|
Xovaan posted:Who I am: Recent college grad with a BA in Economics and an AA in Business Administration I hire people like this sort of profile as entry level researchers, but you'd have to be in the NYC area. Most of the data analyst jobs out there are for finance with some marketing. If you're interested in public policy like I am though, the best options are consulting-ish firms like Mathematica or MDRC. If by chance that's what you're interested in I'm happy to talk, otherwise search for jobs with titles like "analyst" or "research", and skills like VBA, vlookup, STATA, etc... There's probably some low hanging fruit for you. Learn vlookup and pivot tables for Excel like your life depends on it, and learn basic SQL queries (pretty much know what SELECT, INNER JOIN, and WHERE do.) Those are both pretty easy to learn but very useful and in demand. Kim Jong Il fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Jun 29, 2013 |
#
¿
Jun 29, 2013 19:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 11:48 |
|
|
RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:I don't mean to sound flippant, but I'm surprised there are circles where VLOOKUP is a "skill;" I mean it takes liek 2 minutes to read the documentation and understand how it works. And pivot tables are pretty much just point-and-click. Yeah it's pretty easy in practice, but you can say the same for a million IT skills. My point was that it's good to articulate your skills, and it's an area where you can pick something up relatively easily that's also really useful and in demand. yoyomama posted:Don't mean to highjack, but I'd be happy to hear what more you'd have to say about having a career in public policy research, necessary and/or in-demand skills and background, good companies to apply to, etc. If you don't feel like posting something in general here, I'd be happy to send you an email or PM with specific questions. You can post specific questions, I'll try to keep them here in public unless necessary. I work as a data analyst/researcher for a government contractor that also works with a lot of non-profits/think tanks, but as you can imagine things are very incestuous. I mainly work in operations, but my policy bonafides are pretty strong and I've been angling to move more in that direction. Mine is more of a small shop, so I've very often had to do IT administrative/IT support roles even though it's not my job at all. It's a good way though to ingratiate yourself in with upper management and/or get face time with clients.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2013 17:44
|
|
|
I actually have a master list of competitors saved at work, I can grab that tomorrow (hopefully I remember) if that works. Research is mainly NYC and DC, but in NYC there's a lot of similar stuff in finance, marketing, etc... I clicked your history because I am a pathological researcher - I think we have some openings in Boston, if you send me your info I can pass it along. I dunno if it'll be a good fit because we mostly recruit at entry levels for research, but who knows. What I use on a daily basis: a LOT of Excel, SAS (similar to STATA/R), SQL. You probably should know the basics in Excel and SQL, and some at least basic functions in statistical software for an entry level one. Of course a lot of the advanced positions will require sophisticated statistical programming for building models and such, along with an advanced degree. Programming is useful in the sense that we're using statistical packages all of the time, and VBA/scripting is really useful for data cleaning, manipulation, etc... It's also useful to be able to have a good framework for interacting with developers if you are going to be managing projects and interfacing between the developers and management, but you're probably not going to be using something like Java or C++ very often if at all outside of a strongly quantitative position. In terms of how you should sell yourself, it depends on how big you're shooting for. Are you going to be interviewing directly with HR people who don't know anything about the field (and might be impressed if you threw in a lot of random data mining terms), or with researchers who value relevant experience and know what questions to ask? When I interview for my group, I look for a mix of these good practical skills (useful to have, but can be taught) and a strong theoretical background. E.g., are you a substantive person who knows about your field and can think abstractly about it? I think the other stuff you mentioned is less useful in a bigger company, but where I'm at now I've had to do a lot of it mainly because my colleagues are mostly either prominent academics or sales staff who don't have a clue how technology works. Project Management is very useful in an abstract sense, the formal IT definition depends on how much or any software development your firm is doing. Data presentation is always useful and an in-demand soft skill if you're any good at it. Plenty of groups do research and advocacy, but you are going to have a thick skin about others taking credit for your work. I have ghostwritten the bulk of the copy for a lot of prominent stuff. I've collaborated on the core analyses and even proposed ideas, but it can be difficult getting any credit/respect if you're working with prominent experts in a given field. That being said, some people/companies are pretty good about sharing credit and giving opportunities for professional recognition, and others are terrible in taking all credit and making subordinates do all the heavy lifting. That's basically every industry though. I know of plenty of companies who do strictly data collection (e.g., D&B) for business intelligence. As far as the specific field, most do both, although there's a divide between companies who are focusing more of survey type data, and others who have their own custom taxonomies and knowledge corpuses. If you're just doing data collection, my understanding is that is considered business intelligence, while there are a few non-profits/advocacy groups/etc... who just do analyses and get their data sources from elsewhere - most on that end of the spectrum will at least do surveys though. Mine is kind of a hybrid with software development and hasn't been around for all that long. There have been promotions to project management positions, and others to more of a higher, managerial role in data collection or analysis. I think the field's structure is relatively flat though. edit: here are my company recommendations: Research - Mathematica Policy Research MDRC RAND The Advisory Board The Brookings Institute Insert other think tanks here Business Intelligence - Bloomberg Dow Jones Dun & Bradstreet McGraw Hill Reed Elsevier Also look into finance, marketing, and consulting (Deloitte, PwC, Booz Allen, Accenture, etc...) Kim Jong Il fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Jul 1, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2013 04:05
|
|
|
Can you PM me a link to a resume, save it on a Google drive or something like that?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2013 02:29
|
|
|
He's not going to be a DBA from day one. If you can do a Boolean search on Google you can learn SQL. Think of it like this, instead of having a giant spreadsheet with millions and millions of entries, you have a bunch of tiny little tables so you can only take what you need. Two tables can be joined together if they have a common characteristic. E.g. T1: ID|Population|Year 1|1000000|2013 2|344323|2009 3|2290900|2005 T2: ID|City 1|New York 2|Boston 3|Chicago Join the two together, and you've matched the cities to their population figures. That's a part of it (JOINs.) Select statements are basically saying, do you want everything in those joined tables, or do you just want a few columns? Then the WHERE statement is filtering. Here is some real world syntax. SELECT * FROM table1 t1 (this is saying where you're initially pulling the data from, and then renaming table1 to t1 for shorthand) LEFT JOIN table t2 (nolock) on t2.id=t1.id WHERE t1.year='2012' and t2.city='Boston' That is basically 80% of the SQL I have to use on a day to day basis. Add as and COUNT in select statements, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, HAVING, ROW, and CASE statements and that is 90% of the stuff you'll likely need. The hardest part by far (for me, again I'm not writing data or administering it) is knowing what tables to join together, it can be tricky with more complex databases.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2013 01:51
|
|
|
I currently work about 50/50 in operations/QA and product development. This is more by necessity than choice. I am skilled at both and acknowledged as such by management, but this split really means that my duties in both tend to suffer as I can't really do even close to what is needed for either. I genuinely enjoy working with both though. Originally the plan communicated to me a while back was that I would shift to a role exclusively in operations/QA, although I was very skeptical of the time of this happening because management has a very aggressive business plan that always gives the short shrift to operations/QA and pulls away resources from it. This has ended up happening, and now the new plan seems to be that I will exclusively focus on product development with a new external hire brought in to handle my operations duties. I have two really big issues with this: 1. I have a lot of specialized experience with operations/QA - it's the kind of setup where you really need to have 6 months to a year of experience with it to know what you're doing. I am 100% certain that if this was to happen, operations would suffer even more and this could lead to some pretty big problems with our clients. I have to spend an insane amount of time as is putting out these sorts of fires, which is not only thankless (with plenty of shooting the messenger), but is in fact largely caused by management's priorities. They have an extremely poor understanding of this entire process and all that goes into it. 2. The reason for the move is that there is a really big project coming up - and one that I'm very pessimistic about. I think it's doomed to failure, and as such don't at all want to be associated with it. In a way it's a vote of confidence in me to work on this because I'm probably the best person who could get it into shape, but I'm not optimistic, and just the way I think I can only focus on the prospects for failure and not the possibilities for success. Try as I can to look at this way, I just can't accept it. Not only is my career trajectory probably going to be a lot worse if I don't go into product development full time, but it has the potential to endanger my status, which is currently very secure. (That's already not great to begin with because I'm not a very good manager.) That's the extent to which I lack confidence in this. I have tried to dance around these issues in talking to my direct supervisor, but it hasn't gone over very well at all even in that limited extent. Are there any options available at all besides the obvious ones of "leave" or "see a shrink?"
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2013 06:23
|
|
|
I'd go for the MS in stats if you want something more substantive. I know someone in one of those newer programs and while it may be a valuable signal to employers, they aren't really teaching anything new.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2013 19:21
|
|
|
Xguard86 posted:Most places asking for a business/math major would be happy to take an engineer. Just make sure your resume really highlights your ability to use business tools and "get" a business environment. I agree with most of this, but it depends on the role. Heavy quant analysts yes, other kinds of analysts actively dislike Engineering recruits.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2013 18:13
|
|
|
They won't help very much in terms of actual skills but some employers value them. Others don't remotely care.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2013 04:40
|
|
|
Xovaan posted:Man, indeed.com is depressing in my area. My contract/internship is about to come to an end here, and while I have job prospects at a family friend's software company as a market consultant, I really would like something more permanent as well. I'd redo your summary, it sounds weird being in third person. The last line reads really awkwardly too. Your experience summaries are decent, but you should emphasize more what specific tools you used instead of burying them in your skills section. Otherwise, not to sound like a broken record but you need to move to NYC/Boston/DC. edit: just to illustrate that point more, I ran that same search on zip recruiter and got 5 times as many results, and I live 45 minutes south of NYC. Kim Jong Il fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Dec 27, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2013 23:07
|
|
|
Xibanya posted:Hi all, I could use some guidance on how to develop my career. Sounds like Data Analyst could be an option.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2014 00:25
|
|
|
Depends on the place, but it tends to take 6-12 months if it ever does happen.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2014 00:17
|
|
|
I'll soon be switching from my small company to one of the biggest in the world. Interview went shockingly well and they pretty much offered me it on the spot with a huge pay increase. That being said, still a little terrified about completely switching environments (I've worked corporate before but it was in an especially bad place under financial stress, while this one is raking in the bucks.) Also nervous about the fact that your job could suddenly be eliminated tomorrow on the whims of some senior VP, although pretty much everything on paper suggests this is as high growth and high priority as it gets. It's also a completely different software package, although the same fundamental ideas apply to what I'm doing now (burgeoning kind of data analysis where there really aren't much in the way of set industry standards.) So yeah, I'm just anxious - both about this itself, and of committing some terrible social faux pas because I don't know any better. But it really is a great opportunity, and I'm pretty sure I can go back to my current one at a moment's notice if it doesn't work out.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2014 23:39
|
|
|
ForeverSmug posted:Analyst sounds like something I'd be able to do, but honestly I have no clue where to start looking for something like that. Most of what I've found through job search sites are "Senior software analyst" positions. What would these be labeled as? Are they entry-level? Agreed with everything yoyomama said. Look at my previous posts in this thread too.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2014 03:41
|
|
|
Teeter posted:I think I could use some help similar to the last few posts. I've worked for the past 2+ years in academia as a research assistant/project coordinator, but I'm looking to get out because my time here has left me disillusioned. My problem now is that I don't really know what sort of positions I should be applying for. How are your Excel skills? Do you know any statistics packages?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2014 02:20
|
|
|
swenblack posted:It's odd that you'd phrase your situation as being at a dead end. A year and a half of experience still qualifies you firmly as an entry level employee. If he can get a good offer now, he should take it. Look at the research about how people increase their salary. It's always by company jumping.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 05:16
|
|
|
Background: career started slow due to graduating during last recession. Spent a few years at startups, jumped with some apprehension last year to a Fortune 500 company. Have impressed a lot of people there with my ability to accomplish things and DIY resourcefulness. They think I've moved mountains. From my perspective, overall it's fine (good pay and lots of perks), but from my perspective we are moving too slowly. There's some uncertainty due to corporate restructuring - no one's scared of being fired, but our jobs might completely change, and that's been difficult the past few weeks with a lot of new responsibilities thrown on our plate without our previous ones going away. The biggest thing though is how political it is. I largely don't have to deal with that directly, but there's just layer upon layer of upper management, and literally the merit of an idea and the resources that flow towards or away from it completely have to do with how many higher ups support it, and not necessarily the merits at all. This has been frustrating with a lot of low hanging fruit that could save thousands falling by the wayside to work on new initiatives, and oh by the way we're at the same time getting more budget pressure. I'm not that unhappy and it's nothing compared to some of the horror stories you see here, but I was just contacted out of the blue by an internal recruiter from one of my dream companies. Who knows if it goes anywhere and it is on the other side of the country, but wow. I work in an obscure but growing field. The recruiter at least made an effort to not come off like a complete idiot/form letter, which a lot of these sorts of things do. I'm curious to see whether or not they want to bring me in for an interview. They honestly could learn a lot by doing that even if they don't hire me. I actually did apply to them in a completely different role a year ago and received no interest. For the position itself, I'm not sure if it's a fit or not but it's at least relevant enough to check. I've now been project lead in this same role at a small company and now a big company, basically in charge of implementation and day to day operations. It would be for a step up from where I am now, in a managerial role. I spend quite a lot of my time with my manager on overall strategy, and in practice do quite a bit of supervisory work now and have for years at both roles. My current manager in effect spends most of the workday either on direct management or endless, soul-crushing meetings, and jumping through hoops for HR and the central administration, and doing that in lieu of my actual job doesn't exactly seem enticing, but I'd have to see whether they want to do that, or more of a building their operations up from a ground up sort of thing, which I'd be perfect for. It's not exactly the career progression that I want, but it is one, which may or may not be possible currently.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2015 01:12
|
|
|
Duckman2008 posted:
Try to get into corporate marketing or sales operations. Boot and Rally posted:Has anyone found it useful to go out of their way to get a big, brand name company on their resume? What I mean to ask is: have any of you had trouble finding a job doing what you want (say job A) and managed to get an offer from a big multinational corporation doing something else (job B), only to find that when you tried to go back to the job A market it was much easier to get responses? Yes, and surprisingly because the company is enormously successful but seems like a dinosaur in many respects. But for 90% of recruiters, they make really simple decisions like that, and it helps tremendously. Note: may not be the case if you're at Radio Shack or somewhere else stigmatized.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2015 18:23
|
|
|
I've worked at company A for slightly under a year. Huge bureaucracy, and everyone's shocked at what I am able to accomplish in bending the rules, although by my standards we're moving at a glacial pace. Parent company is in the midst of a massive reorganization and it looks like our group is well positioned to the extent that you can tell. Middling stock results after years of roaring success, but to their credit senior management does know that their structure is a mess - my group is the one leading change efforts. I have great job security and like/work well with my colleagues, but there are already too many cooks with middle management with this group and in general, and I'm not sure that there is a great path for advancement. My group's director seems to like and respect me, but I think he fundamentally likes to deal with more sales and marketing types when it comes to planning and strategy vs. analysts and that's unlikely to change. Company B (another huge company, but not as big) found me on LinkedIn out of the blue and seems close to making an offer. Base increase would be more than a quarter of my salary, BUT for some insane reason I am not exempt from overtime currently, and made the equivalent of 12% of my base in OT this past year. Adding in increased commuting costs (currently in the suburbs and I just moved closer to work, offer is in NYC), around 75% of the increase disappears, although I guess I could negotiate that. This is for what is a managerial role in title, but with no direct reports, and given the role itself I have some trouble understanding why it does have the salary and title that it does. The role itself also doesn't seem very interesting to me. Also, this company's recent performance is middling to slightly worse than my current one from what I can tell, and both of them had layoffs in Q4 with B's a bit worse. I don't really want to move into traditional management, but to advance my career it's probably going to be that, or move into more of a technical direction (which the almost-offer sort of does, but not in a way that I want.) I have looked into a few external managerial roles lately and I think my lack of title has been a hangup, although in practice I have been effectively managing people and operations for years now. I'm also sensitive to leaving within a year if that might hurt some feelings or be seen as a red flag by some.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2015 17:52
|
|
|
asur posted:I wouldn't leave a job that you've been in for less than a year for a job that not only doesn't have a large pay increase but you don't seem that enthusiastic about. It also seems like your last paragraph is contradictory. If you don't want to advance into traditional management then why do you care that your title is holding you back and why don't you try to advance yourself down the technical track. Because there isn't really another path for advancement, and the IT setup here is seriously the worst in the universe.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2015 23:18
|
|
|
Radbot posted:So I've reached a point in my career where I'm either going to go down a more tactical path, like executing my company's plans for digital marketing, continuing to be in the weeds of web analytics implementation, managing our agency (as I currently do)... or possibly becoming a manager with direct reports. I'd really like to be in a Sr. Manager or Director level position within 3-4 years, as I know I've got the technical chops and my performance review showed that I was able to keep my personable facade over my terrible personality excellently. Do you have supervisory experience at all? Jump to another job (possibly internally depending on how big your company is) or get an MBA, that's usually how it goes. I've gotten a lot of supervisory experience purely because I know what I do really well and am extremely proactive. My manager is stuck in endless, worthless meetings instead of actually being able to get things done, so I'm effectively running things and have been for a while. I sincerely don't want to be a manager because I'd rather actually do my job, although I would love more say on strategy.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2015 02:14
|
|
|
Analytics is definitely a good field for you to enter with your skillset even though your perception of employer biases is correct. In fact, I've gotten approached out of the blue by a few Philosophy PhDs with very similar questions. Start teaching yourself more Python, R, SQL etc..., and be an active participant on sites like Kaggle and Stack Overflow. I was in a similar spot to you (and in fact same age, NYC area, and very similar academic background), although I decided to much earlier, sparing myself a lot of pain. It was a combination of temping just to build basic experience, writing a lot on the internet in my chosen fields of interest, and somehow talking myself into an internship that I was able to leverage to land a different, better position.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2016 23:47
|
|
|
Bitchkrieg posted:I'm at a small company with an incompetent, maybe completely ineffectual, HR department. That's every HR department.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2016 02:42
|
|
|
I have a relatively junior role on paper - I've been performing the duties of a senior contributor for a while. I requested a formal promotion, my director and VP agreed (and I believe them), only HR said no. They're not really inclined to fight HR due to how non-functioning things are around here. I was offered a 15% pay increase, as well as a 10% retention bonus if I stay at the company for 15 months. It also bars me from any internal promotions for a year. I legitimately only care about the title. Things absolutely would collapse if I was not around and I have the ability to suicide bomb everything were I to choose. The reason for rejecting my promotion is infuriating. I work in analytics, which no one else in my department really understands, nevermind HR. Their reasoning is, by definition, any analytics role can only be at junior-ish level. Despite literally having thousands of senior level people with no discernible skill. HR is unable to comprehend that analytics consists of more than Excel and MicroStrategy (as evidenced by their inability to source any candidates worth a poo poo for our openings.) There are hundreds of people in my employer with senior roles in analytics. I know the policy exists but is inconsistently enforced. I also know they're really fighting me because a new title would put me in a salary band that averages a 50% increase, and I know what strategies HR uses in their playbook, and how no promises from HR are worth poo poo. As ridiculous and unfair as it is, I would accept merely a title change if it came to that. I've been really reasonable and well behaved until now, and on paper their stance is just completely loving insane. I'm a lovely networker, but have a great relationship with everyone I've worked with. I'm trying to drum up an internal offer to force their hand and also trying a little bit harder on the external front. I don't want to really push hard externally though, as a lot of my contacts are at vendors of my current employer, and I wouldn't want to burn through certain options unless I was really desperate. I also will make a bit of cash if my options vest in a year. Apparently HR is now pushing my director and VP to get me to sign this agreement - I don't know if they told HR yet I said no. I half want to sit down and either rage, or logically rip HR to shreds - half want to just refuse to meet them, I can legitimately claim that I'm too busy. Meanwhile I'm in theory on vacation, and just like my last vacation, it's been anything but as multiple emergencies have come up where no one else could solve them. This is going to make a great tell all book some day. I seriously cannot fathom why the global economy doesn't collapse given that my employer is as large and successful as it gets, but I guess current events are kind of bearing that out.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2016 05:27
|
|
|
I think if I'm gone I'm gone for good because it's a gigantic loving pain in the rear end. I'm trying to appeal to HR for what that's worth.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2016 03:43
|
|
|
Kim Jong Il posted:I think if I'm gone I'm gone for good because it's a gigantic loving pain in the rear end. I got another internal offer and was able to use it to force HR's hand. 20% raise, but much more important is the title bump. This was really only possible because my director and VP were fighting for me and poo poo would have legit collapsed if I left. I have doubled my salary in slightly over 2 years and I'm still dumb founded by it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2016 02:38
|
|
|
Not exactly, it was more graduating during the recession. I'm decently overpaid now, although comically underpaid compared to most of my coworkers.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2016 00:14
|
|
|
Kudaros posted:I'm wrapping up a PhD and looking for jobs. I found one listing where the recruiter is highly responsive and appears to be interested. However, I just found out it's apparently considered an 'entry' level job. Unless you want to be an ETL developer, you can teach yourself basic database querying and get by ok. You might run into growing pains with logistical things like transforming or processing data, but you'll figure that out soon enough. Knowing nothing else about you, based on your description I'd peg you for something like 70k outside of Manhattan or SF. My concern would be the uncertainty about how long it'd take you to pick up the practical components of the role. quote:The catch is that I'm trying to get a job in the same city and, while there are several jobs in the area that are suitable and likely pay better, I feel they may be more competitive on the business side of things, and if I'm playing the odds, it's better to have this than be unemployed. It depends on the role. If this is a pure modeling gig, then it sounds like you can legit ask for more. If not, then that's reasonable for a green candidate. By all means, if you're not familiar with them, start cramming on things like Python, R, SQL so at least you don't get tripped up on the basics if they come up during an interview. Most companies won't be using something like MATLAB or Stata. quote:I currently make 24k and will be unemployed after January. Wife makes 55k. I am married, no kids, but with a house, mortgage, and a household total of ~$40k in debts (most of which is my wife's student loans, which are interest free for the moment). We own our (lovely) cars, take cheap or no vacations, and have otherwise modest expenses. I suspect we could be debt-free in a bit over a year. Yes for the overall job market, but the market's hot for analytics skills. If you can use this role to teach yourself more practical stuff, and then go back on the market in a year or two, you'd be likely to see a bump. I think the going rate on the open market for real data scientist in metro NYC (what I'm familiar with) would be something like at least 150k base with 20%+ bonus. It's tricky as you'll quickly find that recruiters largely don't know poo poo about this category, and very possibly your future supervisors will know nothing about the topic as well, and thus for better or worse not know what they're looking for.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2017 05:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 11:48 |
|
|
obi_ant posted:Looking for some advice in terms of a new career path. What are you good at? People person? Do marketing. Smart person? Teach yourself analytics. My employer has a significant large national retail presence, and a LOT of people with generic marketing type jobs worked their way up from the retail level. In many cases, more academic credentialing doesn't have a high upside, and can lead to more debt.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2018 03:57
|
|