Making a Successful Career Switch to Data Analytics

As you may already know, there has been a huge upsurge in the importance and popularity of data analytics in the last couple of years. With an ever-increasing number of job opportunities, plenty of people from different professional backgrounds are actively looking to make a career transition to analytics. Harsh Gujrathi, a former Jigsaw Academy student, recently spoke to us about how he is taking the leap from marketing to the world of data.

“I’ve had five years of experience in marketing and while I dealt with data on a regular basis, the scope was fairly limited,” said Harsh. “Another problem with this data was the quality. It generally came from the client or from secondary research that the client had conducted. Because of this, the data was muddy. So, the output would often be skewed.”

Harsh was hoping to break into the field of analytics and was naturally looking for the best way to start making the move. After plenty of research and feedback from enough people, he finally settled on doing his data learning with us at Jigsaw Academy.

“The student support team was extremely helpful during the whole process right from when I was still trying to decide where to do an analytics course,” he said. “They actually took the time out and spent 45 minutes answering all my questions. I had a basic understanding of the data science process but I needed to fine-tune my technical skills.So, I had to make sure that I identified the course that would be right for me.”

When it came to the course itself, Harsh had very positive feedback for us. “The content of the course was very good. The descriptive analytics part was easy to understand and in general, the material was well structured. The faculty were also extremely helpful and guided me through any queries I had.”

Soon after the completion of the course, Harsh was able to put his new-found data to the test. He received a certificate of excellence for the capstone project he completed as part of the course. He also teamed up with a fellow Jigsaw Academy student and won a student contest organized by Pixetics in Bangalore. He felt that participating in the contest in particular, was a very valuable experience in terms of what he learnt about the data analytics process.

“It was a very interesting collaborative experience. I’m adept at modelling with SAS and my partner is a specialist in visualization with R. So, we were able to divide the responsibilities quite well,” he said.

“We’re also both from similar backgrounds and we were each able come up with insights which were relevant to the competition, that we could bounce off each other. Overall, it was a very positive experience that I feel will serve me well going forward.”

All this being said, Harsh fully understands that mastering analytics is a long process and that requires a fair amount of self-study and hard work. “Probably the most significant aspect of the whole program was the fact that we had so many non-graded assignments. That’s one of the best ways to become more comfortable with the concepts and the faculty is always there to help you out. I feel like these assignments will be especially useful once I enter the industry and build towards a career in analytics.”

You can visit our website to find out more about the course for Data Science with SAS, the course for Data Science with R, or the Full Stack Data Science course, which covers them both along with several other subjects.