How I became an analyst

I just approved a comment on one of my earlier posts, a post about my possible foray into sales. A post that, as I re-read it, brought back plenty of memories. A post that reminded me how my career as it stands now, that of data science and analytics, is quite different from what I had once thought I would be doing.

When I’d written that post in January 2009, I’d just graduated from the University of Western Australia and was actively looking for a job. But what job I was looking for I didn’t have much of a clue. Most of my peers hadn’t studied what I’d studied (a combination of business and information technology), or had the interests I had.

The Career as Journey not Destination

Back then I wished someone told me how jobs and careers worked; I wish I someone told me that a job or career is more journey than destination, and that not everybody knows outright what they want to do for the rest of their lives. And sometimes, careers are, as in my case, down to plenty of randomness.

So as these memories flooded back, I thought, why don’t I write something about how I found my current calling? Maybe it might help someone just starting out as well, someone as confused as I was. So here it is.

My Initial Career Intentions

Based on what I’d studied and what I was interested in, I had the following careers in mind:

• Entrepreneurship (to be my own boss was something I’d always dreamed about, but doesn’t almost everybody);
• Web-design (I’ve had a website since since 1997 — you might, but probably don’t, remember Geocities and Homestead, two free web-hosting platforms I used in the early days);
• Programming (in 2002 I wrote a content management software in PHP that was essentially a clone of one of the leading CMSes at that time called MoveableType, and used it to power edonn.com);
• Copywriting (I used to write, still do, a lot, and loved writing to influence (and still do);
• Business analysis (whatever that was… the only reason I’d had it down was that in my university’s course material for one of my majors, information systems, it was listed as a probable career, and I’d scored a perfect GPA for the major, something I only found out in hindsight as I prepped my résumé);
• Education (teaching or similar — I wanted to “change lives”); and
• Financial planning (I’ll talk more on this later).

These were some of the options I had bouncing around in my head. And whatever I decided to do, my initial thought was that it should be related to non-profit or charitable work if possible. If I was going to be spending the most part of my life doing something (i.e. a job) it might as well be something “worthwhile”.

Limited Options

I would find out soon enough that though I might have tons of ideas of what I wanted to do, those tons would be whittled down quickly to what jobs were available. Being in the middle of an awful recession — remember Lehman Brothers and the sub-prime crisis? — many of the  jobs I thought I had a chance in were simply unavailable.

Sales(y) jobs, though, were still in abundance. These were jobs were largely commission-based, and no- to low-risk propositions for the employers: if you don’t sell, you don’t get paid. And I suppose because of the abundance of these jobs and my not quite knowing what jobs to look for, I decided to try my luck interviewing for them, finding out what they were about and convincing myself that I could do them (the post above was part of the “convincing myself” part, but to a large extent I stand by what I wrote — though I’m not “selling” a product to external customers, I do plenty of selling in terms of ideas , analyses and other “data products” to internal customers).

One sales(y) career that I had seriously considered was that of financial planning. I had taken (and enjoyed) financial planning at University, and I loved reading personal finance blogs and books. Helping others with their finances was also something I felt I could do, especially if I was doing something I knew would help them.

I interviewed with an independent financial planning firm (one I trusted and felt really comfortable with) and was conditionally accepted. I was told to go back when I had the necessary certifications, which I diligently went out to get (which set me back about $600).

But all this while I still wasn’t sure if that was really what I wanted to do. Did I really get a degree for this? A polytechnic diploma would have been sufficient, and having a degree didn’t really help. So I decided to let fate decide: if by April 2009 I hadn’t been offered a non-financial planning, non-salesy job, I would take up the position at the financial planning firm mentioned above.

I continued scouring job postings, looking out for the less sales(y) jobs, trying my luck by sending out résumés for which I felt unqualified but had great interest in. I also targeted jobs more relevant to my degree, which I would never had gotten with just a polytechnic diploma.

Then one day a job ad came along that made my small eyes open a little wider. One that made me think: I could do this; I want to do this. It was for a Business Analyst position, a position I had, until then, not really thought much about, but which had a beautiful mix of business, social science and information technology.

The technical skills that they were looking for seemed a little more than I could offer (specifically VBA programming skills), but everything else I had down to a tee. I sent in my résumé and hoped for the best. A few days later a call came, and I was told that they wanted to interview me (hooray!) That first interview went decently, and I was told to return for a technical skills test, which I passed.

And then I was told that there was a final interview. By this time I was feeling a little job-search weary, and I told myself that this was going to be the last interview I’m going for before I said yes to the financial planning firm.

And as fate would have it, the final interview went well, and I was told a couple of days later that I got the job.

On 1st April 2009 I started my career as an analyst at Future Electronics.

(Yes, April fool’s. “My job’s a joke; my career’s a joke” became a standard joke for me while I was at Future).

And that’s how I became an analyst (and not (yet) an entrepreneur; web-designer; copywriter; financial planner; or an educator. Though on this last one, I still do plenty of educating in my analytics role!)

Some asides:

• In case you’re wondering what an “analyst” does, read my post “What do you do? I’m an analyst.“
• I’m no longer at Future, and currently work at Study Group (a higher education pathway provider), where I’ve taken a similar but more strategic analytics role – still not quite non-profit or charity, but I’m getting there).
• As an analyst, especially in smaller companies or teams, or where analytics is more immature, I find that you pretty much define your own job scope. Sure, the job you’re hired for needs to be done, but there’s often so much more you can do with data and systems with lots of business impact, that if you’re gung-ho enough you can start side projects that can quickly become integral to how the business runs things.