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Any book recommendations on change management?
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Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Informatica openings any?
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Bowl Leader
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Please think from the POV of the interviewer: it's not what you can learn from them - it's what you can bring to them.
It's going to be a hard sell for you to say "I can learn that" in an interview. The interviewer wants to know you can DO it. You are also competing against others, you won't look good when others can already do it vs having to learn it. Being a quick learner isn't really a plus in an interview. Being curious, always learning something new, and being able to use that new skill, that's a plus.
Learn as much as you can on your own, the interviewer will judge if you know enough to get the job.
That said: here's an idea = one way to expand is going upstream or downstream. In your case, are you satisfied getting the SQL outputs? Would you like to learn SQL and manipulate the outputs? Then learn SQL... going further upstream, are you satisfied with thus database that you're writing your SQL on? Maybe explore databases, and if you like that, explore data pipes connected to databases.
You'll soon find you've learned SQL, noSQL, ETL, perhaps some other scripting language like Python. This is going upstream.
Maybe you want to go downstream: what happens after you put together some data cuts? Perhaps you want to explore some models that can be done... so you start with correlations, then regressions... maybe you uncover some non-linear patterns and you stumble upon decision trees.
Then you'll find you're learning because you're curious and you're immersed. When that happens, the recruiters will call and the money will follow.
No company is going to say no to someone wanting to do more :) it's free labor! Haha!
Okay, sure, if I were your manager I can see the salary discussion coming from a mile away if you've already always been volunteering to do more... but I'd welcome it. Probably already got it approved on the backend.
If you want to automate your manual work, go with python. Python can automate excel and power point work.
Some people find after automating and doing more, the company won't let then move up... at that point, you will have plenty of time to start looking because you've already automated your day job :)
Sometimes it's not that the company doesn't want to train you, it's that there isn't anyone who knows any better... concrete example: perhaps the managers and above do not know python, that's why they trained you to do this manually anyway - and in some small way, that's why you have a job with this company.
I'm speaking from experience, btw. I've been down this path. I now know SQL, Python, and modelling very well... so well I even got a masters for it.
You mentioned product data. What types of product is this data representative of? Who are the users of the product, and who are the consumers of the data you’re generating?
Putting data in an email or on a screen is the easy part. Identifying the story that the data is telling is the hard part. If you can help the consumers of the data understand what the data is saying, you will see a lot of career growth!
Some ideas:
- are you using any data visualization software currently? Tableau, microstrategy, lookr, qlik, etc… If you aren’t using one, why not? If you are using one, why that one?
- could you send automated emails once a week that recap the most recent week of behavior? User counts, most common / least common used features, operating system and/or browser details, any other key performance indicators, etc.
- are there any trends as far as which features are used in what order? Do lots of users use a specific feature first, and then another feature second? Are there any features that often don’t get used until much later in the session? Might be worth trying to figure out why that is. Are there certain actions that are indicative of a high value user? I’m sure your company could tell you who the high value users are. Looking at their behavior, what sets them apart from other users? Is there a certain feature that could be promoted better that can turn lower value users into higher value users?
This should get your gears turning. Being a data analyst is an opportunity to showcase not just your ability to bring the data to the page / screen, but to showcase value through data. Find a way to take that next step to bringing a voice to the data, not just surfacing it.
Definitely downstream as well = focusing more on building use cases for end user of data, visualizing data, speaking to business stakeholders, showing the so-what
“Data job” is pretty vague. The skills to be a great data engineer are very different from data scientist, which is different again from analyst.
So the best advice I can give is: imagine what specifically you envision doing daily, then just skill up there. No job will be 100% what you want, but if you position yourself as a specialist willing and eager to diversify, companies will hire you for your specialisation and train you up on the other stuff they want you to do.
Coach
Le VP has spoken.