I come from a non-technical business background with very little knowledge of coding or anything related. My technical skills were limited to the Microsoft Office Suite only. Read further to learn about my journey with Great Learning’s Data Science Program.
I was and am heading the strategy team of a consulting organization. Ideation and strategizing like GTM and campaigns (atl,btl,ttl) for varied clients from an EV manufacturer (entering a particular market) to political parties (electioneering and continuous engagement) is my core responsibility, and these would be inspired primarily from the analysis provided by the analytics team which was a combination of both primary and secondary research.
A challenge I faced on a daily basis was getting insights from large amounts of unorganized data (e.g. 30-35 attributes of 10lakh plus records). The data team will clean the data but cannot decide if we want to keep or leave any fields, and this was a decision often left to me (domain knowledge was required, and I had to engage with domain experts for the same, and this was cumbersome and expensive for us), and I was looking for a way to do this in a structured way and also put an SOP in place for the future. I came across Great Learning while searching online, and I enquired about an analytics program. I also enquired with other providers of online learning services about the same.
The options, depth of knowledge of the counselors, and an in-depth session with a senior member of the Great learning team convinced me to go ahead with the program even though I was apprehensive about online learning in the beginning. The main reason was I felt that it would be a series of just video lectures with no scope for interaction, but one mentored learning session put all my doubts to rest.
The highly interactive mentoring sessions provided me with a great way of clearing my doubts, motivating me to prepare further going forward, and also showed me the real-world possibilities of how I could actually implement what I was learning since the mentors themselves come from an industry background and had sound practical advice for us and we sometimes even discussed our work issues related to data science and analytics. The mentors I genuinely believe kept me motivated throughout the program and were always available to clear any doubts I had. They were instrumental in me completing the program with excellent grades and also real industry application of my newly acquired knowledge.
I have started using a number of skills from the program at my work, like SQL, which I regularly use now to retrieve data and tableau, which has helped me greatly in visualizing our reasons for a particular strategy to the client. My work has become more efficient and the results more data-driven, and the results speak for themselves.
Starting with analytics is a great step to further our career, and it paves the path for many more avenues of growth in the future. The skill sets acquired can be put to use from day one of the program itself at work and would encourage anyone thinking about an analytics program to start right away!
