Around this time last year, I was chatting with my roommate, a data scientist at a start up about my job recruiting Business Analysts and Business Intelligence Engineers (BIEs). I was telling her how, as I talked to more candidates, the concept of combining technical data analytics and business knowledge was really starting to grow on me. I jokingly said "this is essentially what I do in my role as a recruiter". I'm responsible for gathering requirements, learning a profile, building metrics and producing a hire. I was growing the analytical skills needed to truly understand the needs of my customer (mainly the gaps on their team), and bring them the talent they needed that would eventually convert into a productive hire bringing value to their team and company.
It dawned on me then that I could in fact do this. I could pivot my career over to analytics because in college, I was often in a PR role in many of the student programs I was involved in and gathering insight on student sentiments regarding new programs was something I took pride in. Additionally I was heavily involved in voter registration campaigns with organizations for which outreach and engagement tracking through surveys was a big part of what I did.
Before I even realized it, I had gravitated to roles and positions over the year that highlighted not only the importance of data in driving the decisions that we make but also showed me how much I valued having a part in identifying, deconstructing and portraying that data in an easily consumable format. In college, I took a GIS and a python programming class which helped form the mindset that pushed me towards the goals that I build in November of 2019 for myself. If I had built all this experience over the years, what was holding me back from giving analytics at a corporation a fair shot?
The main thing that I understood as I built on my experience of hiring business analyst and BIEs is that in addition to all the technical expertise that they were bringing to the table, the single most important piece across the roles was having the domain knowledge or the curiosity to learn about and understand your customer. Specifically, understanding the business.
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