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Teacher and Violin Shop Manager to Data Visualization Specialist
62 Plays7 months ago
Joseph graduated from Springboard with a Data Analytics certificate.
Before starting a career in tech, he managed a violin shop, and was a public school strings teacher.
He now works for Texas Health and Human Services as a Performance Visualization Specialist where he analyzes data and creates visuals to help monitor the performance of many of the health agencies that serve the citizens of Texas.
If you have any questions for Joseph or myself that could be answered on a future episode, please email me at [email protected].
Interested in finally taking the plunge by starting your career in tech? How does $1500 off a Springboard Career Track Course sound?
Use code EPEHT at checkout to save $1500.
Learn more here.
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Transcript
Meet Joseph: From Violin Shop Manager to Data Analyst
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Life After Tech Bootcamp. Today, I'm really excited to introduce you to our alum, Joseph. In December of 2021, Joseph graduated from the springboard program with a data analytics certificate. Before starting a career in tech, he managed a violin shop and was a public school strings teacher.
00:00:36
Speaker
He now works for Texas Health and Human Services as a performance visualization specialist, that is a mouthful, where he analyzes data and creates visuals to help monitor the performance of many of the health agencies that serve the citizens of Texas. With all this, he's still a professional violinist and composer and is now a guest on a podcast. Hi, Joseph, how are you today? I'm doing well, thank you.
00:01:02
Speaker
Great. I hope you're getting much more sunnier weather than it is here in Brooklyn. It's really quite nice. It's a beautiful day. Sunny and not too hot yet. I would imagine spring in Texas was amazing. But I also, you were telling me something else that's amazing.
Climbing the Ranks: Promotion to Data Analyst 5
00:01:19
Speaker
You have some news to share.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yes, so on April 1st, I found out, I got official notice that a job that I applied for within the agency, I got the job. It was in my own team, a data analyst five position opened up that's dedicated to a specific project. I applied for it and got it. So that was quite exciting.
00:01:47
Speaker
On April 1st, huh? Are you here? I'm totally kidding. In all seriousness, congratulations. That's really, really exciting considering you had such a different life only a couple of years ago. So it's probably amazing to kind of just take a look back and be like, wow, I was there and now I'm here. Like what happened? I know what happened, but what happened?
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, it still feels a little like vertigo a little bit. You know, it's just a little dizzying to think of how much my life has changed in just a few years. Yeah, I know. It's yeah, I think like in the past four years, how much of mine has changed like yours? And she's like, what's the next four years gonna bring? I don't honestly want to know not that I'm scared, but I kind of just want the surprise, I guess.
00:02:42
Speaker
Right. Well, anyways, let's start talking about the before times, instead of just dreaming about the future.
Balancing Music and Analytics: Joseph's Dual Background
00:02:55
Speaker
Let's get back to where you were. You were managing a violin shop, and you were also a teacher. So what was happening?
00:03:07
Speaker
was, so I'm gonna go back a little bit further, not too much further, but I was on track to get a PhD in music theory. And at some point I began to really question whether I wanted an academic career. And in the meantime, I live in Austin, which is a great city for musicians to gig in, especially if you're a string player. So I was already gigging a lot, but I finished
00:03:33
Speaker
the coursework for the degree and needed something to do. This was in 2004, I guess is what it was. I applied to work at a violin shop. I started working at that shop in 2004.
00:04:02
Speaker
It was always supposed to be a temporary thing, something that I was going to move on from. But the interesting thing about being a musician is that you tend to
00:04:15
Speaker
You have to make a living by stitching different jobs together. The violin shop was my main gig, but then I had private teaching on the side. I also had a lot of gigging and some composing, things like that.
00:04:39
Speaker
When you are creating your life out of those pieces, sometimes it's easy to get kind of stuck. Because if you dislodge any one piece, then there's not enough, you don't have part of your income anymore. So I ended up being there for over, for almost 20 years actually.
00:04:59
Speaker
Oh, wow. You were at the violin shop for 20 years. Yes. Or close to 20 years. It would have been 20 years this year. I haven't been there. Round up a little. That's okay. Yeah. And so and, and, and at some point, I realized, you know, I became the manager at some point. And
00:05:23
Speaker
And I was like the oldest guy there, the guy who knew all of the secrets and where the bodies were buried, that sort of thing. And the people I was working with just kept seeming to get younger and younger because they were about the age I started at. And so I just really felt the need or the desire to move into something that would give me some kind of future and a retirement and things like that. And so I started looking
00:05:53
Speaker
you know, at that point for another path.
Career Crossroads: Transitioning to Data Analysis
00:05:57
Speaker
Certainly. Yeah, I remember you were talking about having all of those pieces together being kind of like a patchwork quilt. It all needed to be together to be a functional blanket in a way. So I can see why that would be very draining and also a little scary to take time away from one, because yeah, we all kind of need an income. Right.
00:06:19
Speaker
You know, and I also was certified to teach music, to teach instrumental music, violin, strings, you know, in the public schools. And I had done that before I started the graduate program for about five years, but kind of had decided that that wasn't really what I wanted to do. And so the thought of going back to that was not really like, it was something I could do, but it wasn't what I really wanted to do. And I honestly just didn't know which way to turn at that point.
00:06:48
Speaker
Sure. Okay. So you're starting to look for other career paths. What was that journey like? I can't imagine you went from teaching the violin managing a sort directly to data analytics. Like what happened there? So, um,
00:07:07
Speaker
So I had a good friend, interesting enough, who was a career counselor. And I just asked her one day if I could just have a session with her to sort of think about some other possibilities. And even before we had talked very much at all, she was like, just knowing you, I think that you should really take a look into data analysis. And weirdly, I had already
00:07:37
Speaker
I had already heard that there was this thing called data analysis or data science, and I had been exposed to it a little bit at the shop in the sense that I had started mining our shop data, our customer database, our inventory, to try to find ways to bring people into the shop.
00:07:58
Speaker
These two things kind of happened simultaneously in that I was really starting to dig deeper into the data that we had at the violin shop to try to find ways to sell more instruments. And about that same time,
00:08:14
Speaker
I had a friend say, you know, you should really consider data analysis. And she said, there's some free stuff on the internet. Go dip into a free course and just see what you think of it. And then if it seems like that could be a good fit, then consider doing a boot camp. It sounded like you had a nice little path to get to where you, it was like discovering something new on each step.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, so the other piece of this too is that I was getting a degree in music theory and music theory, anyone who's a musician knows that theory is really mathematical and there's a lot of analysis involved where you're taking apart you know the chord structures and things like that and you're finding out and so
00:09:11
Speaker
That analytical mindset was already something that was really kind of, that it was already practicing, but just in the realm of music. And so it wasn't that huge a leap from there into analyzing data. It was a very similar feeling activity.
00:09:32
Speaker
That's really cool, and I actually didn't know that. There was a previous episode where we talked to Sid, who's an opera singer, and he explained that as well, because I thought that was a very interesting point. Someone coming from music would make them a good data analyst, and I love how I've learned that connection.
00:09:54
Speaker
Now that you realized the connection there, what made it so that Springboard was the right choice?
Springboard: A Launchpad for Joseph's New Career
00:10:06
Speaker
So interestingly enough, my career counselor friend actually mentioned Springboard as one choice that I should look at. So I should mention that it was already on her radar. But I looked at several different options, including one that was offered by the local University of Texas at Austin here. But I looked at a few.
00:10:32
Speaker
What narrowed it down to springboard for me was, first of all, the curriculum was more comprehensive.
00:10:40
Speaker
So the UT course, I kind of narrowed it down to two. And so I was between University of Texas and Springboard. And I'll just mention that UT initially caught my eye because they had teachers in the classroom and you were going to class, even though it was virtually, you were gonna be attending a class that a professor was lecturing on. So that live person was, you know,
00:11:08
Speaker
was something I was interested in, but the UT class didn't have any SQL as part of the curriculum.
00:11:16
Speaker
Just reading about Springboard and talking to, I think I made a call to find out more information or whatever. Knowing about the career component, I felt like as someone who's relatively late in life, career changer, that especially moving from something that's a really creative field into a more corporate world, I felt like I needed a lot of help in that regard, a lot of
00:11:43
Speaker
someone who understood how to present yourself to employers. And so Springboard's career component was important to me. And then the data analysis career track also offers the money back guarantee.
00:12:11
Speaker
And I didn't have a huge amount of money. And so the thought that if I gave this my best effort and did everything I was supposed to do and I still didn't get a job, I could get that money back. I mean, honestly, that was a motivator.
00:12:30
Speaker
But I also knew, based on what Springboard said about their track record on that, that really everybody was getting hired, or most people were finding jobs afterwards. So I just felt pretty confident that Springboard for the price, so the curriculum was sort of the most comprehensive for the price.
00:12:57
Speaker
The career component was important to me. The sequel was important to me. And ultimately, it really became the sort of the fact that it's self-paced in a certain way, that you're setting your own schedule to do it. Ultimately,
00:13:20
Speaker
That wasn't initially something that I was thinking about, but it turned out to be a very wise choice given the crazy year that I had that I was completing the program in. That is really cool. And I have to say, yeah, I agree with the career component. I felt more prepared going into my second career than I did coming out of my undergrad, which I'm still paying off.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, I felt very, very prepared with my career coach. And I feel like a lot of other people echo that. So within this course, was there anything that you did outside to kind of prepare you for what you did?
00:14:01
Speaker
Well, before I started the course, I had sampled a six-hour Python program in Tableau. I mean, not Tableau, just online, sorry. And it was just basically learning sort of the basics of Python for data analysis and learning how to write some basic code. And so before I started,
00:14:28
Speaker
I had sort of sampled that just to see if I felt like Python was something I could do. And I felt like it was. And then as a result of
00:14:41
Speaker
At the violin shop, we were changing point of sale systems. I don't know if you know anything about that, but when you're changing a point of sale system in a small shop, you have to move all of your inventory. You have to move everything that's a piece of data online to another system.
00:15:02
Speaker
And you have to put it into a format that that other system can read. So there's a lot of just constantly moving data around, cleaning it.
00:15:16
Speaker
Excel became my best friend during that time, and I learned a lot just on the fly about how to use Excel to do things that I'd never even dreamed of. So, weirdly, I had some on-the-job, seat-of-the-pants Excel stuff that I was doing at work that kind of prepared me for the first unit in the springboard course, which was really focused on Excel.
00:15:42
Speaker
So I felt like I had a good baseline set of knowledge with Excel when I got to the program. Oh, that's awesome. Do you think that people, so I know nothing about data analytics. I hear about Python. If you asked me to use Python, that would be a very bad hire on your part. If I were to just start this course, would, do you think you can kind of start from zero or do you think you need a little bit of a foundation of understanding?
Job Search Strategies: Insights and Interviews
00:16:12
Speaker
So Springboard provided some pre-work that basically sort of touched on Excel, Python, and SQL, I believe. I did all of that pre-work, so I would recommend that just because it gives you... Now, there wasn't anything particularly difficult about it, but at least it gives you
00:16:35
Speaker
If nothing else, when you get to those sections of the course, you won't feel like you don't know anything about it. But aside from that, I actually do feel that you can mostly go into the course without a whole lot of prior knowledge. Yeah, that's great to hear. I felt that was the same for UX, even though I had done a little bit of research on my own. But yes, I love that they set it up that way so that really anyone can take it.
00:17:05
Speaker
And you're in the course, you took it. Now you finished your certificate. What is this job hunt like? Because I know you said having that career coach really helped you set yourself up for a professional setting. What was that like? So, um,
00:17:29
Speaker
So I should mention that there's career counselors throughout the entire program and you have a different one I think each month or something, you get a different, and I thought that was really a clever thing because everybody, every career counselor had a different take.
00:17:48
Speaker
on a resume or on things that should be in your LinkedIn profile. And having those diverse perspectives is actually a really good thing. I mean, you can think of it as being frustrating that you're not getting just like, do it this way. But no, it's actually better to have a broader perspective. And so having those different career coaches throughout the program itself
00:18:19
Speaker
just helps you prepare for the fact that that no employer is the same and they're all going to be looking for slightly different things and so it I kind of it prepares you to understand that you're not you know it's not a cookie cutter kind of thing you know you're not forcing yourself into into a mold you're actually
00:18:45
Speaker
you know, trying to present yourself the best and different people are going to see different aspects that you can do in different ways, I guess. So then, so sorry, that was a digression a little bit. But the cool thing about the career coach after I finished was, um,
00:19:04
Speaker
He basically said, okay, Springboard expects you to do this many applications a week and do this many informational interviews and such and such to fulfill the requirements of the money back guarantee. So there's a minimum set of requirements that you have to fulfill.
00:19:30
Speaker
He said, but basically he just said, these are minimum requirements. And here's what I really think that you should be doing. And so he basically said, you need to do more. And so, you know, the idea is that
00:19:48
Speaker
when you're out of, when you finish the program, then you make your career search your job for those next few weeks and months until you're hired. And that means putting in some effort to connect with people and apply to more jobs and also not to put all of your eggs in one basket.
00:20:17
Speaker
You know, so don't get fixated on one particular job. Look for, oh, the other thing that he did was he basically said, okay, when you're doing job searches, okay, don't just type in data analyst. Just use the more broader term analyst because
00:20:37
Speaker
There's a lot of data analyst jobs out there that don't really go by that name. So broaden your search and don't get fixated on one particular title and you're going to find more opportunities that way. That was some advice that I thought was really good.
00:20:56
Speaker
Certainly. And yeah, to your point, you are a performance visualization specialist. That does not have data analytics. It does have something to do with it, but yeah. It's not immediately obvious. The connection isn't obvious. Right. It's not. It's not. But let's talk about how you got your first job.
00:21:21
Speaker
So I applied to so many jobs, and I mean probably hundreds of jobs. It got to be where I wasn't even really counting. I was keeping track of them in a couple of ways. There was an online tool I was using to sort of help me sort the jobs into piles. Like, okay, here are some jobs that I'm interested in. Have I...
00:21:45
Speaker
applied yet you know and then you could I found a tool that allowed me to move those into through the process so that I didn't have to really think about which one it was I could just you know sort of concentrate on moving each each of those pieces through so I think the great thing about really focusing on
00:22:07
Speaker
on the quantity of jobs you're applying to is that you don't really have time to fixate on that one that you might really go, oh, I want this one so badly. Like, for example, there was a, there's a company called
00:22:22
Speaker
Scribd that is kind of like what I would call the Netflix of books like you have you subscribe to this service on like your your tablet and Then you basically have an e-reader that's connected to all these books that are just there you can just read any one of them and so just thousands and thousands and Because I am a huge book lover
00:22:47
Speaker
And I love that app. That was like a dream job to me. And I did get an informational interview from that company. And I really tried hard. And that would have been something that could have fixated on, especially since I got the informational interview and thought maybe they'll call because they were hiring data analysts.
00:23:14
Speaker
But I didn't have time to fixate on that because I was applying to many other jobs. And so honestly, when I got the call for this interview, the other thing too is that by that time I got the call for this interview, I had had several interviews for other jobs. And so this was now one of a series.
00:23:38
Speaker
interview for the job you have now. Yes, so the interview for data analyst four, which is performance visualization specialist with Texas Health and Human Service, I'd even applied to many different data analyst jobs within that agency. And so when I got that call,
00:23:56
Speaker
It was about two months in from the job search. And I had already had four or five interviews and applied to hundreds of jobs. And so that interview was one in the series. And in my mind, every time I had an interview, I would tell myself, and this was something that the career script said too, this is a learning experience.
00:24:24
Speaker
This is a time for you to practice your interview skills. This is how you should think of it. Don't think of it as a, oh my God, this is the one, this is the, oh my God. And by the time you've had four or five of them, you kind of can stop, you stop fixating. And every time I had an interview, within 30 minutes after that interview, I was applying to more jobs just mentally to keep myself
00:24:53
Speaker
in the zone of not putting your eggs in one basket. Yes, that's definitely great advice is to not get too hung up on one. I know that was similar to me. I was having almost an interview or a recruiter call me every day because this was 2021 and tech was going bananas. And yeah, I just took it day by day. We'll see what happens.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah, when I got the call from the career for Verizon, I thought, okay, cool. I thought nothing of it. And I think that calmness, I don't know if you felt this, but just feeling calm and thinking of it as practice and not at like forcing mentally kind of helped my hate saying like helped my energy in the interview.
00:25:41
Speaker
Absolutely, I mean, I think, cause then you can relax a little bit because like your whole self worth isn't writing on this one thing. Instead, what you're focusing on is
00:25:52
Speaker
this is a learning experience, and you know, practice makes perfect, perfect, and I can tell you that as a musician, you know, you don't develop, you don't play a piece perfectly the first time, unless it's super simple and you've been playing for years and years, but generally, as classical musicians can tell you, you know, you practice something for months and months, you know, to get it right, and sometimes,
00:26:18
Speaker
there's that annoying little thing that you can't correct and you know and so you practice it every day and it doesn't get better and then one day you pick up your instrument and lo and behold it works you know and and it's just that daily
00:26:34
Speaker
And so there's no difference really, and I'm glad I learned this from music.
Industry Insights: Culture and Career Adaptation
00:26:40
Speaker
There's no difference between that and doing something like learning how to interview well. It's just a matter of doing it over and over again. Yeah, I completely agree. And to add on to that, I definitely had some companies I targeted. But I also, I think coming from fashion, where is a very,
00:27:01
Speaker
Um, cutthroat place of industry. I would think like certain brands would reach out and huge name brands that you would think you'd want to work for, but then you learn about the company culture and like, actually don't want to work there. So I think that helps when I didn't hear back from my dream companies, because maybe I don't want to work there. That being said, I have found tech to be a lot more, um, hospitable and not quite as.
00:27:31
Speaker
cut through in his fashion. So maybe I do want to work with those companies one day, but that was something that helped me get through the interview process. I was like, okay, this company A, my dream company is ignoring me. Maybe I don't want to work. Right. And I think that's something that you also have to do is like you have to, it's like, um,
00:27:55
Speaker
when you're a kid in junior high and you and you ask that person that you like out for the first time and they just totally blow you off like okay that's their problem not yours yes you have to really think of it that way because to think of it in any other way is is going to is going to you know you don't have
00:28:17
Speaker
You don't have time to worry about what someone else thinks. You have to just move on and go for the next thing. Look for the company that's going to see what you have to offer.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yes, I think it's so funny you brought that up because and to play on your love of books. I love books too. I was just I'm reading the book The Courage to be Dislike that distills a lot. Have you read this? I have not but that sounds great. Yeah, well if you were if you were in New York City, I totally lend it to you but definitely check it out from the library. But I literally talked about interpersonal relationships and how someone kind of reacts to you is
00:29:01
Speaker
It breaks them down into tasks. So there's the task of the company would be to hire you, right? But if they just don't like you when they interview you, like that's their task that they have to deal with. You can't take on their dislike of you because that's just not going to do anything. Obviously the book describes this better, but I loved hearing that philosophy of. Yeah, it just it really did encourage me to be not so much disliked, but if someone is not
00:29:30
Speaker
For me, I can't dwell on that. Right. You can't control what other people think of you. And so you have to just let it go. Yeah. And on top of personal issues, companies might not hire you for so many ridiculous reasons. Right. That has nothing to do with you. Right. Yeah. So some companies just have so much red tape. There's bureaucracy. Budgets get cut. Business goals change.
00:30:00
Speaker
Another thing that I found myself avoiding during that time that I was in the job search is there are certain job platforms that are more like social media kind of platforms. I'm thinking of a big one. I don't know if I should name it or not. But you have people on there that are posting like, oh, I've been searching for three months and I can't find
00:30:23
Speaker
And it's so sad and full of, and I found myself avoiding looking at those things just because I really feel like you have a choice of framing something negatively or positively. And I felt like I needed to avoid things that were framing my experience or had the potential to cause me to frame things negatively.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I pretty am 90% sure I know which platform you're talking about. I feel I have seen those posts as well. And it is really sad. And I can't even imagine the struggle and the pain people are going through trying to find a job or a new job or just even get their foot in the door. That being said, I really want to put it out there to discourage people from posting that kind of stuff. I don't think anyone's going to read that and think, wow,
00:31:18
Speaker
This person's really sad. It might come across as a little entitled. Like, I don't think that's gonna attract anyone that's gonna give you a job. What do you feel about that? Am I being too mean?
00:31:31
Speaker
No, no, I think that's true. I think when you post that, especially in a place where employers might be looking, that's probably not the best impression to make. But also, you're setting yourself up for a negative frame of mind. And yes, it is difficult. I'm not saying it's not. I mean, I was kind of worried at the end of that three months. I was thinking, as it got closer to the three-month mark and my savings were dwindling, I was like,
00:32:00
Speaker
I might have to go back to teaching, I just might have to do it, you know? Or I might have to do this or that thing. I did have choices, that's the other thing. I knew that there were choices that I could make that would, you know. But dwelling on that, I guess I just felt like I needed to continue to, you know,
00:32:30
Speaker
I think quantity is almost the thing in terms of applying for jobs. And yes, it can get frustrating. As I said, I applied for hundreds of jobs. But once that becomes a routine, it's not really so bad. Once you've got all of your materials there to apply for a job, you can usually
00:32:51
Speaker
do that within minutes. And so then you focus on making connections, talking to people that are, and even if you never hear back from a company that you snagged an informational interview, that informational interview gave you practice talking to someone else.
00:33:13
Speaker
And so everything that you do, it's not so much about this is going to get me something as it is. Well, it is getting you something. It's getting you practice in connecting with people. And that practice is going to pay off as you begin to have more interviews, I think. I agree. As I interviewed, it definitely felt more routine. Like my first interview, I was very, very freaked by my last one.
00:33:42
Speaker
It was, I could do it off the back of my hand. Now I could not interview. Now I don't know what I would say, but once you practice enough, it does feel very routine. So I'm curious, like instead of posting, you know, something really sad or having a negative frame of mind about, you know, the job. What would you post on social media instead?
00:34:04
Speaker
So one thing I might do is during that time I ended up getting a freelance gig that allowed me to practice some data analytic skills.
Freelance Success: Projects and Networking
00:34:15
Speaker
It didn't really pay much at all, but it was a good practice. And eventually that work got published, which is cool.
00:34:24
Speaker
It might be good, I had already planned to practice my skills anyway, and so it might be good to pick some small projects that you can do and then post about those. Because then you're demonstrating competence and you're demonstrating creativity and what it is that you've chosen to analyze or whatever.
00:34:48
Speaker
Yeah, it shows you're contributing to the profession you want to be in. Yes. That, I think, actually I know that is what will attract employers. And I know that's kind of what attracted your employer, but the story of this small project and what ended up happening with it, how it got published is super, super cool. And I would love for you to tell that to everyone now. Okay. So, um,
00:35:17
Speaker
I was a former teacher, and interestingly the teacher that I student taught with, she now works at the Texas Education Agency, Texas Education Agency.
00:35:32
Speaker
I guess she had seen a post somewhere on either Facebook or maybe LinkedIn that I was becoming a data analyst. And she goes, oh, I've got this project that the Texas Cultural Trust has just gotten some new data from the TEA, Texas Education Agency, about elementary fine arts certification. And they want to figure out how many, what
00:36:01
Speaker
LMG students' levels of access to certified arts education in the state of Texas. So she basically hooked me up with the Texas Cultural Trust to see if, I mean, she asked me if I'd be interested in that and I was like, yes, I'd love to do that. I mean, I am from Texas.
00:36:24
Speaker
was a music nerd all the way through school. I started taking violin in fourth grade and graduated taking violin and being in the orchestra and all that stuff. So it was a project that was well suited to me because I had that firsthand experience of Texas schools. And I had taught in Texas schools as a certified music educator. So I sort of clicked all the boxes.
00:36:55
Speaker
And so the interesting thing about that too is you never know who is paying attention. I would never have guessed that someone randomly from that I really hadn't spoken to in a long time would just randomly contact me and say, Hey, there's this thing I hear you're a data analyst. Would you be interested in doing this?
00:37:14
Speaker
And so that was just the most amazing thing. I didn't even try for that. It just sort of fell in my lap. And so when you're connecting with people, don't forget the people that are actually closest to you, even if you're changing careers, even in your former industry. Because it turned out, here was something that was perfect.
00:37:39
Speaker
And it allowed me to practice those skills that I had learned in springboard. I did the entire project in Python.
00:37:47
Speaker
And then it became a part of my research into levels of access for elementary education became a part of what's called the state of the arts report, which is a document about fine arts education in Texas that goes to every legislator in the state. And it's trying to advocate for them to spend more money on the fine arts and why they should do that.
00:38:16
Speaker
my little piece of that puzzle, you know, is part of that report. And so, anyway.
00:38:24
Speaker
No, I completely agree. And even if maybe your close friends or connections can't offer you work like that, it's always good just to be top of their mind because you never know who they're going to talk to. Your network is your network. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was surprising because like I, you know, you think of networking as like reaching out to strangers, but it turns out networking also means, you know, it means letting
00:38:51
Speaker
your friends, family and those people that you're closer to know what's going on, you know? Absolutely. Cause you never know who they know. And I think for the most part, like to help each other out. They like to connect others. So be, be that person that lets that friend help out, you know? So, but okay, to continue with the side project, it got published and,
00:39:20
Speaker
it was in the hands of the Congress of Texas. So what was that like? What was that feeling like after you knew you contributed to something like this? It was kind of disbelief, honestly, because it's just like, I cannot believe that barely three months out of bootcamp, suddenly I've done work
00:39:45
Speaker
that has actually made it into an official document that went into the hands of every legislator. So it was surreal and, in a way, humbling.
00:40:06
Speaker
There's a sense in which you want to do your best work in that sense. You want to make sure that everything is correct. But just really exciting, ultimately. Just super exciting. I think I have a LinkedIn post where I'm like, look. And I open up the book and say, I did this. That's absolutely something you should post on LinkedIn and every other social media site. That's very, very cool.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely would see that and be like, Oh, what's this guy about? Should I hire him? So definitely good content to put out there. And that led to your job now.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so I think in a way, it didn't necessarily lead directly, because I was still tidying up the loose ends of that when I got hired for Texas Health and Human Services. But nonetheless, it certainly was something I could speak about in my interview, because there were questions about how you handle certain kinds of data situations.
00:41:16
Speaker
that just gave me more experience to rely on. And it was real world experience with real data. Yeah, you had that photo. Yes. That's incredible. So what was the interview process like to get into the Texas Health and
Role at Texas Health and Human Services: Real-World Impact
00:41:31
Speaker
Human Services? Because I know that's government. It's a little different than maybe a private interview, perhaps. Maybe I'm wrong.
00:41:46
Speaker
So I had a few interviews with private corporations, and in at least a couple, I had like a technical interview, which was basically a timed test that was proctored, you know, and you had to write code. And in this interview,
00:42:14
Speaker
They ask technical questions, but they ask them in the interview itself. So the interesting thing about Texas Health and Human Services is that their interviews follow a certain format. They have 10 questions.
00:42:29
Speaker
and they give those 10 questions to you 15 minutes before the interview which is not a whole lot of time so you're not going to do a whole lot of prep but you know in those 15 minutes but at least it lets you at least you're not blindsided by something and they were mostly behavioral oriented but in some cases there was a very there were some broad technical questions that during the interview
00:42:54
Speaker
we actually kind of got into a discussion that sort of drilled down into specifics about those technical aspects. So the question was framed very broadly, but within the interview itself, we narrowed down fairly quickly where they were asking me specifics about certain things. So that was unusual in that there was no time to test or anything, but at the same time,
00:43:23
Speaker
my current boss, I could feel him steering the question in a certain way to see how I would answer. But the nice thing about that too is that I was answering from experience.
00:43:41
Speaker
albeit limited experience in the sense that I had my capstone projects and I had the work I was doing for the Texas Cultural Trust to rely on. But one of the strengths of the Springboard program I will say too are those capstones which you use real world data and I encourage everybody to pick up projects that you're really interested in and not just something to get the job done so that you can really connect with it
00:44:11
Speaker
I think when you feel like you're solving a problem or you're working on a puzzle that you're interested in, it's going to connect you more to the processes that you're having to use to solve that problem. Yeah, I remember you were saying some of your capstones, they were based sort of around public service in a way.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah, so my first capstone was analyzing Airbnb data for the city of Austin to see how the densities of short-term rentals in Austin might be affecting Austin's housing crisis or whatever, which is there's a lack of affordable housing here. And I wanted to see, I wanted to at least
00:44:58
Speaker
try to assess whether the huge amount of short-term rentals here in Austin was playing any role in that scarcity.
00:45:11
Speaker
And so that was really intriguing to me, but it also allowed me to use Tableau's geographic features and plot individual Airbnb's on the Austin map and to show densities for each section in Austin. And so that was a really fun thing that was also very informative.
00:45:34
Speaker
It gave me a lot of information. Certainly, and definitely something to consider because around that time, people are probably still analyzing COVID data and that was necessary. It probably still is to an extent today, but I would imagine most people are pretty sick of talking about COVID data. It's something new. Honestly, my second project was COVID related in that it was analyzing.
00:46:05
Speaker
what would be called digital engagement of schools during the pandemic. So when schools went online, then kids had to do all of their lessons virtually, and they had to log computer time in a lot of schools. And so this project was analyzing levels of digital engagement
00:46:20
Speaker
It was analyzing levels of
00:46:33
Speaker
digital engagement, I guess, by looking at page loads and then correlating that with the income and various demographics of those school districts that I was analyzing. So, you know, just to sort of see, to see whether there was a correlation between, you know,
00:46:59
Speaker
certain demographics and levels of access to education. It's kind of a similar thing to, in a way, it was not unlike the stuff that I did for the Texas Cultural Trust around levels of access, but it was just looking at computer, access to computers, basically. Yeah, absolutely. Well, now that you are in Texas Health and Human Services, what is it like? What is your day in day job?
00:47:27
Speaker
look like. I know you just got promoted so things may have changed recently on April 1st. Still a little dubious there but I'm just kidding.
00:47:37
Speaker
So fortunately, I was promoted within my own team. So I'm still in the same spot that I was and kind of mostly doing the same thing, but now just focused on one particular project more. But on the day-to-day level, so the interesting thing about Job and Data Analytics is that every company is going to do it differently. And so technically,
00:48:05
Speaker
My title is Performance Visualization Specialist, and so technically I'm supposed to be on the side of just visualizing the data. And so we're supposed to receive, so we work closely with a couple of other teams, and one team is more of the analyzing the data side.
00:48:31
Speaker
or they're supposed to capture the business requirements, basically. And then we're supposed to translate those into technical requirements. And then it's really strange because there's an interesting division of labor where I work. And so this team does one thing, another team actually pulls the data and then we visualize it. But in reality,
00:48:59
Speaker
as the more technical, like, so we're kind of midway between the business analysts who are trying to capture those business requirements, and then data engineering, who's, who's basically building the database views that are going to feed the visual.
Translating Data: From Technical to Business
00:49:14
Speaker
And so we're kind of my team is in between sort of a non technical and a super technical side, and we have to translate, you know, we're translating between those two teams. Okay. And, and then we're
00:49:28
Speaker
And if we do it right, then when the data comes back to us from data engineering, then we're able to visualize it. And so that's sort of on the surface what my job is about. But in reality, I've also had the opportunity to use Python and SQL to really build some of those views, or at least to like, so in some cases,
00:50:00
Speaker
I've ended up basically kind of building the prototype database for data engineering to implement. So then they like, you know, so either using SQL or Python, like this is how you're going to put this data together and then I'll hand them that code and they can use that as a template kind of to
00:50:23
Speaker
construct that data that's going to come back to me so I can visualize it. That's fantastic. So I'd love to know, you know, between what you studied at Springboard versus what you're doing now, what really set you up for success and what did you kind of learn on the job that Springboard didn't teach you? Two questions in one.
00:50:47
Speaker
Okay, so one thing I will say that that probably if you're in the data analytics path at Springboard, you're going to find yourself using outside resources for some things. Because if you're picking your own data set, there's no way that the Springboard program can prepare you for every
00:51:09
Speaker
wrinkle that you might encounter in wrangling that data. They're going to give you a lot of the basic information, but if you want to do this specific thing with it, you're probably going to go
00:51:24
Speaker
to the internet and do a search to find out how to do this thing. And it's great. One of the things that's so great about coding is that the coding community, they are not proprietary. They are longing to tell you how to do something. So you put your question out there in the ether and you'll find your answer on Stack Overflow.
00:51:53
Speaker
which people are contributing, you know, you ask that question and you find out that first of all, the question's already been asked by someone else and it's been answered by 60 people, you know, in different ways. And so you can find
00:52:07
Speaker
And people are very generous in the coding community about sharing how to do something and maybe what's the best way or the most efficient way or the way to get it done even if it's just a down and dirty way. So that's something that I already had started doing in Springboard is just using the internet as a resource for specific coding tips and tricks.
00:52:35
Speaker
So I will say that process just translated immediately to my job, because one of the first things I had to do was sort of reconstruct the back end of this COVID dashboard that the state of Texas had published. And all of the pieces of the data in that dashboard were basically hand stitched together by someone who was like, OK, let me go get this data and stick it in here manually. Let me go get this data.
00:53:05
Speaker
My, you know, this, uh, the person who was, who, who had been wrangling that dashboard had left and it landed on my boss's desk. And he was like, can you automate this process? And I was like, I don't know. Let me see if I can. And so I, I managed to learn how to, you know, automate that process or at least 98% of it, you know, um, and.
00:53:34
Speaker
and make that.
00:53:36
Speaker
and reduce the amount of asking you had to do to put it all together. So by the end of that, you could just basically go get one piece of information on the Texas, it was about unemployment information in Texas. You had to manually go get that, but everything else, once you had that piece, would just auto-populate. It would pull everything automatically. And so I learned how to do that on the job,
00:54:05
Speaker
But I was already prepared to learn how to do that because Springboard, in a way, the projects that I was picking required certain kinds of things that I had to go find out how to do those. And I knew where to look by that time. Interesting. OK. So yeah, I do love that this coding community is very open, obviously not something I'm a part of. But that's a great thing to hear, especially if you're coming from a more hostile industry.
00:54:35
Speaker
So with that being said, awesome transformation here. Again, congrats on your promotion. Is there anything we didn't get to talk about that you wanted to share with everyone? Well, I think that we've touched on just about everything. But I will just emphasize once again, those capstone projects are your opportunity to really
00:55:05
Speaker
like to really find the intersection between the program that you're in and your own personal passion and so choose wisely on those so that you know yeah
00:55:22
Speaker
that I remember that like several people did this liquor store project. I don't remember what it was, but maybe it was evaluating where you could open up a new liquor store and you know, and that data set was readily available. And so a lot of people just went through that and they, and they did that liquor store thing, you know, and okay, that's fine, but you know, unless you're into distilling whiskey, that may not be really your personal passion. It might demonstrate that you're capable of doing that, but like,
00:55:50
Speaker
I don't know, find something that you're interested in. Sure. Yeah. Or at least like going into, I don't even know what kind of industry that would be, but some kind of retail like work, like figuring out where to open a store. Yeah. I can very much see why some people would not be interested in that. Right.
00:56:11
Speaker
Try to connect what it is you're doing to your personal passion, I think, if you can, or something that resonates with you. That's where it draws an interest. It's so much more authentic that way. I'm sure it's just more enjoyable for the person working with that project. Yeah.
00:56:32
Speaker
And strangely, it'll make your effort to try to solve whatever problem or find out whatever thing you're trying to find out. It'll make that effort more enjoyable when you're having to search for some technique about how to do something. You'll be really into it because you'll want to find that answer. Absolutely. And with that, I know you just got promoted, but Joseph, where do you see yourself going next? What's next for your career?
Future Aspirations: Making a Meaningful Impact
00:57:04
Speaker
So I could see staying within Health and Human Services or within some sort of something that's more in the, that is serving the public in some kind of role or that could be a nonprofit or it could be like even like there are certain kinds of maybe issues
00:57:30
Speaker
that I would love to be able to produce data to support those issues. And so doing something that has some meaning, for me, I think I would rather not be in a more corporate,
00:57:54
Speaker
environment associated with selling things and something more that's like serving people. And that's just me. But so I would kind of probably want to, I hope that in a few years that I'm still doing something where I can feel like I'm making the world a better place. I mean, that sounds kind of cheesy, but just something that is illuminating problems and providing solutions.
00:58:24
Speaker
That sounds cheesy at all. I think that's very much a core value. People want to, I think, add value to certain aspects of this world. And whether it's just the world, your friends, family, maybe your pet, I don't know. It's a value. And I don't think that's cheesy at all. Well, Joseph, thank you so much for your time. I wonder, are you open to people connecting with you on LinkedIn?
00:58:53
Speaker
Certainly. Yes. Would you be able to spell your name so they're adding the correct Joseph? Sure. So it's, uh, so it's Joseph with a pH. And then my last name is Sheffield, which is S H U F F I E L D. Fantastic. Yes. And I know that people have been connecting with each other. Um, I'm really excited about the community that this podcast has built up between not only the alumni, but current students and
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's just been really exciting to see the progress. And I'm so excited to produce this episode. I think you've dropped some amazing advice. And yes, again, thank you so much for sharing your story. And for the jillionth time, congratulations on that promotion. And for anyone else listening, if you have questions for Joseph or myself that I might be able to answer on a future episode of this podcast, please email me at alumnipodcast at springboard.com.