Is Analytics Only for People With Tech Backgrounds?
Analytics is for engineers! Heard that before? Well, believe it or not, that’s just a myth. Let’s meet Clarence Wong, Commerce graduate from St. Xavier’s college Calcutta who successfully made a career in data analytics. He completed the Jigsaw Academy Data Science Certification in 2013 and is currently enrolled in the December 2013 Batch of the Great Lakes’ Post Graduate Program in Business Analytics. We had a really interesting chat with Clarence, where he talked about his journey into analytics, his passion for the subject and his dreams for the future. Below are snippets of our conversation.
Clarence’s journey into analytics…
I began my career with HSBC. In many ways my analytics journey began there, though in a very nascent manner. I worked in the online fraud prevention team and there we used some basic analytics to improve service deliveries, improve productivity and service errors. After about four years I joined Google and that’s where things really took a quantum leap forward. Google really promoted an open source environment and it was here that I got introduced to R and Python and where I began to use analytic techniques like clustering and decision trees.
When I moved to ADP (Human Capital Management Industry) two years later, I again had a good mix of data operations and client services. I became more fluid and began to use a blend of lean and analytic frameworks. That’s when I decided to get a more solid understanding of analytics and learn the theory behind the applications. Ofcourse I did a lot of self learning as well but I though with so much buzz about Analytics and Big Data in the industry, it was imperative that I picked up some in demand analytics skills as well.
On getting trained in analytics…
I looked at several course options like the ones at ATI, IIM and NIIT imperia. I finally enrolled in Jigsaw Academy’s Data Science Certification course because I felt that they were the most application oriented and their curriculum was flexible and had the right content. I read some great student testimonials, also found that they had been featured in Analytics India Magazine’s list of Top 10 analytics courses. I also read a comparison of IIT Mumbai and Jigsaw done by one of their students, that was informative and led me to believe that Jigsaw was a good choice. Quite importantly their courses were also priced very competitively.
Jigsaw’s Data Science Certification course was great and taught me more than enough to make greater inroads in the analytics space and work as an analyst or senior analyst. However if I wanted to make a complete career shift into analytics, being that it would be a mid career shift, I would have had to start from scratch and I didn’t want that. I wanted to become more business savvy in the analytics context and so decided to enrol in the Great Lakes Post Graduate Programme in Business Analytics. I wanted to learn how to be a better analytics and people manager in the context of a cross functional analytics team and how to better cost and leverage your models to improve profitability.
The training led to a great job offer!
This proved to be a good decision as mid way through the programme, I got and accepted an offer from Value Labs as Project Lead – Analytics. In my new role I will be responsible for setting up the Global Analytics Consultancy for the organization, it’s vision, strategy and coordinating the efforts of the analysts.
Personal Insights
I think all of us use analytics to some extent in our work. We all have an analytics capacity. We use analytics in our daily life, without knowing it. Every time we choose a route to take, or which brand to purchase, we are using our analytic capabilities. It doesn’t matter what our educational background is, we can all crack analytics. I did it as a commerce graduate. If you have an interest in data and want to transition to an analytics role, believe in yourself and make it happen.
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