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At the beginning of my job search, all I had figured out how to present was that I loved data. This was nice, but not a big hit with employers. Here is my reflection on how I improved as a candidate.
Solving Business Problems
A big mindset shift for me, was realizing that every manager is looking to hire someone who can solve their business problems. Sure, they want someone who is passionate about working with data. Who like to use SQL. But that alone won't solve their business problems. Here is what will:
Having great communication skills, and being able to translate your findings into words that stakeholders can understand. I saw each interview as a conversation, and a way to show off my communication skills. When asked "Tell me about yourself", I learned to tell it like a story, which set us up for a conversation, not just an interview.
Being able to learn quickly, and take feedback well. As I talked about how I took the few courses that I took and then built upon that to make a portfolio- as well as having just finished graduate school (in another field), this showed employers that I am a fast, hungry learner.
Translating previous experience into relevant experience, even if it is in another field. If you spend sometime on #Techtok or LinkedIn, you will start coming across a lot of content on how to repurpose past experience to be relevant to new jobs. I particularly like Greg Langstaff the career coach, and his BadAss resume bullets. No matter what you did before, it will translate to data analytics somehow. Here is a post I wrote on LinkedIn about how my psych background will serve me well as an analyst.
Interviewing Well:
This is your chance to shine. Here is a post I made about things I learned about interviewing for tech positions. In addition:
Always ask for "next steps" at the end of every conversation! Trust me, this will save you a lot of worry
Look up content about how to talk about salary. I never became an expert in this, but there are a lot of people who have a lot of good things to say on this subject!
Projects
A huge shift happened for me once I had experience to talk about. What was my experience? Well for one, I was lucky enough to have someone see my content and reach out about a position, so I was able to do some consulting work. Basically, they needed to find someone to help increase the user friendlyness of their dashboards because their customers were not understanding the graphs, and so I came in to help with that. I was still working full time, so it was a small commitment. But- it was an actual paid position! I was making $65/hr doing this.
I also found @thatnickpowersguy on Tik Tok, who had this amazing spreadsheet that he was making videos about, and I offered to design it in Tableau. It was not a paid project, but I treated it like a paid client. We set up meetings to discuss what I had made, and I made visualizations and dashboards with him, his Tik Tok, and his preferences in mind.
In my interviews, I absolutely milked both of these experiences for all they were worth. I used them to demonstrate that I could use the skills hands on, that I could work with clients, and that I did have what it took to solve business problems. I truly believe that my amazing luck in getting the position I have now would not have happened if I had not had these other experiences to talk about.
As a matter of fact, it was the unpaid position which served me best! This data I was able to publish online, freely available, so I was able to pull it up in interviews. I even presented it in the panel interview I did for this position! This just goes to show that experience, ANY experience, is important.
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