the first analyst for, you know, I think it was like a nine-figure business, so like $150 million to $150 million in revenue. And the thing that knocked me out of the interview, they asked me have you ever done a stored procedure? And I didn't even know what that meant. I was like so humiliated because I was like power bi tableau the insights. But there's a whole piece that I'm missing from, like the data engineering side to where, like if, if I wanted to be the person that ran the analytics for a smaller company, you, you can't just have like that laser focused right I am a sql developer, BI developer or a financial analyst that focuses on this very specific.
Speaker 3:And I think that's the line between analyst and developer as well, too. Okay. What does that mean?
Speaker 3:A developer is really the person that's doing the back-end coding, the behind-the-scenes sort of thing, where analyst. I feel like it's going to say bad when I say it, but I want to say it's almost the more superficial level. You are taking what's already done in the back end and you're querying through that. You're drawing insights. Like whenever I'm querying data, you know I'm doing some tech support. There's an issue. I can look into the data and figure out what's missing, what looks off.
Speaker 1:I'm going to yes and you. Yes, from a tech standpoint, analysts have a superficial understanding of what developers do, but, on the flip side, developers have a superficial understanding of the data because they're not actually in it. You know they're not looking at. Hey, here's our pricing strategy. Oh, you know, at this higher price point, we sell X amount lower. No, they're working on like the actual kind of infrastructure around that. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's like it's really like kind of pick your poison, and I'm kind of leaning towards like maybe I want to be in a position where, like I'm almost like a full stack developer I don't know, I mean, it could be six months from now and it's like, yeah, that idea was not at all what I thought I wanted to pursue, or whatever.
Speaker 3:Well, I feel you on that because I'd say that was my biggest motivation to get my MBA too. Feel you on that because I'd say that was my biggest motivation to get my MBA too. Is I wanted to be that bridge between tech and business acumen, where am I going to be a full stack developer probably not ever, but I can try.
Speaker 3:I've taken a course to start learning like basic Java CSS, java CSS, start using Git a little bit, and that's just surface level. And then I know nothing about business acumen. I'm taking my I guess you could say second and a half course in my MBA and I took my first marketing class and thought this is everything. I'm ready to go. What's the point of the rest of these classes? I've got this. I learned so much.
Speaker 1:Now I'm in supply chains and I'm thinking yeah oh, there's this I do, and well, and it's funny because, like I'm, I'm kind of curious what you mean when you say business acumen, because I am going to say something that may come off as controversial. I'm not sure you can like learn true business acumen in a classroom.
Speaker 3:Interesting Okay.
Speaker 1:Like you can learn the fundamentals of marketing, like, hey, here's a marketing funnel, the top of the funnel is awareness, and then there's nurturing, and then there's, like the, you know sales yeah, unpack that a little bit, but like it's one thing understanding like here is the framework, but then going and applying that framework out in the real world. That's when you're starting to deal with like ambiguity, complexity. You have to make assumptions, um, and I think that's I mean a marketing class is a good start right maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3:There's so many very successful people that never went to college.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I guess that's kind of what I'm. A lot even that don't have an MBA. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting to is like there are different courses or trains of thought. You could go and study what you want to go or, you know, if it's available available to you, you could go and get like a marketing specialist job and work and, you know, spend the same two years. You know, maybe we split the timeline one year, one timeline you're getting your MBA, the other one you're working as a marketing specialist.
Speaker 3:Um, who knows, like so if you were not to get your nba so you know nothing about business, you know would the only way to learn both sides would be to get two different jobs what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:um, like you're saying that, no, well, okay, well, I guess what I'm saying is that college gives you like a very theoretical, almost like sterile. You know it's like we're looking at this in a vacuum. It's like the whole foundations of economic theory, of well, assuming that everything stays equal, which is like well, that first assumption, if you raise tariffs, that's going to affect other things in the economy. Prices of goods are going to go up to the end consumer, which is then going to Like there's, you're looking at that macro level. It gives you a perspective on kind of you know, broadly speaking, how a business runs, but like you learn so much about, like a very it's almost like an impeachment. You're like dialed into one specific aspect of the business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so kind of the difference between understanding and comprehending, where you, when you go to school, you understand this material. But until you're actually in the workforce and using those things that you learned and seeing how they intersect with each other, that's where you get a comprehension of it.
Speaker 1:Well, okay. So one thing you said before we hit record was you feel like the MBA is a cheat code, and I'm not trying to rain on your parade by saying like you get like a sterile kind of formal, this is what. But I will say the benefits of an NBA is that you get a broader perspective. Yeah, because that person who went and got the marketing specialist just knows marketing. Yeah, versus, like you're zoomed out and you can. You can kind of see like oh well, you know we're marketing really heavy for these areas, but we're having a supply chain issue here. So like it doesn't matter, if the marketing is effective in florida, we can't ship anything there, it's just all going to waste.
Speaker 1:So like that's yeah it's kind of a different game that you're playing. It's like almost you're getting into the world of strategy versus in a marketing specialist role. You would be the executor, you would be kind of running it and then which I mean it? You know we've talked for a while. Your goal is you want to move into management, right?
Speaker 3:yeah. So when I said cheat code, what I mean is I'm an analyst. Now If you look at our org chart, there are 20 people above me, right, there is nobody below me. How do I scale my career, right? Do I just work as an analyst and either job hop to eventually get to a better position, or do I stay in my analyst role and just, you know, grind it out and hope I get the promotions over time and time and time and then in 20 years I'm in a leadership role where I can be an analyst now, get my MBA and then hope that scales my career a little bit, where maybe I can you know, I don't know cut a couple steps there. Or my next if I were to leave my company, I would be able to jump in at a higher role, right? Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 1:This kind of circles back around to like. One of the first things I said when I was like opening the podcast is there is an important aspect that is neglected by like I don't know 95 of people working in analytics is building relationships in the industry, and I will say an mba, a good mba, so like, and I'm not even when I it's funny when university yeah when I say a good mba, I'm not even talking about academics right functionally speaking, a good mba gets you plugged into a network and gets you because you went.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that's why I chose hp.
Speaker 1:Yeah hp is like very razzle-dazzle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, la-di-da.
Speaker 1:But I mean they have. Devin Summers, who was in my classroom here at Greensboro College four years ago, went directly from studying business at Greensboro College getting the analytics minder, then jumped directly into an MBA at HPU and then he got a senior analyst role at NASCAR first job out of the gate.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. But the thing is like there's a lot of stories like that too. Right.
Speaker 3:You know, I was razzle-dazzled a bit whenever I did my tour of HPU and instead of giving you a pamphlet, they actually give you these hardback books and they have all these, you know, student success stories in there too, where their students are getting internships, and that, ultimately, is what sold me, because I could just go get a piece of paper and that's probably not going to do for me what HPU would, where you would get plugged into a network and get to meet people yeah, well, I mean, I'm actually on the advisory board for hpu's business school.
Speaker 1:They have a whole like catalog of contacts of former students and also people who are like volunteering to like work with hpu students and you just go onto the Excel file. It's got their telephone number, their email address, their LinkedIn, so you can just go and reach out to them and connect with them, which is I don't know why all colleges and universities are not doing something similar to that, but that's hugely valuable because there's a whole hidden job market out there where people are getting jobs because they're not. They're not even applying, it's just because, oh, the former head of this department knows this. This guy who works in analytics, he completely bypassed the cold application process and got directly to a you-round interview because this person kind of vouched for him. And you've got to bear in mind there's dynamics at play with that. If that VP referred me to the job and I had a bad job, that would make him look bad, yeah absolutely, and it would kind of hurt his social capital, so referrals are extremely valuable.
Speaker 3:They are and I've ultimately a referral helped me get my job now and it's I can confidently say the position that I'm in now is the first one that I have where I really like my job.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a perfect conversation. What does that mean? Like what, and you don't have to get into like this. I don't want you to like throw anybody on their bus, but what's a good job, what's a bad job, or what aspects make it good or bad to you?
Speaker 3:Okay, Well, what I like about my job now is I love my team. I love the team that I work with. We help each other out. There's no stupid questions. There's a lot of like knowledge transferring sessions. Like hey, you want to learn this? Like let's hop on a call and walk through this. Or you have a question about this? Like let's get together and talk about it. I love that aspect of teamwork and team building. I've seen growth in my role where I haven't seen growth in other positions.
Speaker 1:So it felt just like static, like there was no that. I can see that as being very demotivating of like absolutely there's no room for growth here, so I'm just going to put in the bare minimum, because I'm just waiting for the next thing yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So there's that. There's a lot of cross training. I love being hybrid. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Where my office is. It's like 10, 15 minutes away. I go in about once a week and we actually play Dungeons and Dragons on our lunch break on Wednesdays, which I absolutely love. So there's such a great culture. It's a good snack If I need to step out and run an important errand you know nobody's going to be like. Did you put in your time for those two hours while you were doing this? Or I called you and you didn't answer you're not micromanaged. I'm not micromanaged. I feel like an adult, yeah there.
Speaker 1:I think there's also an aspect, too, of finding the right kind of work as well. Um so, do you enjoy the work itself?
Speaker 3:I really do, I really do so, I work in real estate technology.
Speaker 1:You're like lighting up, talking about work.
Speaker 3:I know, isn't that funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:I love it. I work in real estate technology and I feel like in a past life maybe I was a realtor or an interior designer or something so I really enjoy the data that I work with. I think that makes a big difference too, because when I worked at a CPA firm, it was just numbers.
Speaker 1:Accountants are some of the most flavorful, colorful people I've ever met. Sorry if you're an accountant, I'm not trying to like poo-poo on you guys.
Speaker 3:What makes where I have been unhappy, what makes a job not desirable, I would say would be it was such a high-stress work environment where it was every single day. We had a deadline to meet by five o'clock but we couldn't start. You know pushing the data to go where it needed to go until like 3.30.
Speaker 1:So you had like an hour and a half to get the thing done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if there was an error which errors happen all the time it's like, okay, well, now you're working until 8 pm every single day and my work schedule was like I was my busiest from 3 pm until 8 pm. Every day is what it felt like, and I was also super busy in the morning. So I'm still starting at 7.30, 8 o'clock in the morning. Oh wow, and it was just these long days. It felt like thankless work, to be honest. Okay, and a culture of hostility where everybody was just frantic. I will quote this one thing that someone said to me one time.
Speaker 5:It's comical, it's in a call and they said I feel like there is a train coming and I am standing on the track and I know it's not going to stop and I'm just hoping that me standing there will slow it down and ultimately I am going to get run over and started tearing up, wow, and this was like a senior level person and I was like, yeah, this is awful, because I feel.
Speaker 3:I mean, I don't feel like that, but I felt very stressed and that's I remember the day I quit, or like my last day there. I didn't just quit, but I slept all night, yeah, and I forgot that I could do that yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other aspect of like keeping an eye on your mental health, like if you're not sleeping through the night because you're so stressed about work, that's beige, probably a red flag. Yeah. Like I don't know. I mean, maybe there's other circumstances that are kind of complicating things, but yeah, I'd say it's a red flag for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say because you dream about work. That's a red flag. Like I, sometimes I dream that I'm working now and it's still stressful yeah like, especially if I'm kind of in the middle of a problem that I'm working on, or like a project that is time sensitive. You know I'm thinking about it, but uh, it's definitely well, I mean it's, it's sound.
Speaker 1:The assumption I'm making about that role that you were in in the past is that what's the saying? Shit rolls downhill. It sounds like.
Speaker 3:I have never heard that, but I would assume it does.
Speaker 1:It sounds like the CEO might be under pressure from the board and there might be some weird political stuff going on, like maybe there's a corporate takeover and like these people are trying to cling to like their job, and then they put pressure on their direct reports and then their direct reports get pressed and it's yeah, so we?
Speaker 3:what I was doing was covid rental relief disbursements. I think ultimately it would have been a temporary position, any like there's a lifetime to that role, um, but you know, banks close at five o'clock so you get in everything you can until the end of the day. So really that's just how the system worked. I don't know if there's a better way around. That. That's above my pay grade, I guess.
Speaker 1:It's something I don't like to say. Yeah, but I mean you're getting an MBA so soon to be not right?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:I'm ready to take on anything now with my pay grade just so I can learn more. All right, so what classes are you taking?
Speaker 3:I know you looked this up like right before I know I said I should be able to answer this. Well, I finished on my marketing based management class. I'm taking a supply chain operations class and this is what I looked up and I already forgot what it was. I think it's accounting fundamentals is the other course, so that's like the prerequisite course and it's a self-paced course. So initially when I started my MBA, I wanted to do it full-time so I could finish in a year and I thought a good way to test the waters to see if I can manage a full, if I could go full-time, would be to. I'm going to sign up for this one class and then I have this self-paced course at the same time so I can finish that whenever I want to. I ultimately need that before I can take other classes. That did not work no.
Speaker 3:I am could not handle the workload of working full-time and taking two MBA classes. Yeah, it was too much. It was too much, so I'm still working on that self-paced course now alongside my supply chain class.
Speaker 1:So I mean this is a bit of a tangent, but how would you rate your time management skills out of 10?
Speaker 3:I would say if you asked me that question a few months ago, I would say one of my weaknesses would be time management. But I think I've gotten to a really good place where I manage my time really well.
Speaker 3:I'm really good at blocking off my calendar and my schedule personal and work to make sure, like if something gets in yeah, I can get it done, but what my bigness weakness is is based off of that, and I don't even know what you would call this is that when something unexpected comes up now, that will sometimes throw me into a frenzy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where I'm like, that will sometimes throw me into a frenzy. Yeah yeah, yeah, where I'm like. Oh man, I didn't account for this. Right.
Speaker 3:And now I have to, like I've stacked up my time and yeah. So I guess to mitigate that, like what I've done is I try to get everything done Monday to Friday, so my weekends are my weekends. Yeah. And if something comes up, then I can.
Speaker 1:I mean you may also want to like bake in some safety time. Yeah. Almost like an emergency fund. You know like having a three to six-month emergency fund makes your finances so much lower pressure. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, though, if you're taking two classes and you're working full-time and you have a social life, yeah, I mean, I don't know, my weekends have become you're doing a lot like right now it's you're. You're getting used to being like very busy and I think that that's stretching you in a good way yeah, I hope so, I'd imagine.
Speaker 3:I hear all these senior positions are working off the wall hours. So if I, if I'm filling up my time with that many hours, then if I could just do one thing for all of those hours, maybe that would be easier.
Speaker 1:As you're moving kind of up a hierarchy, I think you have to deal with broader sets of problems, or I mean and I guess this is another conversation, living back to what we were talking about with you know, getting growing in your career, like there are two paths kind of within analytics, so like you could move into management, or you could become like a highly specialized individual contributor. Yeah. Where you're doing like I'm trying to.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't mind that either, honestly.
Speaker 1:Which like, but I feel like being an individual contributor might kind of conflict with the nature of an MBAba, because the nature of an mba is kind of wide, yeah versus a getting a like a phd in geospatial science, like what is. Isn't that what kinga has? Geospatial she has like a phd in like environmental science, like focusing on, like geography that sounds she now is a data scientist that works for a flood risk startup. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean that's like think about how specialized that is, like you've studied this for environmental stuff, for I don't know.
Speaker 3:A PhD. Oh my gosh. I hear those can take two years to more. Yeah, like do they take you five.
Speaker 1:So that's like an area that she studied and she's become an expert on and then she consults in that space, versus, like, going the nba route. Yeah, you might have to. There are certain threads that are going to span multiple kind of verticals and departments, and higher up the organization you go, the more you kind of have to to deal with that yeah, yeah, absolutely so yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's just, I think, you're having to deal with like more uncertainty as well, you know which, and that, I think takes the ability to kind of self-soothe and deal with anxiety, which sounds like you've also gotten better at that too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say so. I think me going to the gym is a big part of that, and then, unfortunately, with my schedule, now that's not something I'm able to do like I was, but making sure that I get there at least once a week it does help, for sure. For sure.
Speaker 1:I got you. Okay, once a week is it does help.
Speaker 3:For sure, for sure, I got you, so okay, so you're a semester in or two, technically yeah, so two mini masters in which would or like the second half of one mini master in the first half of another, I mean.
Speaker 1:I'm just one. I'm kind of curious, Like do you have like a specific title or direction that you want to go in?
Speaker 3:Because I feel like there are a lot of people who have the same kind of instinct that you have of like, oh, if I get a master's degree, that's going to open doors up for me. Yeah, it's interesting. I did this HPU MBA summit. I met a lot of the other students and I was very impressed how many people know exactly what they want to do and I don't. But I think I'm just going to. I'm still trying to figure it out. I know that I want to be a bridge between.
Speaker 3:I'm not the most technical person in the world. Obviously, Like I said, I'm not going to be a full-stack developer or anything, but I can be more technical than most and have that business acumen and be able to be in a leadership role where I can convey what needs to be conveyed and, you know, do the thing. I guess If I had a title in mind, I don't ever want to be a CEO, but wouldn't it be cool if I was like a CIO or, you know, a CTO? I don't know, Maybe I need to be more technical than what I'm imagining, but I'm still trying to grow my technical skills. In the position that I'm in now, I still have the opportunity to learn a lot of new things and I am actively learning every day on the job. So I'm hoping, as that grows and then by the time.
Speaker 3:I get my MBA. Maybe there's also the imposter syndrome, like I don't know. Probably won't ever be good enough for that, but if I aim for it, we'll see where I fall.
Speaker 1:You're cracking me up a little bit because you just said I don't know what I want to do and then proceeded to give me a very detailed breakdown of what you want to do, so like I don't know. If that's fair. Like well are the people that you're like that were in that orientation, where they like I want to be at this specific company at this pay. Like that feels a little rigid to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like your, your kind of vision for like where growth could go or where your career growth could be, feels kind of realistic, like it's not. You know, I need to get a job at Meta and that's success. Yeah. Because it's like you get in there and then what you know like that's yours, seems kind of a little pliable A little bit pliable.
Speaker 3:Which is just more realistic. I would hope so. Yeah, and I like working in tech now and I would be interested in other fields too. Just hearing about the fresh market honestly. Yeah, first of all, that 40% discount.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I can say that on air, but that's incentivizing, I mean, I guess that's like free promo for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have friends that do really well in retail too, and I think that's super interesting as well. Personally, I love retail, I'm a shopper, I love Target.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I mean, it sounds like you.
Speaker 3:I feel like I am very adapt, adaptable and I can find happiness in a lot of places. Um so, in the space that I'm in now, the the real estate. It's not what I would have ever, it's not what I expected or ever aimed for, but, right, it's cool. I really like it, I really like it um, I know what I don't like.
Speaker 3:I I don't want to work for a financial institution. I know I don't want to work for any. I don't want to work for a financial institution. I know I don't want to work for any pharmaceutical company. Never would want to work for the government, like any sort of government sector. So yeah, I mean I have a little bit of direction, like I know enough to stay in a lane, but you know I would be willing to take multiple paths.
Speaker 1:Well, you have a lot to build off of. You know a lot of experience, like a lot of skills and knowledge, because I was talking with somebody I think it might have been a student of how many people know Excel. You know probably, like I don't't know Excel at all probably 95% of corporate people, but how many people know it above a 5 out of 10? Yeah, then that breaks it down to like I don't know 20% of people but it's.
Speaker 3:I feel like that brings us into the conversation of AI, because Excel I think it's Excel right, they have a new AI assistant that you can use, whereas, basically, if you know the basics, if you know what questions to ask, then you can do anything which. I feel like that was true before. You just had to be willing to do your due diligence and research to be like how do I create a dropdown menu?
Speaker 3:Right now, you could just use the the tool and it's going to go ahead and make it for you, uh, but I wonder, does that raise the bar? You know if everybody can do no that was another, um uh, incentive for me to get my mba too, where like to set yourself apart yeah, I don't know if I can keep up with. I don't know if I can keep up with tech has?
Speaker 1:has daniel hall not told you his whole take on ai? No, tell me um, ai is not going to replace your job, it's just going to augment it yeah, but more people are going to be able to do that job.
Speaker 3:Now, that's what I think um and empower more people to be able to do.
Speaker 1:I think you are undervaluing the fact that you have a five-year-long history of working with data, the critical thinking ability that you developed, and like the intuition and asking the right questions, you know, like because, yeah, the new thing is going to be prompt engineering. But the fact that you've worked with data and you're like, oh, this data looks wrong, so it's like, okay, why might this data be wrong? Oh, it's because this table's not joined correctly, so you can go and follow the thread, versus, like, some average person might not even be able to recognize mistakes.
Speaker 1:They're just going to ask hey, you know why were sales down last week? And then it would give like a see, I'm not so sure that like AI, is this super pill? Like there's so many assumptions and there's so much like gray, that like.
Speaker 3:I feel like it's going to change. It is already changing a lot of things.
Speaker 1:It will change the nature of work.
Speaker 3:yeah, For example, in my role as a data scientist, one of the last things I was working on with my team was creating a new API connection to this new platform we were using In my role. Now I wanted to connect to an API to pull specific data. I went to chat GBT Obviously I don't use this on my work computer, but I'll use it on my regular computer and then, you know, copy the script over. But I went to chat GBT said connect me to this API, I want to pull this, this and this, and then I am able to just set up my connections with my credentials and the data's there. Where. That took like my team before we were working on creating this API connection for like a month or two and it took me 15 minutes.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, yeah. To do it now, Well, that's a huge amount of leverage. 15 minutes that's crazy. Yeah, Do it now Well, that's a huge amount of leverage. But the problem with leverage is it can go both ways right. Like if I'm buying a short for the housing market in 2007, that's awesome. But if I were, you know, if I leveraged some cash to go and buy a house in 2007, I would be out, I don't know, probably a few hundred thousand dollars. So, like AI can be really good, it also can be there's a liability or a risk to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because if you're just going off of what it's telling you without fully understanding, like, hey, this checks out, this makes sense, and like understanding the use case and the contributing factors to why you know things might be this way or that way, yeah, um so I guess how you were saying I was underplaying myself before, like I think I do still like believe that it's true that more people are going to be able to do those like basic to intermediary yeah, or intermediate skill level tasks like with an Excel or BI assistance, tableau assistance, whatever. But I think also there's that scalable too. So if you're at a level three, maybe you can jump to a level five where you wouldn't be able to before. So maybe I should look at it at that perspective instead of like oh no, I'm a level three, everybody's about to be a level three.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying. Yeah, I think you're downplaying yourself. I think it might be some imposter syndrome um, I don't know that's. I think you're in a great spot. You know, like you've you've got five years of experience is very, very important or very key right now. Yeah, because it's, it's very hard to break into analytics right now. Is it?
Speaker 1:It's, it's gotten. I mean, I shut down my career services program cause I, you know, I had a hundred percent money back guarantee and it was like same program, same methodology. You know, about a year ago I guess, like, oh, like, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, at this point the job market, especially for entry level, just kind of tanked.
Speaker 3:And you know what I have found is being an analyst. I still do believe that it's like a commendable title. However, I feel like it's become like it's getting diluted right.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's become this diluted right.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's become this buzzword essentially. I know, uh like my company did a restructure of positions and now it's like everybody's an analyst.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Everybody's an analyst Well and. I see that, and just looking at other jobs online too, uh like there's a financial analyst. I'm reading what's required and it sounds like a typical analytics job. And then I go to the next one and it has nothing to do with analytics.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 1:There is some kind of like, but at the same time titles are somewhat arbitrary.
Speaker 1:Like for, for example, you mentioned, like the banking industry, apparently it's like not that hard to become a vp, like a like, yeah, like, because I I think that, or maybe I shouldn't say it's not that hard. But a vp at the fresh market is you're one level below c-suite, but a vp within like I don't know, truest, for example, I think there's like multiple business units. A vp is like a manager or a director level, maybe more accurate to be a director level, because then there's like senior vps and then there's like I don't know so that also gets you back to like what size is your company essentially?
Speaker 3:too yeah like there's a lot of intermediate, there's those small companies, there's meta, and then there's so many in between where I don't think I work for a huge company per se, definitely not like meta. Yeah. But there's still at least 10 people above me.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. I'm trying to think about, like, in my current position, how many people are above me. I think there's only like two, three levels of management above me, maybe two look at you, big shot well, but it's a different I.
Speaker 1:I think it's a flatter organization maybe, and that's see that that we could go on it's. It's an endless conversation around, like you know what's the size of your company, what industry are you in, what vertical within that industry. So yeah, but I guess I'll caveat this of like, if you're getting a new job, they don't expect you to know everything, but if you have like a history, if you have five years of working with data, various different companies, various different industries, that gives you a starting point, that gives you a leg up over, you know, people who are just starting out, entry level, that have access to AI. I feel like you're downplaying that. I'm trying to like pump you up a little bit, but you've got this body of work, these experiences, these skills and these wins, quite frankly, that are kind of mental models in your head that you can use to navigate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, ai is definitely here to stay. So I think that's something that everybody's going to be using, and even my husband's company. They have an internal AI for their whole organization and it's been incredibly useful to just say, like go in and you can ask, right that's crazy over this project and it will pull up this.
Speaker 3:Or, like you can ask questions where you might spend time, you know, going through the office or he works in manufacturing, so going from this person to this person to this person to try to figure out an answer where you can use the AI now and that's not enhancing anybody's job as like as a skill set, essentially, but it is enhancing your job, the time you would spend doing certain things and increasing accuracy. Right.
Speaker 3:Reducing bottlenecks. I guess you could say where like people might get stuck and be going to the wrong person. For this one thing, this project is getting delayed or not. All the information is there and now this ai tool is there to like, let the data flow or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like AI is where analytics was. When you and I first sat down at Mythos on Market Street in Greensboro the beginning and looked at Because I mean, I feel like you got into the analytics market at a really good time.
Speaker 3:I think so too, you know like Because I remember I was really wanting that analyst position and I didn't get an analyst position right away yeah, a data mining position. But I thought, okay, well, this is good I.
Speaker 1:I took a data mining class in my gis course in college, so I was like you know right, but I mean, even that is like enough of an end to like look, look, what you've done.
Speaker 3:It's working with data. Yeah, you know like it's working with big data. Right. It's such a valuable thing, it's such a transferable skill.
Speaker 1:I gotcha All right. Well, let's wrap this bad boy up. Do you have any closing thoughts on how people can get an analytics job?
Speaker 3:Craig's sitting right here off screen what do you have to say to Craig Just be open, you know. Yeah. Like if there is one thing that you know that you want to do, definitely go for it, but don't be afraid to take a baby step first and then jump from there Like just get in.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, I definitely. That's kind of the advice that I'm hearing from a lot of my professors nowadays is, if you're a really smart person, if you have critical thinking skills you know there's not a good way to show that on your resume and your application, but if you just get in, if you're an impressive person, you will impress somebody.
Speaker 1:And you just have to get that personal, you just get in you know if you're an impressive person. You will impress somebody and you just have to get that personal. You just have to get in. Well, good luck on your interview on monday. Thank you, I mean craig's an overachiever, if you do, you mind me. Yeah, we can talk about that, all right. So you got an interview for uh, is it like essentially like a project management?
Speaker 6:uh, it's a it's a project management position at an architectural design company, but the deal is kind of it's a growing position and so if a project manager like this will be the first time they hired somebody to do that, so that person also needs to know some analytics. They need to know we're getting all these new numbers. It's the first time the company's had all these numbers. Somebody needs to know what to do with all these numbers, because that's like a fresh thing to them.
Speaker 1:Well, you said you read a book on architecture in the last two days.
Speaker 6:Yeah, well, I've been studying up, so I went to Books A Million and got a copy of a book on the architectural business.
Speaker 1:It was like 200 pages.
Speaker 6:It wasn't architecture for dummies. No, I didn't pick up architecture for dummies. There was project management for dummies. Yeah, you sent me some pictures of that. That was funny, but I don't know. I've actually read some of the for dummies books and they're kind of like for dummies, you know.
Speaker 3:It helped me pass chemistry. I will say that I've got a chemistry for dummies alongside my textbook Gotcha for dummies alongside my textbook Gotcha I'm a dummy there.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, molly. Thank you so much for your time. Craig, good luck on Monday. I know you're going to kill it. And thank you all for tuning in to the episode.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
