Your Background? I had a good 7.5 years of experience in IT before I got a business analytics role. I was always interested in client-facing roles and knowing the business side of things. I applied to Great Lakes’ PG Program in Business Analytics in 2016. I switched my job in-between to a product company while I was in the program only to boomerang to my previous firm a year later for an analytical role.
Why Great Lakes? I knew analytics was an emerging area. I heard about Great Lakes for the first time when it was launched in Gurgaon in 2013. I have been following Great Lakes since then. Great Lakes was one of the first colleges that started a program about analytics. That is the reason I wanted to do it specifically from Great Lakes.
Program Highlight? It has to be the Faculty. Every professor who walked in was extremely good and knowledgeable. They were receptive to suggestions and feedback that we gave them. Dr P.K.Vishwanathan, Rajesh Sir, and Dr Shankar were really good.
Tools You Use? I primarily use Excel and R a lot for my work. Since my role is sales-cum-designing attributes so I am on the business side mostly which means that I end up using Excel a lot.
Advice to Aspiring Professionals Looking to Transition? Background or domain won’t really matter because we are already using analytics is one way or another at our job. Even developers use analytics a lot while working with databases or building data models. Your experience should help you kick-start a career in analytics. Always keep an eye out for smaller opportunities to learn and apply analytics within your own profiles. Embracing these opportunities will get the ball rolling for transition into completely analytical roles. The good thing about analytics is that it is not domain-specific so as long as you are capable of understanding data pertaining to different domains, you can succeed.
Rapid Fire with Great Lakes: PGP-BABI Alumnus, Gajalakshmi
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