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. 137 | Featuring Dejuan Robinson
Hello and welcome back to the how to Get an Analytics Job podcast. So today we're doing something new. I don't think we've ever actually done this before. So I'm sitting here across from one of my current students here at Greensboro College and we're going to be talking about five specific things. So number one we're going to be introducing him, kind of give some background on you know where he's at right now. We're going to also be talking about his skills and experience. We're going to be talking about the job hunt, both kind of at a high level, and then also what he is going through as far as you know what status he's at right now, what kind of anxieties, what kind of worries he might have. And then, finally, we're going to do some mock interview questions. So, dejuan, welcome, how are you feeling?
Speaker 2:I'm feeling great. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so thank you so much. I mean, this was kind of last moment. We're actually studying the podcast in class, so I don't know if we can get any more meta than we are right now. But it turns out that you have been doing content creation for about a year, so sometimes I actually just pull you up to the front of the classroom and let you kind of talk about what you know, and then I'll fill in any knowledge gaps. So I guess, just quickly introduce yourself, like what's your background, your current goals and kind of what are you going through? Right?
Speaker 2:now. I am from Riverdale, Maryland. I am currently a senior in at Greensboro College. I major in business administration with a minor in business analytics. My goals are to just get a job in my career, hopefully in analytics, even if it's just an entry-level job. Pass that life goals. I'm a simple guy. I just want to be able to pay my bills, do my hobbies and hopefully spend time with my family. If I have one, what?
Speaker 1:was the third one, my bad, just like. So, I guess, the current status. I guess I can kind of fill it in so you were rounding out the last semester of your senior year. Yes, so now is when you need to kind of get your personal brand tightened up. We're getting on your LinkedIn your resume and then also getting you prepped up. We're getting on your LinkedIn, your resume and then also getting you prepped up for the interview process, because I mean, literally, you just got your first interview set up, yes, like within. I mean we had class at, I think, one yesterday, so I mean this is like in real time happening. So I mean I guess let's kind of start with what skills and what experience do you have? Because I know that you're I think I looked at your LinkedIn before this so you're about 10 months in to like working a job currently. So I guess could you tell me a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:My current job is at the Greensboro Board ABC stores. There we just do usual sales associate stuff, just talking to customers. We're recommending them drinks, helping them find drinks. But we also we also have times where they want us to push a certain product or sales on a certain product. Like if we get sales on like allocated drinks which are basically like if you're for anybody who drinks, it's bourbon, it's buffalo, trace, eagle, rare wellers, blanton's, eh, taylor, those kind of drinks we kind of when we get them, we put them out. We put them out fast. A lot of people it's a hot seller because it's ready to get. Everybody wants something that's scarce. So yeah, we, we do that. It's a lot of basic store maintenance but when it comes to that job I think it's very undervalued. Being a sales associate to people who drink regularly, just sometimes having to deal with people who sometimes come in and they're not up to the standard of the store, they're not at their best, and just having to deny them and seeing how they can act when denied their drinks.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're kind of getting into like customer management a little bit, maybe risk liability, like mitigating risk yeah mitigating risk, just being able to de-escalate situations, being able to also just being able to help people in general help people who sometimes don't know they're asking for a gift for their wife or their family just being able to help them. But other than that I've done. I'm currently doing the internship with you which we are studying this very podcast, looking at the audience curves and the retention curves on this podcast to help push content and create. Did we decide if we were going with the short clips? I don't remember.
Speaker 1:I apologize. Yeah, so we'll get into this a little bit more, because this is kind of what I guess to tease the audience a little bit. Like this is what we're going to talk about. As far as the mock interview question, I'm going to ask you like hey, I see that you, you know, for three months at a student practicum where you got to work with real data. Tell me about that, so we'll kind of get into that a little bit more specific in the context of a mock interview question. But I guess okay, so that kind of gives a good breakdown of your experience. But as far as skills go, I mean one of the things we were talking about, like when we were kind of diagnosing the podcast, the last episode, we we pushed out, like we I mean I guess we can get into it a little bit, so we looked at the well, before we even get into you know what the results were, what. What data do we look at?
Speaker 2:we looked at audience retention curve and then we looked at. We also looked at audience retention curve and then we looked at. We also looked at who is watching the videos. We looked at the views and the unique. We also talked about unique views versus just regular views. Yeah, those are things that we looked at. We also looked at where it was. Where are people peaking in the retention curve? Where are people peaking in the retention curve?
Speaker 1:So yeah, which I think is a really interesting concept, especially for those who are listening, like you probably don't think about, like the analytics that are this behind media consumption, but what is the audience retention curve?
Speaker 2:The audience retention curve is basically how long somebody is watching the video or how long they stay on the video. And basically, if I were, if it was to be shown in a graph, it would basically be like a line, and imagine at the top of that line is when you first click on the video, which is at a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's at a hundred.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your line can either stay at that rate or it can slowly drop.
Speaker 1:Or it could rapidly drop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could rapidly drop as well, but with that retention curve, if your retention curve is steadily constant throughout the video, your video everybody was able to understand your video, watch your video and they continued watching it without feeling like this video is talking about something that I'm not looking for.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so the dips are when people you essentially lose their interest. They're switching off, or it could be that they're fast forwarding. So what can we do with that retention curve, Because there's different ways to look at it, right? So what you're talking about is the aggregate view. So that's everyone who viewed it. We can look at it like that. What can we do as far as the aggregation goes?
Speaker 2:We can look at it like that what can we do as far as the aggregation goes? We can look at it and see where are we getting spikes, and then we can go to that retention curve and we can look at the spikes in the video and we can say, okay, this is an interesting topic from our podcast. A lot of people came back and looked at this and, like I, like I when we were in class, we can just take that portion, put it into a short clip and if we both looked at it and was like I feel like this is very informative, we can post that as a short clip to have people who didn't see the podcast still gain a piece of information about what we're producing.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess what I was trying to kind of lead you with a little bit with like the I guess the Socratic question method, is we can change the aggregation so you were describing it as the total audience If we change it to how it relates to other videos, performances, that's where we can see the spikes. So what now we're doing is going back and looking at each week's podcast episode and identifying where those spikes are, listening back to it, figuring out what the topics are, and then we're using AI to clip the podcast as it relates to those specific topics. So, essentially, if we lose somebody early on in the episode, we can post a short and then retarget those people who dropped it off. So it's a way to. It's essentially like an awareness campaign from a marketing standpoint, which I think is really cool.
Speaker 1:But okay, we're nerding out too hard on the details, I guess. So this is kind of the experience you've gained, which I think is awesome, and it's great that you can articulate it pretty well, like you're able to sit down and explain it. I mean, part of it is because you guys are doing the work. I'm not spoon-feeding it to you. I'm like here's the goal, you guys figure it out and then I'm kind of here to play a support role and kind of manage the project. But tell me about the skills that you developed, because, because we've we've been together for two semesters now.
Speaker 2:I've um. The first was in Power BI. That also helped me with the previous internship and I could get into that later. If you'd like. Um, that kind of getting better at Excel, honing my skills at Excel was something that your class helped me a lot with and just overall data visualization and project management. Being able to even, like you said, cut up AI clips and also go back in and make it even better and make it even more focused and more target audience, because sometimes AI can be great in producing all those clips, but I still it's kind of dumb yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a weird way it's like hyper-competent, but also it lacks any type of wisdom or judgment yeah, so like sometimes, like there are certain clips where it may say it's talking about this topic, but if you were a normal person watching it, you wouldn't, you wouldn't even make that connection. Yeah, you wouldn't even make the connection, and being able just going back back in and being able to edit those and being able to make sure those are reaching the right audience or even speak on the right subject when relating to the topic at hand.
Speaker 1:That's something that I've gained from this and I guess let me ask you this Do you have a way to show, let's say, you show up into an interview in the next few weeks. Let's say it goes well with this kind of phone screen that you're about to go through, if you?
Speaker 2:were on like a Zoom call. Do you have a way to kind of showcase the work that you've done? I would be able to showcase the.
Speaker 2:In my previous internship, before I started with you, I did data analysis for our college football team where I took their practice, penalties and errors and I managed them, I organized it, cleaned it up and put it in Excel and then transferred it over into the data visualization tool of Power BI and I made the graphs and I made the line charts for the comparison from their in-game penalties and mistakes to their practice and I was able to show the ratio and comparison between those two within those line graphs, while also showing the way my coach, the way my supervisor, which was the coach, the way he wanted it was.
Speaker 2:He wanted to be able to see week by week, the penalties and the number of penalties, which is also what I did. So I was able to visualize that with a drop-down toolbar. You can click on the week, each game week, and it will show you the practice, penalties and mistakes and then the games. And he said he just wanted to be able to see where are we overlapping, where are we having too much of a problem in, and I made that visible to him through Power BI, so that is something that I can show to potential recruiters or employers when they ask me to show.
Speaker 1:Right, let me ask you this Did you have a test last semester?
Speaker 2:Did I have a test? No, no.
Speaker 1:I didn't. Your test was your portfolio, so like and I did this with intention because I mean, what's a better story when you show up for that interview of hey, I got an A-plus on this test versus? Here are three projects I've worked on. I'd be happy to show you the use case and show you the UI and uncover some insights within this data that I analyzed, and uncover some insights within this data that I analyzed. I mean so like, whether you realize it or not, I've been slowly trying to help you prep for the transition that's coming. What two months?
Speaker 2:two months away.
Speaker 1:Two months, I mean. I guess that's kind of a perfect segue into. The third topic that we wanted to cover was how's the job hunt coming along?
Speaker 2:I mean your face.
Speaker 1:for those of you who are listening in audio, your face is not looking super confident, which is understandable, because I mean going from college to working is a huge transition and especially like we were kind of talking like the market's a little tough right now.
Speaker 2:It's not going well but, like we did say at talking, like the market's a little tough right now it's not going well. But like we did say at the beginning of the podcast, I did get a text back for a Zoom interview with Crown Royal Campaigns, so I have that Monday, so I hope that goes well. But aside of that it has not been going well.
Speaker 1:Well, ok, is it not going well? Or do you feel like maybe you need to adjust your expectations? Like, let me ask you this how many jobs have you applied for? 90. 90. Okay, what is the timeline on that?
Speaker 1:The timeline as in like— Like if you applied for 90 jobs and it's been two months, that's probably a bad sign, but if, like, some of the jobs you applied have been a matter of weeks or maybe even a month like sometimes you don't hear a callback for six weeks on a job so I just want to kind of like give you that zoomed out perspective on it.
Speaker 2:And I'm probably not used to that, probably because of the jobs I've worked previously. They usually hit you back within like a week or two, so that's probably something I need to adjust to, but it's been over the span of three months, okay. So I've been getting some rejection emails later where they've been moving on with a different applicant which is I'm fine with. Yeah, you're expected, yeah, that's natural. I feel like at least you're looking at my resume or somebody or some type of system is so, at least it's being looked at. I think that I'm not getting discouraged.
Speaker 1:I think that eventually, Well, you just said it wasn't going well.
Speaker 2:It's not going well, but I'm not surprised because of one, not my experience, but just I don't have that much of a networking, as we spoke on in previous classes. I think I just need to build my network more to be able to open more doors than just cold applying, as in when cold applying, there could always be somebody who has more experience, even at an entry-level position, than I do.
Speaker 1:So just opening my networks, which one of them is you and another one can be the camera guy, craig craig over here our personal jamie yeah but yeah, I mean because I I've invited you guys out because I I host, uh, a fairly regular meetup and it's funny cause you guys were like six 6 PM on a Wednesday, but now you're getting it, while I was like this is important because there's a whole hidden job market out there, like what you're seeing on LinkedIn or in D or whatever is. It's the highest hurdle to jump over. Like it, these jobs are getting hundreds of applicants, of applicants, within the first 24 hours. So like you as a student who haven't worked as an analyst full-time yet, like that's, it's a, it's a big challenge to get up above that.
Speaker 1:Now you can kind of play the numbers game and just you know, like I think I was saying, one strategy is just get your one-click apply set up, so every 24 hours, every analytics or it doesn't even have to be analytics, it could be you want to get into marketing, marketing, specialist jobs, any jobs that are relevant for you, just every 24 hours, posting and being on top of that. So you're at the top of that list. I mean on top of that, so you're at the top of that list. But yeah, the kind of the hidden job market or like kind of the back door into the job is to know somebody who is either hiring or some know somebody who just got asked hey, do you know somebody who's looking for an entry level job?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I feel like I get that door on top of the cold applying. I feel like I'll, I'll, eventually, I'll get somewhere or I'm not. I get that door on top of the cold applying. I feel like I'll get somewhere or I'm not, and that's probably why I'm not too anxious. I know it'll take time and I don't feel like I need to be in as much of a rush as it's perceived, so I just feel like, as long as I just keep doing what I'm doing, I feel like my resume is up to date, my LinkedIn profile is polished, I feel like I've set myself up for the opportunities at hand, so I just have to keep knocking on the door.
Speaker 1:Can you unpack that a little bit more? So, when you say you feel good about your LinkedIn and your resume, why do you feel that way?
Speaker 2:Because of some of it. Most of it, I'm not going to say. Some of it. Most of it was just having my resume looked over. Yeah, and also by you and also by our careers and developments Specialists yes, Karen Atwater, both of you looking at my resume and then also just using the everybody says keywords, making sure it's actually related to the jobs I'm applying for and using the experience and actually accolades that I've gained throughout my internships and my jobs in my profile. So not just rambling on about duties but, like in my resume, it says I boosted sales of special order drinks by 15% at my store, which is something that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Can we pause there and kind of dig into that a little bit? Yeah, so, like, what you've done is you've quantified the work you've done, and I would say the vast majority of people are not doing that. It's like they list out roles and responsibilities. They don't list out the impact that they've had within a business, so it, what do you think that signals?
Speaker 2:I think that signals that I'm actually profitable or helping the business make profit. That's what I look at Well.
Speaker 1:I would say it signals that you have the right, correct mindset, Like you are looking at it from instead of let me just be this person who does all these lists of tasks you're actually thinking critical about it, Like you're getting your job done, but you're also thinking about ways that you can potentially optimize, or you know what are the levers that you can pull to make things go even better. So like having that kind of mindset ports over really well to a full-time job. So I think you're in really good shape there All right.
Speaker 2:So how's your LinkedIn? I think my LinkedIn is is good. I'll say good, I won't say my LinkedIn is great. I think I need to kind of go into more depth about the actual skills that I've attained from the internships and the jobs that I've worked. Yeah, I just think that some of them are like kind of too broad and then some of them aren't like really narrowed down. Like for the one I did the sports analyst I did with my football team. I could say I did a project management Because, technically, me uploading the data into, yeah, you managed it like they gave you a directive and then you broke it down into steps and you took all those steps.
Speaker 1:we go even further, like data governance. You collected all the data, then you create, you put it into a form that was actually clean and able to be uploaded into a BI tool, and then you took that and you visualized it in a way that the head coach could interpret and then they could go back and rework their training, because you guys did crazy training last semester, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in-season and out-of-season Right now, even though I'm not on the team since I'm graduating, but right now for spring ball, they do. They do basically like uh, cardio runs five days a week, lift three days a week, and then they have meetings and other things throughout the week. So this is like each week, this and we're not even in season, but I mean, so this is like each week.
Speaker 1:And we're not even in season. But I mean speak to me a little bit about how does the data that you created help with that whole process.
Speaker 2:So it helps with it, as, when it comes to just the coaches like basically teaching their positions, or the head coach coaching his team overall and coaching his coaches, his staff it's okay if our running backs fumbled the ball a lot. Okay, as a head coach, I need to talk to my running backs coach and see what we need to think of something to help reduce this, because turning over the ball is never a good thing. If we're getting a lot of unsportsmanlike conduct, penalties, which is basically like if a play is over and the ref blows the play dead, one of our players pushes somebody else, that's unsportsmanlike, yeah, so why are we doing that? That's us as a team. We need to sit down as a coaching staff and address the culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and address the culture of the team.
Speaker 2:Those are things that the head coach will now have to think about, or now be like going into the next game. Okay, we had two fumbles this week during practice. We need to focus on ball security, focus on not fumbling the ball. We need to do a lot of ball security drills so that we can help reduce this going into our game this Saturday. Those are just ways that just me with a football background know that these are things that a head coach would more than likely say to his staff to help reduce these mistakes that they're making.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's a really unique kind of setup in that you are helping, kind of your manager in this situation, or coach, coach and manager, I guess Coach, well, but like the coach is managing the team. So I I'm like thinking about, like the title is coach, functionally speaking. They're managing all the players and you know, like how things are going. So you, you, you were playing a role in helping them optimize.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I mean that's and helping them optimize. Yes, so I mean, that's pretty cool and like, taking that mindset, you could potentially port that over to an entry-level job where you're, you know, proactively getting things done, but then also thinking at a higher level of like, how can we optimize? What can we do to improve overall performance? So that's awesome. To improve overall performance, so that's awesome. Okay, so, overall, with the job hunt, how would you this is an interesting question Out of a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel like it's going? Because, bear in mind, like you just got your first interview and you have two months before you graduate 'll give it.
Speaker 2:I'll give it a six. A six, okay. I'll give it a six just because, like you said, I got the interview. But also I feel like I feel like, even though it's not a lot of analysts or entry-level analysts jobs that I'm looking for, there are still potential opportunities for me to get my foot in the door, like you said, through marketing, being a marketing specialist or even through other business positions. So it's not like being an analyst yes, I would like to be an analyst at the end of my career, towards the back end, but just getting my foot in the door. There are a lot of opportunities for me to just enter the business world and start my job in the business world, and lot of opportunities for me to just enter the business world and start my right start my job in the business and this was a conversation that we had um in class what two or three weeks ago of because every week, like what?
Speaker 1:what? I've worked into the capstone course this semester is a career service component of it, of you need to start applying early and just kind of get your head in the game of it's going to be a transition. You know, once this semester is over it's not like you're going to the next semester and it's comfortable and it's You're kind of going out into the great unknown. So understanding that that's rapidly approaching, like we've started having you apply for analyst jobs. But I mean, I guess I was about to tell but like what has been my advice as far as a quote applying for jobs?
Speaker 2:It's. It's not the best way, but it's it's like you said. The way the routine you gave us was, like you said, easy, apply, refresh every day. But your main advice was it's not, it can work, it's just it takes. It can work, it's just it takes. It's.
Speaker 1:It's a lot, it's a numbers game because, like I I think back nine months ago and I accepted the role that I'm in now, um, I think I applied to 196 jobs and I got interviews with five companies. So I mean, that's what? 2.5 roughly speaking. And this is somebody with eight years of experience, an undergrad in economics and mba, and you know like quite a few quantified wins under my belt, um, and I'm not saying that to like discourage you, but just to kind of give you like a hey, this is, this is the state of the job market right now. It's not great for analysts.
Speaker 2:That being said, what do we talk about as far as the keywords that you're targeting? Like you said being, well, the category analyst. So, like you said being a market, you could be a marketing analyst, you could be a data analyst, you could also.
Speaker 1:I forgot what you said, so I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that when the market is down, you may have to be a little bit flexible on the jobs that you target. So instead of trying to get an analyst job right out of the gate, you may want to target marketing specialist jobs and there's a lot more of those. So maybe you get a marketing specialist jobs, and there's a lot more of those. So maybe you get a marketing specialist job, you would get access to marketing data on some level. Then you know you work that for a year, maybe two years, and then keep applying for marketing analyst jobs while you're doing that and then you're a lot more competitive. That second round, because you're not completely fresh out of college and you've worked within marketing. So you have, you know, a track record of understanding the context in which the data is used.
Speaker 1:And that's where the skills that you developed in my classroom are going to kind of come back full circle, because it's uh, it's tough. I mean I'm I'm like anxious for you guys, because the market is not very great right now, but I mean you're gonna land on your feet like I. Like I mean you proactively reached out to me what a year before you got into my classroom, yes, so, like I mean you, like, I have full confidence that you're gonna be able to land something, and then, once you get in, you're gonna work really hard, you're going to rack up some wins, and it you're going to be able to land something, and then, once you get in, you're going to work really hard, you're going to rack up some wins, and it's just going to be kind of like that. First hurdle, though, is going to be tough, but then, once you're in, I think you're going to do great. All right, so do you have any questions for me? So we've talked about the introduction, your skills, your experience, the job hunt.
Speaker 2:I mean your skills, your experience, the job hunt. I mean any questions you want to ask me about that. I mean not really just because you're also my teacher, so, like you, kind of give me everything that you know about the job, job hunt and the job hunting process as you've been through it yourself. Yeah, um, I don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't really have any questions about the job hunt all right, so you're ready to jump into the mock interview section? Yes, because I don't think I prepped. I prepped you a little bit on this, but I think this first question you're kind of going in blind. All right, let's get into scene here. Dejuan, thank you for coming to this interview. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:I am a senior at Greensboro College. I'm a senior at Greensboro College with a major in business administration with a minor in business analytics. I have taken two internships One I'm still currently in in my years at Greensboro College. One was a sports analyst role where I helped my football team, through my head coaches, my supervisor, collect data on their penalty and game errors in practice and in game and relating those to help the team help optimize and build better overall performance for the team. The second one that I am in is a student practicum where I basically look at podcast data and the analytics of a podcast and monitor the retention curve and the audience curve to then pull clips and shorts from the podcast using AI to better push publicity towards the podcast.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was pretty good. Let me give you some feedback so I would back up. You got very specific, so like tell me about yourself. I typically it's almost it's like three points. I mean you could break it down into you know the past, the present and the future, you know, or I mean you could break it down. It's tricky Cause you're it's, it's hard with you in that usually when you're getting asked that question about, tell me about yourself, like you've worked for a while, so that kind of gives you something concrete to root down on. But maybe let's, let's, let's stick to that framework. So like if you could give me one sentence about the past, one sentence about the present and one sentence about the future and maybe I need to do you think I need to give you a little bit more context.
Speaker 2:Probably context on the past and the future Okay.
Speaker 1:So you could say something like I'm very interested in. I've always been interested in data and numbers and strategy, so this is why I actually majored in business analytics and then, once I got into my business analytics minor classes, I really enjoyed what I was doing, where I got to work with, you know, huge data sets, I got exposed to like real world business use cases and I got to build out a portfolio which I'd be happy to show you in the future. What I would like to do is land an entry level marketing analyst job where I get to work with marketing data to help them maximize their ROI so something like like that. To where your your initial response was very specific, to where it's like the tell me about yourself is just kind of an icebreaker question. You know, Like if I were to ask you, you know, give me a breakdown of this specific project, then you go into the details. Gotcha, you want to try it again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd like to try it.
Speaker 1:All right, I need to read it, all right. So, duan, tell me a little bit about yourself, so.
Speaker 2:I am a senior at Greensboro College with a major in business administration and a minor in business analytics. I got into business the business major in general just because ever since I was young I realized that businesses not going to say run the world, but we rely on businesses a lot. And what got me into the analyst minor was always wanted to help businesses grow, even if it was just through looking at their data sets. I always felt like me finding that one little tweak or that one little thing that can help a business boost their profit, even if it's by only 5%. I feel like helping any business grow. That's great for me. That's what I want to do. I want to be able to help businesses just grow in general. It doesn't matter what it is. And yes, I would like to. Hopefully, if this was a real job, I would like to land this job position, hopefully at your company, and I hope that your company would be able to take the risk on me in this entry-level role, hopefully it being an analyst.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, how did that feel versus the first one?
Speaker 2:I think the first one was I think it was just me trying to push my what I've done, my experiences too fast, and I think it's. I think I just needed to give them more about just me as a person. I felt like right, the first part. I felt like the second part was more organic. It didn't feel like I was forcing it. It kind of just felt like this is this is why I'm here. Like this, you're kind of getting a little why into why well, it's almost like you took a breath.
Speaker 1:You're like I'm connecting with you as a human here at a hot, at a high level. I I still feel like you. You went on a little bit too much into the details, but it was exceptionally better from the second take versus the first take, so just kind of making it more conversational. Um, but then also too like you, have you ever heard of this concept of like data granularity or or just granular in general? So if you're out in the working world, there's layers of management. So the c-suite is interested in a specific level of detail, middle management is interested in a different level and then the boots on the ground, kind of individual contributors, are way into the weeds.
Speaker 1:I think when you're having that question about, tell me about yourself, they're kind of wanting that c-suite high level view it's. It's just it's breaking the number one, functionally speaking, it's breaking the ice, but number two, it kind of gives them some threads to pull on. So, oh, you're interested in improving ROI. On marketing, tell me about that. Like what have you looked at before? That kind of is a conversation starter and you want them. You can almost think of it like a dance, like you give them kind of that high level view and then you let them guide the conversation through the questions they ask.
Speaker 1:Because what I've seen because I've been coaching people to getting their first analytics job for like three or four years and what you don't want to do is like a neil degrasse t Tyson monologue. We're not talking about the moon and the stars and going off on this huge detail. It's like answer the question. I mean you want to give some detail, but not not a ton, um, and then if they ask you about it, then you drill down. Does that make sense? Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, all right, speaking on the detail, the next question I got for you is what experience do you have within analytics?
Speaker 2:So I have two which are internships that I've taken. One was with my college through their football team, where I was a sports analyst managing their practice and game error data. The second was through a capstone class where I managed podcast retention curves and AI data. Which one would you like to hear about first?
Speaker 1:Tell me about the podcast.
Speaker 2:So, within the podcast, we were managing a podcast called how to Get an Analytics Job. We were managing a podcast called how to Get an Analytics Job and within that podcast, our professor would show us the retention curve and basically the analytics behind the podcast. We would mainly look at the retention curve and the audience groove and we would look at that and we would determine what parts of the podcast are the audience looking at the most, which parts are they going down on, which parts are they going down on, which parts are they staying constant with? And what we surmised was that we would post clips on the parts that the audience looked at the most. So we would pull however long the professor wanted it to be a minute 30 seconds to a minute and we will pull it. We will let AI clip the whole podcast and we will pull just. We will let AI clip the whole podcast and we will pull just. We decided on two to three clips Two to three good quality clips that we felt were very informative and would garner retention. That's what we did.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's intriguing to me because our company is. We know about AI, but it's still this kind of vague thing. Can you be a little bit more explicit about what AI tool did you use and what was the use case for that?
Speaker 2:So we used Raven, ravenside, riverside, we used Riverside, we used Riverside, and basically what we did was like I I said we would post the whole podcast and we would. We would put keywords, we would have the AI look for keywords throughout the podcast and the AI would clip those keywords. If they felt like one of the keywords matched up, they would clip it. Now the only downside to that is sometimes the keywords in the video itself would not align as in they would. The topic at hand would not match what the title of the video is. So then we would have to go back in manually and then edit it and make sure that this is actually a topic that somebody would care about, or we would just delete it overall just because it wasn't relevant to what we were looking for at the time. So with AI, it was great for mass producing clips and helping us cut down on the manual labor, but we still had to find that fine line between the quality over quantity aspect.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, Sorry, I'm just taking notes to kind of like come back. Okay, so did you see how that conversation went? So I asked you about and I'm not a character, by the way, so this is no longer interview.
Speaker 1:John David, did you see how that conversation went though? I asked you about the project and then you mentioned ai, and then I made a note oh I, ai is important to us. We know that we need to adapt to it, but we are not there yet. So that gives you an opportunity to kind of go in and just elaborate more, but you don't want to throw all of the detail out at all the time. So did that kind of give you kind of a representation of how those conversations can flow more smoothly?
Speaker 2:Yes. So kind of, even with that, with my answer to your question, kind of cut back on how much I'm giving into the project.
Speaker 1:Right, and maybe this is like way over analyzing this, but it seems like you might feel not very confident and the way that you're overcompensating for that lack of confidence is by oversharing details. I hope that's not like too harsh a criticism.
Speaker 2:No, that's not true.
Speaker 1:So you're like trying to show, show, show, here's all the things that I've done. And then it's so much detail that you kind of lose the force for the trees. And then it's like okay, he mentioned 16 different things. I don't know where to go from here because it's just kind of overwhelming from a conversational Because, at the end of the day, I mean, an interview is a conversation and you want to make sure that on like a a personal level, you're connecting with the other person. You don't want to come off as like a robot. That's just like regurgitating. You're not an AI, you're not just going to go in and just like oh, thank you for the question. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like and just kind of spewing facts and details out, like. But to give you some like concrete advice on how you responded to that question about, like, tell me about your experience and then, talking about the podcast you have. We talked much about the strategic versus tactical level.
Speaker 1:We touched on it a little bit okay, explain, explain it to me tactical is more like you actually drilling, you actually going to tactical.
Speaker 1:Strategic is like you planning it out, setting up the goals so my feedback on how you answered that was that you completely missed the strategic and jumped straight into the tactical. So, like if if I were to answer that question of hey, I see that you did the student practicum Um, you, you worked on a podcast. Tell me about that, the. The first sentence would be something along the lines Well, on a strategic level, we wanted to grow the scope of the podcast. So the way that we did this was we came up with a way to create an awareness campaign to expand our reach, and what's really cool about that is we leveraged AI to go in and clip up the podcast to the most interesting bits about it to scale out our overall reach. And then, you know, that's kind of it. Right there, like then, there are going to be questions like really, how did you identify what were the most interesting tidbits? You could say that's a great question.
Speaker 1:Well, we went into the back end of YouTube and if you look under the engagement tab, there's a chart that gives you a view of the retention, and then you can explain the retention curve and you can say well, what we did with the last week's episode is there were three peaks where people were most interested. We were then able to take those topics. We went back and listened to what we were talking about during those peaks, fed it through that AI and then all of a sudden, we were able to generate 10 clips to retarget the ideal audience for this podcast. So it's this is a little bit hard to explain, and it's hard because we're on a podcast too. Like it adds like a whole other layer of, like almost performance. But is that?
Speaker 2:making sense.
Speaker 1:Like it makes sense do you want to try? Do you want to try it one more time? We could try all right, we'll try it one more time and then we'll close out the podcast. So you're you're almost through. All right, duane, I see that you got the student practicum where you worked with a podcast and you there's like analytics behind it. Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 2:so, within that podcast, our goal was. We asked the teacher what his goal for his podcast was and he said was to basically grow his podcast and reach a target audience. So what we did was the plan that we came up with was to basically take the most interesting parts of the podcast, clip those and then run them through AI.
Speaker 1:Now, how we did that was See, I think you don't even have to go into the detail, so like it's almost like you can just kind of start high level, like what's the overall strategy, you know what is the Almost like the why, and then Does that feel uncomfortable, just like saying three sentences of an answer. I think so interesting why do? You think that is?
Speaker 2:maybe it's probably me assuming that I feel like they're already going to ask the question instead of just letting them. That's quite an assumption, though right yeah, it is, and I think that just me not just letting the, letting it just happen naturally yeah, I think that's what I think.
Speaker 1:It's just me trying to lead it into my strengths instead of just letting them ask me about my well, it's funny because, like I remember, a month ago I asked you like, do you want to do like a mock interview? You're like no, I got this, but now you're in like the hot seat. It's like a little bit more stressful than you probably anticipate it. Right, yeah, which I mean this is perfect timing because you got when's your first interview coming up it is this monday bam, you got.
Speaker 1:You got one day to kind of sit with this and kind of think with it or think about like what we, what we talked about, but, um, I mean we and we, we can go and like run through some questions if you want, with the audio and the video off, just to help you prep. But all right, craig, thank you so much for recording us and being the behind the scenes. This has been great.
Speaker 2:Duann, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, craig, and thank you Thank both of you for having me today.
Speaker 1:Awesome, all right, well, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you guys enjoyed.
