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Teaching to Data Analytics
45 Plays9 months ago
On today's episode, we talk to Sarah a Senior Data Analyst at edX.
Sarah shares how she leveraged her decade of teaching experience (along with a few other education-adjacent roles helped her get to where she is now.
She also shares expert networking tips (which helped her land her job), how to determine what role is right for you, and how to stay positive during the job hunt.
If you have any questions for Sarah 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.
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Transcript
Introduction of Sarah: From Teacher to Data Analyst
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey there, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Life After Tech Bootcamp is full swing of winter in the East Coast. So we're going to see how I can get through this with my crackly voice. I'm so excited to introduce you to today's guest, Sarah, who is a senior data analyst at edX. Before landing this role, she studied data analytics at Springboard and before
00:00:42
Speaker
branching into this career. She was a middle school
The Value of Community in Remote Work
00:00:45
Speaker
teacher for a decade, then a sales and account manager for an educational testing company. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the podcast. I know before we started recording today, you were just at a conference. So I'd love for you to share what that experience was like.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yes, sure. Hello, happy to be here. Yeah, so I had the opportunity to go to the DBT coalesce conference in October. And most of these jobs these days for people looking for jobs, I'm sure a lot of them are remote. Mine is all remote and most of my team is on the East Coast. So it can feel really isolating, just kind of me and my screens.
00:01:32
Speaker
So this conference, I mean, DBT is a great tool, highly recommend for any companies thinking of needing an ETL tool. But more than that, it was just so kind of soul nourishing to be at this conference with a bunch of like-minded data individuals to get in rooms with people who were struggling with the same kind of organizational challenges that I am, that my organization is.
00:01:57
Speaker
to learn of some new skills
Challenges in Career Transition for Teachers
00:02:00
Speaker
and just really feel like I was part of a community. As someone who's newer to the tech space and newer to the data space, shifting into this career all remote, I really had a hard time developing community. So it was a really, really great experience. That is wonderful. And I love how, you know, while you went in there trying to like work on problems kind of all together, it really ended up being that community that was so special.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, clearly you've gone places. You're doing stuff, but I'd like to understand a little bit more about what happened before you transitioned into this role and got to go to really cool conferences like this. You're a teacher and I'd love to hear about it. Sure. Yeah. So I started my career in education. I was a middle school English teacher for about 10 years.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I loved it, but like many teachers kind of burnt out. And so when I was looking for my next move, I got recruited for a kind of a sales account management, some amounts of training and learning development, but working for a company that made tests for schools, so standardized tests for schools. And I learned a lot. I think actually having a sales background is pretty interesting as a way into data analytics.
00:03:27
Speaker
But I found that it was a little bit, it was uninspiring in certain ways and being customer facing was really intense in a way that I also kind of burnt out on. But as a part of my job, I did do training sessions with school groups on interpreting the standardized testing data. And so I realized that that was the piece that I liked the most.
00:03:51
Speaker
And in looking around for my next move, I was thinking about, OK, how can I get closer to the data? How can I do more of that and dive a little deeper? Which is where I sort of landed upon data analytics and then springboard boot camp. That's really cool. I love how you switched into something else. I like to understand you were burnt out, of course. I hear that from teachers all the time, which breaks my heart.
00:04:20
Speaker
Was it easy for you to get this job? I feel like a lot of teachers sort of feel stuck, at least some that I've spoken to. Yeah, absolutely. And that is for sure true. I'm lucky in that I did have one other more public sector job. I don't know how you would call it, but a non-teaching career under my belt when I went into the boot camp.
00:04:45
Speaker
But yes, absolutely, it's challenging when your resume is full of classroom
Discovering a Passion for Data Analytics
00:04:50
Speaker
teaching for people to see you as anything other than a teacher. I got very lucky in that the company that I had previously worked for before I did springboard, it was called ERB, an educational company. They had a long history of hiring former teachers, so they kind of understood that. People who are transitioning kind of straight from teaching and trying to go into data analytics,
00:05:13
Speaker
We can talk about the job search later, but certainly there are ways to sort of position your resume and skills to put your skills at the forefront. Because skills that teachers have are absolutely 100% very applicable to other careers. They have all of these communication, collaboration, management, organizational skills that quite frankly a lot of people with more technical experience often lack. But it is really about
00:05:43
Speaker
spinning the narrative so that people can see you as more than a teacher. And it's challenging. Certainly. And I've always disliked the whole those who can't teach or coach or whatever. I really dislike that saying because when I think about it, just because someone's really good at something doesn't mean you can teach it. And I know you can go into much more nuances of like the skill sets of being a coach or a teacher. But yeah, I'm not a teacher and I can
00:06:11
Speaker
see why that's another skill set that is so valuable and not really seen. Yeah, absolutely. You know, those who can't teach is complete BS. And I've seen a lot of people just like I'm sure we've all had experience where people who are fantastic individual contributors then get put into management, but they're not great people managers because it's a different skill.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, teaching is a very specific skill that I think translates quite well into the data world because it does require a high degree of kind of autonomy, multitasking, organization, executive function skills, all of which are going to really do you well in a technical field as well.
00:06:55
Speaker
Certainly. Certainly. Well, okay. I almost want to skip ahead, just like talk about that now, but let's kind of understand. So you, I know in your pre-survey, you're saying you're looking for something asynchronous. Springboard just kind of seemed right for you. What, when you were discovering analyzing the data at this testing company, you know, what were you, what did you think you needed to really
00:07:22
Speaker
get to where you want to go. And I know that answers springboard and that sounds so cheesy, but I'd love to understand that thought process for you. Sure. And it really was a fairly long process and I tried to be very strategic about it. I was at a point where I was very frustrated with my job and almost rage quit a million times. My fantastic husband who is very risk averse, but also a logical person said, okay, yes, but
00:07:48
Speaker
how about if you have some sort of plan in place at least. And so what I did is sort of take many steps back and started with, okay, what are the aspects of my current role that I do enjoy? And that was the training sessions with these school groups and digging into the data. And I realized that through this, I had a pretty good solid working statistical knowledge. So then I thought I sort of
00:08:18
Speaker
Did a lot of Googling, quite frankly. And that's where I sort of hit upon data analytics as a good starter tech career. You know, someone from not, I'm not from a technical background. It's, you can kind of get into it from there. Then I, once I sort of thought that this was a good way to go, I did two things. Number one, I took a free statistics and programming course, like a real intro intro course.
00:08:45
Speaker
just to see if I even liked this kind of stuff. And I would highly recommend that for anyone thinking of getting into data analytics. There's several different, I think DataCamp is a great one, but there's several online learning modules that have just intro courses that are free. It's a good way to just get your feet wet and know, does this seem at all interesting to me? I did
Job Search Strategies and Networking
00:09:10
Speaker
enjoy that.
00:09:11
Speaker
Then I tapped into my network and basically found a few people who were already working in data, and I asked them to sit down and talk to me for 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And, you know, what is it that you do? What do you think is important in this field? Just sort of trying to get a sense of whether it was a field that would fit with my personality. That seemed great. It all seemed like, yes, this is a good move for me.
00:09:37
Speaker
And so after that point, it became, okay, how do I get the training that I need? I looked at a lot of different programs. And because this was all happening in 2020, 2021, you know, midst of the pandemic. So I knew that async was going to be my only option. And so maybe in another time, I would have more heavily looked at programs that had in-person
00:10:04
Speaker
like General Assembly, there were a few others that I looked at. But the fact that Springboard had been started and designed specifically for asynchronous learning, it really appealed to me because I know firsthand from people who are still in the education field that just suddenly pivoting to online learning when you've been used to doing in-person is not always successful.
00:10:30
Speaker
There were a couple front runners, but springboard kind of rose to the top for a few reasons. I read some of the student profiles and there was at least one person who had come from the education world that I saw kind of spotlighted on their website. So I said, okay, one person at least did this successfully. And then it was a lower price point than a lot of the other programs.
00:10:55
Speaker
And the fact that it had the career job search, career coaching, job search curriculum as kind of parallel to the technical, that was super appealing to me. And then I really just liked the way that they handled the intake process. I submitted an inquiry, an advisor called me, we talked through my goals, my background, my experience.
00:11:19
Speaker
Um, and then at the end of the day, the thing that made me pull the trigger quite frankly was, uh, there was a black Friday sale. I think it was like $500 off or something like that. And I was like, all right, sure sold. And that's what made me finally just like commit and sign up. I love that. That's great. But okay. The silliness will.
00:11:42
Speaker
not silliness, but lightheartedness of the Black Friday sale. Like everything said before that, like I completely relate to it. And you said it so calmly and eloquently, but that had to have been very hard for you. Like I definitely was in a position where I wanted to rage quit my job and I didn't have a husband, but I had some really good friends who were similar to how you described your husband. And I, they both were like, don't quit your job. It's a pandemic.
00:12:08
Speaker
Um, but yes, I, that sounds like an incredible way to piece together the dots, just taking a pre-class as you kind of said. Um, yeah, I think that's, gosh, that, that sounds like a, that sounds like an intense time. So I'd like to understand, you know, you're in the course. What did you do outside? Maybe that kind of helped to get you to where you wanted to go.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, so they do a pretty good job of making this clear in the program, at least I felt. You can't be all things to all people, tech and data specifically. It's a humongous field. I thought Springboard did a very good job of teaching the tools and processes that are kind of most used. But there's always going to be more out there, and there's always going to be different kinds of focuses.
00:13:05
Speaker
And they were sort of mentioned in the curriculum. And so what I did, I did a lot of people practice on places like Code Wars. I did some extra data camp because we got as part of our tuition. There was I think it was a year plus of data camp full subscription.
00:13:26
Speaker
So topics that were not covered as fully as I like or that I just found more interesting than others, I would do extra work in data camp. And then also just really like looking around, Kaggle is a really good spot and then data.world, just kind of perusing other people's projects and Python notebooks to sort of see how other people think about problems was really helpful to me.
00:13:55
Speaker
But I will say also no matter how thorough your outside work, your grasp of the curriculum, there's always going to be a huge learning curve when you get your first job because it's a very different thing
Aligning Career with Personal Values
00:14:10
Speaker
working with a static data set that's more or less clean and has maybe 10,000 rows and then you're doing your calculations when suddenly you're dealing with a live pipeline, lots of different raw data inputs.
00:14:25
Speaker
things that might go wrong, millions of rows, it's much more complicated in the real world. And you kind of have to know that, take a deep breath and roll with it. Certainly. So it sounds like you're really describing, you know, studying perfect practices, springboard versus getting into the industry and hitting all of the roadblocks that would just naturally occur in the real world.
00:14:54
Speaker
Is there any way a student could kind of give themselves an authentic experience or is it just something you kind of have to know to expect? There might be a way but I did not encounter it. It's also I didn't come from any sort of computer science background. There's still a whole lot about the pipeline in the back end that I don't
00:15:20
Speaker
fully understand. I know enough to do a good job at what I do. I'm learning more every day, work very closely with data engineers. But I think there is some part of it that can only be learned on the job. And you kind of just have to have faith that you learned all this stuff in the program. You're going to continue learning, and it's going to feel hard at first. But I don't know. It's really kind of interesting and exciting to me.
00:15:48
Speaker
Interesting. So that
Role at edX and Interest in Text Analytics
00:15:50
Speaker
completely makes sense because I studied UX design and I kind of knew that I wasn't just going to get to design whatever I wanted and pass it off to an engineering team and boom, perfect user experience, user interface. So what's one or two things that you think people could
00:16:14
Speaker
think ahead upon that they're not going to experience as a student, but they're going to see in the real world that perhaps they can say, you know, I haven't gotten to experience these things yet, but I know to look out for them when I do get on the job. That's a good question. I would say it's just be prepared for data to not be as clean as you're maybe used to it working with data sets in the program.
00:16:44
Speaker
So you're going to need to be prepared to do a lot of QA. And especially in the beginning when you're newer on the job, it takes a long time. And you may be frustrated by how long it takes. It'll get quicker. It'll get better. But yeah, with live data and pipelines, it's very, very important to double and triple check your work. And it seems tedious. And maybe you're like, oh, I shouldn't have to do it, or I'm sure it's fine.
00:17:12
Speaker
But that's the sort of thing when you first get into like a live set, really double checking your work is super important. Certainly. Yeah, I I've never built a data set, but I can only imagine something small going wrong and messing up everything. Yeah, I the very one of the very first kind of little it was a pretty small project I cut my teeth on. It was fairly low stakes.
00:17:39
Speaker
But I ran the numbers and we were sort of trying to measure the impact of this one type of credential that was attached to certain courses and whether or not that, oh, I worked for an online learning company, I should say. And so we were trying to measure the impact of this, you know, quote unquote credential and whether it made for people to be choosing these courses over others more often.
00:18:05
Speaker
And I ran the numbers and I had done a bit of a funky thing with my join and it resulted in many duplicates those duplicates when aggregated made it look like the effect was significant. But then I noticed that things were inflated.
00:18:23
Speaker
went back, reran the numbers, it turned out that the impact was not at all significant. And so it was a learning experience. I did not get chastised or fired. I was able to catch it soon enough that it hadn't been presented to the customer just yet. But it was definitely an early lesson on, OK, you've got to have many eyeballs on that data and double checking expected
Connecting with Others Transitioning Careers
00:18:50
Speaker
values before
00:18:52
Speaker
giving it to anyone certainly oh gosh yeah my heart would sink if oh gosh that sounds so scary it was a little terrifying but everyone was very nice about it and you know they knew i was new and it was a fairly low stakes situation but yeah it was a it was one of those like okay well i'm never going to let that happen again
00:19:15
Speaker
Certainly, certainly. Well, going back, so I know you're doing a lot of work outside the course, but was there anything in particular in the course that you think helped get you to where you are today? I think the curriculum was very well structured. I think data camp was my favorite piece of it, but that may be because that was the SQL and SQL is my favorite language by far.
00:19:44
Speaker
really appreciated the hands-on project. And that's one thing I felt Springboard did really well, is that you're going through these learning modules and you're practicing with these little labs, but then at the end of each, I forget, unit, month, something like that, there's a kind of a larger project where you have to incorporate several of the different types of skills that you've been learning and maybe use a couple different tools. You do some stuff in a Python notebook and then you put it into Tableau
00:20:14
Speaker
then you also have to present it. And so I really felt like those were those are as close as you can get with a static downloadable data set to kind of a real world scenario where you're taking this raw data, you're crunching numbers, doing calculations, doing an analysis, putting individuals and then kind of explaining it to someone. So those were very helpful. And then also, I know maybe we're going to talk about job searching as separate, but I really also appreciated
00:20:44
Speaker
that infuse throughout the curriculum. There were these networking pieces and, you know, getting together your LinkedIn, the info interviews. I think now it's actually a required part of the curriculum, but I did a lot of lunch club meetings, especially because it was pandemic times and we were all very unused to talking to people.
00:21:07
Speaker
So really do not skip that networking piece. And even the things that seem tedious, yes, it takes a long time to tweak your LinkedIn profile to make it nice. There was a piece where we had to research top 40 companies we were targeting and who we knew, if any, in their companies on LinkedIn. And it takes a long time. And I think a lot of students are inclined to kind of skip past that because they're like, well, I'm here to learn
00:21:37
Speaker
the Python, the SQL, I'm here to learn the technical stuff. I really appreciated that the other piece, the soft skills piece, as it were, was like infused all the way through. And so if you did go through the curriculum start to finish, which I did, because that's how my brain works, you kind of are doing it all along. You don't have to catch up right at the end.
00:21:59
Speaker
Certainly. Well, let's talk about the job hunt now. And I do agree that that networking piece, they really tell you how to talk to people. And I'm someone that likes talking to people.
00:22:12
Speaker
post a podcast, I like meeting people, but it's still very intimidating when, I don't know if you felt this way, but I felt when I was a boot camp or a student networking, I always felt like I was trying to get something from someone, which doesn't make me feel good. So it really helped me talk to people in an authentic way to where, yes, I could use their time wisely, but I
00:22:39
Speaker
wasn't just sneakily trying to be like, can you get me a job? Maybe? I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. Networking is awkward. I think it's awkward for everyone, even people who are mostly outgoing. I mean, I'm like you, I, I like to talk to people, I like to meet people, but networking is inherently awkward. I really cannot say enough good things about Lunch Club. It was, I like to call it like speed dating for networking.
00:23:05
Speaker
It's they match you up. They did a pretty good job. I thought of matching me up with people, but more it was just good practice. It's 20 minutes. Some conversations would run longer if they were going well. Otherwise you just say, Oh, thanks. Nice to meet you. And you hang up. But just that over and over that practice of like, here's my elevator pitch. Here's a little bit about me. And sometimes I made really cool connections with people who did.
00:23:33
Speaker
refer me to other people or say, oh, you know who you should meet as this person or introduce me to someone who could at least give me an info interview. Um, so that's a great tool. And then also I learned how to not be shy about asking for informational interviews. And I do think there's a way to do it. Like, of course, everyone you talk to knows that you are in bootcamp and your goal is to get a job.
00:24:03
Speaker
That's kind of a given, and you don't have to make any bones about that. But at the same time, I always try to approach the info interviews with, you are in this field, you know more than I do, let me pick your brain, I just wanna ask you questions. And do your homework and be prepared with genuine questions. But I found people very willing to help if you approach it with this air of curiosity,
00:24:30
Speaker
a little bit of ego stroking, flattery. People were very happy to give me 30 minutes of their time to chit chat to answer my question. And often they would then say, oh, you know who you should talk to is so and so. Or I know somebody who might be hiring in their data team. And one of those people eventually introduced me to someone who introduced me to someone who introduced me to the guy who hired me.
00:24:58
Speaker
So you just never know, even if that person is not in a position to get you or give you a job, if they like you and they think you're an interesting and smart person, they're going to try to help you out. Certainly. I completely agree. People love helping each other, particularly during the pandemic when most of your social life was cut out. So you had the internet, you had lunch club, you had time to kind of focus on your career and your life.
00:25:27
Speaker
meet people that way. So that's really amazing that finally through this tree of interesting informational interviews, you got your job. But let's talk about the job hunt for you in a whole like you finished the course. What what was your strategy for hunting for a job? So I really relied on that
00:25:52
Speaker
spreadsheet that they made us do in, I feel like it was, I don't even remember, Unit 2 of the program. It was fairly early on and I went back to it again and again when, you know, opportunities were kind of drying up to be like, oh, have I looked at the job postings in this company lately? You know, all the usual places too. I set up job alerts on LinkedIn and Indeed and maybe Glassdoor and then
00:26:19
Speaker
I was very targeted about what kinds of companies I was applying to, which I think actually really helped me out. Now this might not work as well for younger people, people who haven't, you know, who aren't necessarily making a pivot, but this is kind of their first career. But for me, because I spent my whole career in the education space, I was really only looking at
00:26:43
Speaker
EdTech companies, educational foundations, charter school orgs, you know, online learning companies, things like that. Because those were the types of companies where my domain knowledge of just the education space would I knew be seen as valuable. And I would certainly recommend that to others as well if this is a pivot. I happen to love education. It's my passion. So I actually don't want to be anywhere else anyway.
00:27:11
Speaker
But anyone who's making this change as a pivot, if you're coming from an established industry, there's data roles in that industry most likely. Everybody needs a data hire these days. It's like a big thing. So the fact that you're newer with your technical skills that you're saying, okay, well, I have X amount of years as an account manager, a sales manager in the healthcare space, in the
00:27:38
Speaker
whatever space. All of that is incredibly valuable. So I felt like being very targeted was helpful to me. And then the other thing is you got to be prepared for rejection. And job searching is hard. I do come from an acting background as well, like way long ago. So I have a thicker skin, I think, than some for rejection. But the job search takes a while. It took me
00:28:04
Speaker
four months. They say it takes about six on average. In that time, I got tons of interviews. I got to maybe the technical round in a good five seven. I got to final round panel where I knew they were choosing between maybe me and one other person twice.
00:28:25
Speaker
before landing my job. And of course, it's devastating when you get so close and they say, you know, we really like you, but we decided to go with the other candidate. But you've got to be able to just kind of keep with it. I found my meetings with the career coach at Springboard super helpful. She was a fantastic, you know, pep talker motivator. But you know, it's, it's not easy. And you have to be prepared for it to take a long time and
00:28:55
Speaker
keep up with the networking and keep up with the applying and keep up with asking people for introduction. Certainly. And one thing that, you know, this isn't the first time someone's mentioned this on this podcast was to stick with the industry that they know. And I do agree that that does help narrow and you can talk to some of the problems within a space more so than I went from fashion to telecommunications.
00:29:23
Speaker
I had no idea what the issues were in telecommunications until I got there. But I do see that as being very helpful, something easy to speak to. But one thing I'd love to know is, for months, it doesn't sound like a long time, but in job hunting times, that's like, in like, I'm trying to make a joke about like dog years. That's a long time. And was there anything else other than your career coach that kind of kept you going, kept you
00:29:52
Speaker
having this endurance to get to where you wanted to go? Yeah, I think for me personally, and it's different for everyone. For me, it's exercise, running, being out of doors, hiking. And so I think you've just got to make sure whatever your thing is, some people it's crafting, some people it's, you know, time with friends, some people it's movies, whatever your thing is that helps you reset, unwind, stay kind of mentally balanced.
00:30:21
Speaker
you just have to make sure you're really up on your self-care as well because your self-esteem is going to take some knocks. You know, you get rejected. You have periods where there are super dry spells. You've applied for 40 jobs and haven't even gotten a phone screen, you know, for a week or two, which feels like forever. And you think to yourself, maybe I'm never going to get a job. And so anything that you know is good for your own kind of psyche and mental wellness, you just have to carve out time for it.
00:30:52
Speaker
religiously. Yeah for me that was going for runs and hikes and for other people it might be different. Certainly I think that's great advice and advice I didn't take in the job hunt. I definitely was not taking care of myself and I wish I had like that's one regret of the job hunt. I wish I would have taken an hour to go for a run because I'm a big runner too. Somehow we all we all are still alive
00:31:17
Speaker
The next thing I'd love to talk about is your interview. Like what was that like for you for the job that you got? So the job that I ended up landing, the process was pretty interesting. Um, and so it did start, as I said, it started with a lunch club date who introduced me to another guy who was super helpful, gave me advice and then recommended and invited me to join a data centric Slack group.
00:31:43
Speaker
On that Slack group, I introduced myself and my, he's not, I now report to someone else, but the hiring manager reached out to me directly, said, oh, your background sounds right for this role that I'm hiring for. Do you want to meet just like a very informal 20 minute Zoom just to see if this seems like a good fit? So it was a slightly different thing. And this is why I cannot emphasize enough networking, networking, networking.
00:32:12
Speaker
Because when you establish a personal connection with someone, they're much more likely to try to support and help you. So my hiring manager, he and I just met one on one, 20 minutes. I really liked his style. It was clear that we got along just like from a kind of personal professional level. And then he told me about the job. It sounded cool. It sounded great. Then I submitted and applied. And then the recruiter reached out to me for the phone screen.
00:32:42
Speaker
But because I had already kind of established a connection, it really felt like everyone was rooting for me the whole time. Certainly, I brushed up on my techniques. But for example, my manager told me, by the way, we use a lot of window functions in our SQL coding. And it was almost like a hint, hint. So of course, I went and studied up on window functions before my technical interview.
00:33:09
Speaker
But yeah, the process was, other than that, it was pretty straightforward. There was a recruiter phone screen, then there was a call with the hiring manager, then there was a technical round, then there was a panel interview, and then the final kind of negotiations with the recruiter about salary compensation and all that. That's awesome. And I love hearing that people were rooting for you, because I feel like oftentimes it feels very like
00:33:39
Speaker
isolating, but you constantly having to prove yourself like that goes with what you're saying with your ego taking a hit. I think a lot of people just on a human level want to be accepted and supported. But in that job hunt, when you are getting into an interview room, it's almost kind of like a not a firing squad, but you really have to defend yourself in a way and it's draining.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, it can be. I like to think so. This is something that it was not always easy for me to keep in mind when I was job searching, but remembering that you are also interviewing the company and the team. And there are a lot of dysfunctional companies and teams, a lot of things that are just not a good fit for your personality, for the way that they work, the way that you work. So much like dating, you are also trying to figure out if they are a good fit for you.
00:34:33
Speaker
And it's okay to say, no, this isn't the right thing. I think we get into such a mode where we're like, I need a job, I need a job, I need a job, and you're willing to kind of take anything. And the thing that stood out to me, like I said, I came close, very close a couple of times, but the job that I ultimately landed, the panel part, the long, you know, it was like three and a half, four hours panel interview all on Zoom. It was exhausting, of course.
00:34:58
Speaker
But it also I came away from it kind of energized and a lot of the especially like when I had my interviews with some of the strategic leadership people. I felt like they were conversations more than interviews and we were kind of bouncing around ideas and it was fun in a way. And that's kind of how I knew that this was the right fit for me is that I really
00:35:23
Speaker
enjoyed the final panel interview. And that sounds funny, maybe. It was tiring, but it was fun. And so I would encourage people to think about that as well. It shouldn't be such a slog, because if the interview is such a slog and feels like a firing squad, what is working going to feel like at that company?
00:35:45
Speaker
That is such a great way to put it. First of all, I love your dating analogy. I think that's so true. And we talked about that on another episode with Mihal. And it's absolutely true. And even he echoed what you were saying was that, are they a good fit for you? And I don't even want to add anything to what you said, because it was so perfect. But OK, so you're at this company, EdX. Am I saying that right? Or is it EdExtension?
00:36:15
Speaker
I realized when I introduced you, I didn't ask. No, that's okay. So it's also a little weird. It's edX, but as I was going through the interview process, they got acquired by 2U. So technically 2U is our parent company. edX though is the product. We do still have edX as a brand. I now, I was only working on edX data.
00:36:39
Speaker
Then I switched to only 2U degrees data. Now I'm kind of back on edX or bringing in some additional. So it's 2U and edX simultaneously. I see. Okay. So what is edX? Like if I, can I as a person go and use it or is it B2B? I've never heard of it.
00:37:01
Speaker
So 2UR Parent Company is one of the larger online learning companies. Their bread and butter was full degree programs, but then also there's kind of what we call our alternative credential programs. edX was pretty exclusively alternative credentials, but it's all kind of online learning MOOC. You can think of us as a Coursera competitor, but there's everything from kind of three little triad courses to
00:37:30
Speaker
clusters of courses that give you then like kind of a professional certificate style. We also have boot camps and then we have full online degree programs. So they call it everything from free to degree with online learning. Very cool. Yeah. Well, I think that would be a great resource for people even listening trying to up level because something I've heard about the analytics course is that it's a great overview, but there's so many little specializations that
00:38:01
Speaker
I think students are encouraged to pursue within the course, to specialize and hone in on exactly where they want to work within the space. Is that correct? Or am I imagining things? Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct. And it is challenging. Certainly edX is a good place to look at additional courseware because you can take one course at a time. A lot of them, there's certain content that's behind a paywall, but there's a lot of kind of free
00:38:29
Speaker
courseware that you can kind of at least see what's what. And that's absolutely true. And honestly, I'm still figuring it out. There's so much nuance in the data field. And Springboard does do an excellent job of being an overview. It's great to get you started in the door. But certainly where I am at this point, I'm thinking about where I want to go next, how I want to specialize, how I want my knowledge to go a little bit deeper, and it's in specific areas.
00:38:59
Speaker
I'm not sure I would have known at the time I was a student what I would have really wanted to specialize in or maybe I did know but I was like very intimidated and so now kind of two years in I'm starting to deepen in a specific direction. That's awesome and I agree when I was a student I really didn't know either and I think it's
00:39:23
Speaker
It's okay to take a little bit of time in the field to understand that. Just kind of going back to like, you took a lot of time to figure out that you wanted to get it to Download Analytics. You know, why rush the specialization in it? So with that, what are you thinking of specializing and where do you see yourself going next? So I have had the opportunity more recently to do some text analytics with large language models.
00:39:53
Speaker
And it's pretty interesting because I did learn Python in the program, but I would say the first year, almost year and a half in my job, I used Python zero percent. I used my knowledge of Python to be able to read other people's Python notebooks and know what was going on, but I didn't code in it at all.
00:40:13
Speaker
And then I got transferred to a team and they found out I was interested, which was nice. This company has been very, very encouraging, I will say, of kind of like, what is the kind of data that you're interested in analyzing? What do you want to do? And I've really appreciated that opportunity. And being an English teacher in my former life, I've always found the idea of large language models and text analytics, natural language processing, super interesting.
00:40:40
Speaker
But I think I looked, I was interested, I heard about it in the program. I think I looked at a few courses and was just super intimidated. But now I've been kind of helped along the way. I have a fantastic mentor. And yeah, it's specifically around survey data. So people who are taking courses, they get done, they take a survey. I'm sure Springboard has some of these as well.
00:41:06
Speaker
And there's tons of reporting out on like the ratings, right? Oh, how would you rate this one through five? We've got average ratings, high, low, et cetera. But then there's always this extra field of like, is there anything else you'd like to tell us? And so what I've been learning how to do is using Python and these like cloud-based large language models to classify the responses. And then you can layer sentiment analysis on top of it.
00:41:35
Speaker
Here are the topics people are talking about, but are they saying positive things, negative things, or neutral things? And I think it's a super valuable way to get some insight into the customer and what the customer is thinking and where are some areas where we can improve our business processes that are challenging to do. Previously, people just had to pick some at random and read them. So it's been really, really fun, and I love to just geek out on it.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, that does sound really cool. I obviously don't build that kind of product, but in some of the programs I use to analyze my user tests, they will, you know, there's like an AI in the background kind of telling me like these are negative bits of feedback, listen to these segments of the tests. So I wonder if it's something similar to that. Yeah, it is similar. And I've done a little bit of work
00:42:34
Speaker
just for my own fun exploration of something like that you would have a user test where someone's talking and then you can there's programs that will kind of download a transcript of that and then once it's downloadable in CSV format then you can feed it to the Python script for classification and layering of all that sort of stuff. The AI does a decent job but at this point
00:43:00
Speaker
I think it's still more accurate to you to like train your own model, you store the trained model and then it gets kind of like very specific to your type, like whatever, like it's user testing specific or it's user survey specific. I see. Okay, maybe I misspoke and misunderstood how it's done. But thank you for explaining that. Like now I'm curious to look into that more.
00:43:24
Speaker
Is there something that really surprised you about this space, like about what people are saying? I'm just curious if any findings kind of caught you off guard or were unique. Oh, in terms of what I've seen for survey responses. Yeah, I always think, you know, whenever you're putting work out to understand something, there's always some. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:43:52
Speaker
So something that I was curious about, and it does happen more than you think, is when someone, for example, they give a high rating numerically. So they're like, yes, I rate this course as excellent. But then anything else that you'd like to tell us is a complaint or vice versa. So I'm always interested in those kind of anomalies. They say that it wasn't
00:44:18
Speaker
a good experience, but then what they write is a positive comment, or they say it was a great experience, but they write a negative comment. So I'm always interested in those kinds of anomalies. But mainly from a business process, it's really about, okay, if one topic is advisor response time, and most of the comments are negative,
00:44:41
Speaker
then we need to work on our advisory response time. It's pretty simple in the analyses usually. Certainly. I wonder if sometimes people just read the questions wrong. I always wonder if there's that margin of error, what the qualitative data would say around that. Yes, absolutely. Sometimes people read the questions wrong. Some people just clearly have something they want to get off their chest that has nothing to do with the question.
00:45:10
Speaker
So there's a way when I did it's fun building reporting out on this as well because you you have a sort of a side-by-side So you'll build like a topic word cloud and you have all the sentiment scores But then there's always a table with the actual responses. So if you want to dig into Okay, this particular topic looks a little off from what it should be Then you kind of drill in and you read the specific responses. So I do think there's a it's in my mind
00:45:37
Speaker
You know, AI is a tool. I actually really love it. I think it's a great tool, but it's not a replacement for human review. It's just going to help you kind of really hone in on the important things that you need to review manually that need to be read by a human because a human can't process all of that information without cognitive fatigue. So for me, I think it's a fun way to have both where you can kind of categorize it with the algorithm.
00:46:04
Speaker
But you also have the responses. So if somebody ever wants to drill into something specific, they're there. Certainly. That does sound really cool. I'm fascinated, even though this isn't even my space. But since we're coming up on time, I'd love to ask, is there anything you didn't talk about today that you'd like to share with everyone? Just always want to encourage people that if this is a leap that you think you want to take and you've done the pre-work and it really seems like a good fit,
00:46:33
Speaker
to just kind of go for it. I know it's scary taking this sort of leap of faith, getting into the tech field if you don't have a technical background. Obviously, I am only one person and I have my own experiences, but I was very unhappy in my last role. And in this field, I mean, no regrets. It really is the best decision I ever made.
00:46:57
Speaker
And as much as every company has its issues, there's always projects that are less interesting and more interesting. It's just an endlessly fascinating field, and there's so much potential impossibility. So anyone who's thinking about it and really thinks they'd like it but is being held back by fear or safety of a known thing that's even if it's not happy, I know what it is, I would encourage you to go for it.
00:47:24
Speaker
Certainly. And what would you say to someone who's just been on the job hunt five, six, seven months, they're kind of desperate. Um, they're just not getting hired. Things are getting bleak. What would you say to that person? Um, I would encourage them to look into contract work. That's the thing that people don't think about that much in this space, but there is actually a fair amount of contract work available.
00:47:50
Speaker
It's not ideal if what you're looking for is full-time with benefits, but I think it can be a very helpful way. If you're not having luck, you can take on smaller pieces of work, and that at least gets your feet wet. It gets some things on your resume. And it's a thing I think students are not necessarily encouraged to think about in the job search of the program because the goal is full-time employment. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is just to try to keep your spirits up.
00:48:20
Speaker
As one person said to me that did an info interview with me early on, he said, there are currently 1.5 data openings for every person looking for a data job. So eventually you will find something. The space is still, I know things are shrinking a little, companies are in hiring freezes somewhat, but there's a huge need for people in the data field. There are a ton of openings.
00:48:47
Speaker
And so eventually you will find something. Certainly. And that's a great stat 1.5 for everyone who's looking. I wonder what that's like for UX. Something tells me it's not quite as fruitful right now, but that's incredible. And thank you for sharing that. Like I loved how it was a little bit of like EQ versus like, here's some facts that you will eventually get into this industry. Well, thank you so much for your time and sharing your story.
00:49:16
Speaker
Clearly have worked so hard to get to where you are. I'm really excited to stay in touch. And speaking of staying in touch, are you open to listeners connecting with you on social media? Yeah, absolutely. The best way to get in touch with me is definitely going to be LinkedIn. And I will say, please, please, if you are thinking about Springboard, a Springboard alum, or just heard this podcast some other way, please, if you're going to connect with me, write me a note. I do not connect with people
00:49:45
Speaker
with no context. So just say I heard your podcast and love to connect. That'll be enough. And then should I read off my, I'm S Savage on LinkedIn. I typically go by my last name, which is Savage. So it'll be like just first initial S period Savage. So the, oh yeah. So the LinkedIn profile would say S period S A V as in Victor A G E.
00:50:14
Speaker
Awesome. And it's funny, I completely agree. Send a little note saying why you want to connect. It's funny because before we started recording, I sent you a request with no note. So I am clearly in the top of my head now. But in your defense, though, I knew that we were meeting. We had emails about this podcast. So I did know who you were.
00:50:39
Speaker
Fair enough. Fair enough. But I was just thinking, oh man, like I could have done a little better there, but it's okay. We're acquainted. Now we've met. I also will say, and who knows, I may live to regret this, but for those of you, if any current students are in here and looking to, and you need an info interview,
00:51:02
Speaker
I am happy to give 30 minutes of my time. Again, please leave me a note about yourself and why you're interested in talking to me. But I have done many an info interview for students at Springboard looking for advice, looking to just chat, especially, especially if you come from the education world and you're struggling with how you're going to be seen and how to make this pivot. I really love to kind of help people out as much as I can and pay it forward.
00:51:32
Speaker
I love that. Yeah. Like I've heard before, you're not the first person who's come from an education background that's been on this podcast. Industry seems like it is bleeding people. And while it's sad, we need to educate or use. I can understand why people are looking for other avenues. And yeah, I thank you on behalf of everyone else for offering your time like that. It's very, very kind. You're very welcome.
00:52:01
Speaker
Great. Well, for anyone who's listening, certainly connect with Sarah. Or if you have any questions for myself that could be answered on a future episode of this podcast, please email me at alumnipodcast at springboard.com.