5 Study Hacks for Beginner Data Analysts! | Live Webinar

Key Takeaways

foreign hi everybody welcome to another career Foundry event this evening where I'm joined once again by Alex freeberg who is a analytics manager but you may know him as the face of um Alex the analyst which is a fantastic YouTube channel which you should definitely check out I'm William events and Communications lead here at career Foundry now we've got a oh we'll just do this here I know we've got a lot of people joining this evening um so if you just want to drop in the right hand side maybe where you're joining from why you're interested in data analytics and also maybe some study hacks that you have your for yourself you want to make this as interactive as possible so do drop your comments on YouTube or big marker we'd love to hear from you now um let me just introduce career Foundry very briefly career Foundry is the online school for your career change into Tech um we provide lots of different programs but the one that you're probably most interested in tonight is the data analytics program so do check that out on the career Foundry website we offer a dual mentorship model which has a mentor and a tutor but we also have a job guarantee so if you don't land a job within six months of graduating we refund you your tuition fee and um yeah that's almost all that I have um Alex is going to be doing the presentation this evening we're going to also be doing a live Q and A so um do drop your questions um in the sidebar and for the end I'm going to disappear and when I reappear um I'm gonna pose some of those questions some of the best ones but as many as we can for Alex and Alex I think that's about everything from me I'm going to pass it over to you thank you so much for joining us once again we we loved your webinar last time and um looking forward to the study hacks for data analytics students thank you thank you thank you thank you so much for having me I'm reading I I don't think I'm supposed to be doing this but I'm reading the um the chat I see everybody joining in from literally all over the world which is um which is insane I I just I'm saying like Nepal and Mexico and um I think it's Argentina like it's in New York it's crazy there's so many people out there so thank you guys so much for joining Uganda Brazil God I mean is everywhere thank you guys so much for joining and thank you for career Foundry for hosting this I love doing stuff like this um and you know you may not have noticed but I have my camera over here my computer over here so if you see me looking back and forth I'm just making sure I'm not missing anything um you know while we're going through this uh to preface a little bit of this um when career Foundry asked me to do something like this I was like okay study hacks I was like here's what I do here's how I study um and as I was actually like writing it down I was like man the way I study has changed dramatically over the years like I used to be in college and studying at the library for like 12 hours straight um and now that I've gotten older and things have changed I've kind of gotten more professional about it I'm realizing that the way I used to study was absolutely horrible and that's probably why in certain classes I didn't do as well um but it's you know a really really important skill especially when you're first starting out to be able to know how to study and it's kind of overwhelming and I'm going to talk a lot about my techniques and things that I've learned over the years about studying specifically data analytics but just you know study habits in general uh but as you guys know if you guys have watched my Channel at all you know when I first started out I was just studying for hours on end and just like trying to absorb as much as I possibly could and I know I wasted a ton of time doing that um and I haven't really talked about it on my channel which is why it's such a great topic now because I've I've never covered it on my channel so this is like something for not just the career Foundry people but also from my YouTube where it's also streaming live so uh yeah this is our study hacks for data analytics students are we on slide two now do we am I am I in the wrong one let me see I'm not sure if I'm actually changing this did I change that will isn't here to help me okay I I hope you're seeing actually let me go to the audience view real quick I'm sorry guys give me a second I want to make sure I'm not like showing you something or going too far ahead or whatever give me one second okay perfect didn't go too far when I click that next slide it goes to the next slide correct exactly yeah we can all see that thank you I appreciate it okay I'll introduce myself just a little bit in case you haven't seen me if you're you know on the career Foundry side and you've never heard of who I am uh I'm I call myself a YouTuber for the people on YouTube um but I'm mostly analytics I just kind of do YouTube as like a really fun side thing that I've grown uh quite a bit but as of right now I just quit my job about four weeks ago as an analytics manager I was a big Fortune tent company um and I quit my job to kind of start my own Consulting business um and it's you know it's gone really well and I'm super excited about it but that's a big change I literally had to change this About Me section like 30 minutes ago because I'm like wait a second I just quit my job I gotta redo that um but I work a lot with a lot of technical skills um a lot of cloud platforms that's kind of like what I've been specializing in as well as SQL if you guys know me I love SQL uh and yeah that's my YouTube channel if you want to check me out please do so let's go on to number one now as I was doing all this and I was just talking well about this before we started I was like you know a lot of these things I've been doing for a while and I've I've started to kind of build these habits and I know what they are and I I just didn't have a name for it and so as I'm like you know this is how I study is there a name for this this is kind of how I came up I found this it's called the chunking method now if you read right here it literally says the process of taking individual pieces of information and grouping them into larger units now if you've ever done any my tutorials or you've taken a course on like udemy or something like that it's very similar to that style it's very similar to it breaks it up into little chunks and the issue that I used to have is I just used to go non-stop I used to just try to absorb as much information as I possibly could let's take SQL for example let's say you're learning the basics of SQL like I did I would try to learn the basics of SQL and like as quickly as I possibly could and just keep going and never stop uh the issue with that is that I never really retained anything I I really had an issue especially when I was first starting out because I didn't apply it or I didn't do anything else I had a huge issue with just kind of almost getting burnt out um and getting myself kind of lost in the process so I was seeing a lot of information I wasn't absorbing it so this chunking really helped me absorb the information a lot better so this one is probably one of the more simple ones um one that anybody can do anybody can apply by just taking individual topics and grouping them together and people tend to remember better this way I mean there's a lot of studies on this now I I usually try to get into some details when I do stuff like this but I don't have all the time in the world but I was reading about this chunking method and there's a lot of studies that have been done on it and it genuinely just helps people remember better and so you know this is something that everybody should be able to apply pretty quickly um the other thing that I think I had a huge issue with was trying to learn everything at once not just in SQL but I would switch from SQL to excel to Tableau to python to you know all these different things in one night and I was getting very I remember being very confused when I first started out because I'm like I don't understand how all of these things fit together and so what I tried to do or what I do now and what I started to learn how to do was I need to kind of compartmentalize these skills I need to learn them each individually how can I use them individually and then eventually they will come together as I apply them and so something like SQL I had no idea how it worked with Excel or why that was important if I had no idea how it worked with Tableau but I was trying to learn it all at one time and I it just was not going well so this chunking method was I think a really really good one let's go into number two this one I think you can imagine I've done for a long time several several years it's called the Protege effect now I'm going to read it and I'll explain kind of how I've used it um it's a psychological phenomenon where teaching or pretending to teach or preparing to teach information to others helps the person learn that information now if you guys know me I literally have a YouTube channel where I teach analytics like I do tutorials I do all these different things and I'm going to be completely honest with you there are times where I don't know 100 of the stuff that I'm teaching now let me take a step back I know probably 90 of it and as I'm actually preparing my notes I'm preparing my information I'll run into something I'm like wait a second I I kinda knew about that but I didn't really know about it so then I had to then dive into that and teach it and learn it more so that when I taught somebody when I put it up on my channel then everybody understood it now I didn't know that that's what I was doing I didn't know it was called the Protege effect but I know these technical skills 10 times better than I probably did three years ago when I first started out just because I'm now teaching it I'm forcing myself to do this I do this now very intentionally but I used to do it very unintentionally when I first started learning these things I'd go to work and I used to sit next to somebody who's very experienced who literally had you know 10 years on me and I'd be like hey have you ever done this let me show you how to do this and he was super patient just a great guy and he'd be like yeah show me how to do that and I would teach him it and then he would be like well have you tried doing this and he'd show me a different way because he had done something different and so you can actually teach somebody or you can pretend to teach someone but if you have like almost like a sounding board when you're doing this teaching it can go extremely extremely well uh you know this guy I sat next to him for you know probably two years until covet hit and he was just a great sounding more he was 10 times more experienced than I was but of course I'm in this like learning building mode um and so I'm always coming in with different ideas different things you know uh trying to not necessarily teach him but you know show him hey here's what I've learned is this how I apply it so I was trying to teach him in a way now how can you apply this to yourself well hopefully you may have someone like that who you're learning with it's very beneficial to you know study with someone or with a group um you know that is very helpful so if you can actually teaching somebody that that's really really beneficial if you cannot you can even just type up notes create some type of PDF one thing that I've seen a lot of people doing and this isn't something I've done myself but one thing that I've seen a lot of people doing especially on LinkedIn is they will teach their LinkedIn audience so they will go and they will prepare like a PDF or they'll prepare some notes so that they can share and then they'll put it up on there and explain it to them almost every time I'll go into the comments and I'll see somebody who'll be like well what about this and the person will reply that's a really good point I should have thought about that or I should have included that and it doesn't make them look stupid it doesn't make them look dumb it makes them look like hey I'm learning more information so by teaching you're absolutely learning and this is something that you know especially since I've been doing my channel for several years this is something that I can 100 attest to has helped me grow my skills especially in Python um you know that's one skill that when I started my python series I was like okay I'm know most of this but it's extremely Technical and a lot more in depth than kind of what I'm used to so I had to kind of really go in depth and learn it a lot better to make sure I didn't look you know I didn't look dumb when I was presenting it that was kind of my my uh my hope with that um and just like that next Point teaching something forces you to dig deeper into that topic and understand the code better it just it's forcing you like you don't everybody wants to come off as intelligent and you don't want to like go and tell somebody uh something that is completely wrong um all right so let's go on to the next one the next one is build projects and this is um this is one that I really push hard on my channel I just in personal when I work with people um one-on-one I almost always tell them the same thing and I usually get some type of pushback um for whatever reason people are a bit nervous to really put their skills to test with projects that's what I've seen it's more it's not about um the drive to do it like they want to do it but they're nervous to start that's where a lot of this comes in um so the first thing is that building a project forces you to encounter errors you wouldn't get in a course let's say you do the career Foundry course right you you get told a lot of things you follow a curriculum but until you actually start applying it it's going to be fairly straightforward they do a lot of heavy lifting for you uh building something with your own two hands and actually going and doing it you're going to run into a lot of issues for example one of the hardest things that for me when I was first starting out was actually getting my SQL Server to run I couldn't even get it set up like I was just having issues it took me days to even figure out that one issue and I'm like okay this is a bad sign like I can't even get it going um and then finally I got it up and running I figured out the issue I Googled a thousand different things and I got it running and now I know how to do it every single time I know all the errors that I could encounter when I'm starting up on my SQL Server whether it's a name a password on the back end uh you know internet connection whatever they could be um I've ran into all of them and so you really learn better by making mistakes uh all as painful as it is now how does this relate to building projects well uh building a project and there are even courses and and videos and whatever that will teach you how to build projects from scratch and I highly encourage them I have a whole series but a lot of people will say when watching them and me myself included is when you're watching them they're doing the work for you you are watching and you're absorbing which I think is a fantastic First Step you need a place to start if you've never done it before so you're absorbing that information you're doing it with them most of the time you'll encounter very few issues you'll encounter one or two here you know there's a data type that's different there's some small difference but when you go and you take your own data set and you start building it um there is just something about doing it on your own that makes it makes you make a hundred mistakes um and it can be slightly discouraging like I was saying at first because you're so used to kind of getting it fed to you and that's why I recommend building projects so much because you're going to get out of your comfort zone you're going to get out of um what did I call it it's called um I didn't write it down I should have wrote it down as a note but it's called course Purgatory um is a video I made a long time ago I called it course Purgatory because you get caught in these courses and you you you know you eventually you need to break out of it and start making mistakes because you you just can't go any further um the next Point says you'll be forced to problem solve and use the things you learned in a different way which will help you remember it better I'm going to give you an example because this was one that uh I think helped me Learn Python some of the most when I was first starting out um I was learning Python and python to me was incredibly tough it took me I would say vastly longer than the average person to Learn Python like it probably took me about four months to learn the basics of like a for Loop and a while loop and like stuff that I feel like I should have learned a lot faster but I was mostly doing like really beginner tutorials I I wasn't branching out and trying my own stuff so I decided to build this project where I was doing web scraping and this was new to me but I really like was really passionate about I really wanted to um do it so I built this project and I'm actually wearing the watch that I'm going to be talking about um I wanted to buy a watch and I knew that Amazon was about to have their Black Friday sale um and I wanted to know immediately like when it went live and there are apps for this all now but when I did this like six years ago it wasn't the apps weren't as easy to access or popular so I was trying to do it myself and I set up this web scraper that was going to scrape it in the back uh end and what I needed to do is when it reached a certain point like when it reached a price of under ninety dollars it would send me an email and say hey Alex you got to go buy this right now I ran into probably 1 000 different issues with that every issue you could possibly imagine I I ran into it and so me now making tutorials on web scraping I'm bypassing a lot of those issues I'm telling you the way that I know how to do it without ever you encountering those issues so by then you taking my project you're not running into those issues and learning it as good as I uh as good as I did when I was starting out so you have to then Branch away from someone like like me teaching you how to do a web scraping and you have to go build it yourself and make those mistakes again that's a really uncomfortable one for a lot of people I was saying that at the beginning it's an uncomfortable one because you know you feel you feel happy feeling like you know it but until you apply until you build something you don't really know it so that is uh building projects let's go on to the next one the next one is getting rid of distractions um I used to lie to myself a lot around this topic specifically because I used to be the guy who would put the office on uh it used to be on Netflix I had it on Netflix I had the office on is one of my favorite shows have you ever seen it I used to put it on in the background I used to say I learned better when I have background noise I learned better when I am listening to something now I had seen the office a thousand times I I could quote it so I was like okay I'm not actually watching it I'm just listening and so I did that for years um you know especially in college like that was probably one of my one of my biggest uh downfalls in college was I always felt like I was better studying with something in the background um and and a little bit I'll kind of get to some Alternatives but for me Netflix and and like just watching TV was a big big distraction I didn't really think it was and so I would spend 10 hours studying but I'd probably really only study for six and then I didn't actually do any like grouping so I was just mishing everything together and I just was a I was bad at studying and it really is a skill that you can hone in and get better at so distractions is one that you kind of you you just need to get better at we need as a whole most people do now uh I apologize for the mistake I that was my that was my writing but oh I literally even wrote it Netflix in the background doesn't help uh it didn't help me I thought it did it doesn't um so what do I recommend well I actually think that background noise is not a bad thing um listening to some music or something is not a bad thing to do the thing is is for me I would then look up at my screen and then I would completely like stop studying get out of that mental zone so I was like in this zone of studying I'd be doing really well and then something funny would happen on the screen I'm like oh let me let me watch that for a second then 50 minutes goes by and I'm like all right I gotta get back to studying and then I have to like re-evaluate where I am what I'm what I'm learning what I'm studying so getting rid of these distractions is it was a tough one for me I would say I did that for probably like maybe five years um all the way through college and then out of college when I first started learning then as my time became more uh I don't want to say it I not as valuable I'll say valuable I was trying to break into data analytics and I was finding that I was getting distracted and I was like I I have I got kids I have a wife this time that I'm spending studying is valuable like I need to be able to focus I was like I have to start turning it off so I eventually logged out of the Netflix account on my computer on my phone and on our TV to just not have it anymore the next thing that then came in was YouTube so then what I had to do was I had to literally log out of YouTube um so there's a lot of distractions and everybody has them um another one I said another tip is putting your phone in your bag if you're anything like me uh I have two people that text me that's it uh there's no one else it's my wife and probably my mom uh there's only two people I I have like a friend I have one or two friends very very few people but I would text them pretty consistently and every time they texted me I was like okay I gotta answer I I know there's only two people texting me he's dealing with my mom or my wife I gotta I gotta Focus I gotta like respond to them what I started doing was just text them hey I'm about I'm going into study mode you know just so you know I'll get back to you in a little bit if it's an emergency call me and I have that setting on my phone so this one just putting your phone in your bag really references like getting rid of it as a distraction I now spend and I get the I have an iPhone so it kind of tells me how much screen time I have I used to spend about 10 hours a day like even not so long ago just because now I do a lot of my work on my phone and social media but Isis probably spend 10 11 hours on my phone it was horrible um I'm down to about five hours which still feels like a ton but you should check them on your phone it's uh it's insane so then the last tip is going to be dedicate your time to focusing only on what you're learning and it's going to come a lot faster what that means is is I have learned that I work a lot better in the mornings I if I get up early and I S and now it's just work but when I was in study mode when I would get up and study in the morning I actually learned that I was I had much less distractions because nobody was awake yet so no one was texting me um you know I was still like waking up I was drinking my coffee and and I could just focus better so that became my dedicated time to study now once I got married and had kids and a full-time job night time became my time to study but I set that time apart once all my kids went to sleep once my wife went to sleep I would stay up from I think it was 8 30 p.m until 11 30 PM every single night studying and sometimes longer but that was like when I was first starting out I had to have I had to make that time count I had to make it useful and so it can be really tough again these tips are not like the easiest things in the world kind of have to push yourself off a little bit but getting rid of distractions is a really important one I think helped me a lot it's going to be the last one taking breaks I I've said this for almost all of these I these are all of these tips all of these um best ways to study these are all ones that I kind of had to break myself out of um because I used to never take breaks I it just wasn't something I did um and so I just had to like all these tips I'm telling you are like after years of doing it the wrong way I've I've I now know how to do it I'm really good at it but it took me like three four or five years to learn and know how to study right this one taking breaks was kind of counterintuitive to me I have very little time I have three hours at the end of each each night um and I'm working playing with my kids doing other stuff during the day so I have a very limited time so why on Earth would I take a break that sounds like a terrible idea um well what was happening especially uh when I before I got my first data analyst job I had those three hours is I would do those three hours straight and I was doing breaking all of these rules so every rule that you see here I was breaking and I was really hindering myself I was had Netflix on um excuse me I I wasn't you know learning skill by skill or doing that chunking method uh and taking breaks was not not at the top of my list uh so I was doing all these things wrong now I'm very aware that if I go anywhere past about an hour and a half now let me see if I say if I go up yeah okay so I said if I go four hours straight I remember an hour of it this is this has become it started to become an issue when I was actually in my real job because what I would do in my real job as well as what studying on the side because I did both um all the time was I would do my real work for like seven eight hours straight and I would get up and I'm like okay I do not remember what I did I don't I I feel exhausted I didn't feel good I needed coffee to like Focus like it was just a lot of bad things so this taking breaks became a lot more important as I progressed further in my career because I'm like okay you know I'm starting to get to a place professionally where this stuff this isn't working anymore like I need to take breaks so when I studied what I was usually doing is about an hour and a half I'd break it though that three hours into an hour and a half so I do an hour and a half I take about like just even a five minute break was so refreshing I would just go get a drink of water a little snack because I don't know if it's me and it could just be me but I get exhausted studying like I'm at the end of it I'm like I need water I need a snack I have not I'm like dehydrated I'm hangry like I'm just I'm a different person if I don't take breaks um and my wife's gonna attest to this like I'm just a different person I need I need breaks with my work and I need breaks on studying and so just something to something to think about uh the next point is breaks allow your mind to absorb and remember what you've learned so not only is it just good physically you know you can then start like process things and think about things the issue with going long or going studying for a long time that I found is that I I don't really take a second to really think about it I just go Um this was especially prevalent when I was learning python which took me like four months which it should not have taken me four months I would just go go go go go go go and never stop to stop to think um and then when I started taking breaks I'm like well you I if I just stop for a second and actually think about what I'm doing um and really like just give myself a brain give my brain a second to think I can remember this stuff a lot better and so Not only was it helpful just for my body uh to actually step away from the computer my eyes get a break my brain gets a break I can rehydrate because when I start studying I don't remember to like drink water give me a second that was on purpose I wasn't actually thirsty I just wanted to do it to make a point it's good to take a break um and just drink some water because I never remembered to do that when I was studying I would just go like I would just non-stop I was some some then the last one we kind of talked about already which is uh take a break to snack stretch refill your body to study more I'm not telling you not to study if you have eight hours to study use seven of that to study use an hour to take chunks to kind of break it up because I have done that many times especially in college and I just I my body was just I was always exhausted I was always tired so it didn't really I don't think it really was beneficial to me in the long run and I know it wasn't beneficial to to push myself that hard um and get as exhausted as I did it just maybe wasn't the best method so uh these are my five tips now how how are you gonna actually use these start small like when you're reading through these when you're listening to these I am sure that almost everybody out there can be like okay yeah I watched the office too in the background Alex that's me but I'm not giving it up I don't want to do it that could be one thing right that could be just one thing so don't you don't have to apply this all at once most of these games came at points where I didn't have a choice I like had to do them or I was getting so exhausted I needed to do them um so identify one of these that you can do and try to start small and just build from there because studying is kind of a lifelong thing I I have to do a lot of research and study a lot of things for my kind of work as new data sets come to me I have to research different uh domains and different things so I still apply it to this day uh even though I'm you know a professional who isn't studying to get into the field any more I still study all the time and all of these things I do I wouldn't say a hundred percent perfectly I definitely make I definitely uh there are times where I forget to take breaks or you know I I have my phone on and my wife texts me I get distracted but more often than not I'm applying these almost almost every time it's just you have to think about it you have to make a concerted effort and so a lot of these things are are fairly um are fairly easy to do um if you set your mind to it like building a project you you get to a certain level and it's time to start building projects it's time to push yourself to make yourself uncomfortable taking breaks is something you can just schedule with your phone the Protege effect you can you know find somebody to talk to to Mentor um to even go on Discord or slack or somewhere where you can get into a group where you can try to like teach or put it on LinkedIn or you can do the the chunking method which is just you don't learn everything at once chunk It Up by different skills and so all of these things have their place they can all be implemented you just have to do it and that's tough so start small build big I think I'm a little under on time but I think that's okay because what I believe we're going to do is open up to a q a time uh where you guys can ask questions or they may have questions already but um I didn't get to read any of the chat during this time so I'm sure Will's gonna oh hey Will I'm ready for you to come back um he told me to say that so I'm um I'm sure we have a lot of questions or questions that can be asked and I am ready to answer just about any question you have within reason of course foreign thank you so much for the presentation um great study hacks and anybody watching in the audience this is now your chance to ask your questions to Alex so anything about data analytics we're opening up the floor so just drop them on Big Market all those watching on YouTube I've got some colleagues in the background who are going to be taking YouTube questions as well um just to kick this off Alex I've got a couple of questions um let's let's just play this some informal um what was um one piece of advice that you would give your younger self regarding your career in data analytics if you could thank you so just in data analytics as a whole inside this is the whole yeah um give my younger self um I well I have a thousand things to be like maybe I'll try to give like one or two two and I won't talk too long I want them because I could talk about these forever um the first thing would be apply to jobs before you feel ready um that's something that uh I think I waited slightly too long I just I was I had in my head that uh everyone else was going to be way way smarter and better than I was and so I was like okay I gotta make sure I know this really well before I apply uh and that's you know that's somewhat true you need to know it but I mean I have seen it and I have hired people who are not don't have 10 years of experience or five years of experience you just have to start applying so I wish I had started applying earlier um before I felt like ready um the next thing that I would do is and this would have saved me months and I that's not an exaggeration actually months of studying um which is identifying what I actually needed to know I started learning a lot of like machine learning artificial intelligence natural language processing I like deep dove in that even though I wanted to stay in analytics I know I had no intention of going into like data science I just thought it was interesting and I started like deep diving into it and if I had just identified what I needed to know that was a time where I just I wasn't sure what I needed um I didn't I didn't have a mentor at that time or anyone who I was like learning from so I wasted probably like two or three good months of studying like stuff that I almost have not used almost ever in my career so that would be probably my some of my two biggest tips like quick tips but I could go on forever you know if you want me to name 20 I could probably do that fairly easily another question following on from what you just said um do you find with data analytics jobs I know that happens in ux and UI because we do a lot of workshops on that side is that when job postings are put out um companies put in everything they want to have so they put in so much information they make their job super fancy um is it the case that you should just apply even if you don't have all those skills that they're looking for or is it a case that um okay and I'll tell you this because I I was a hiring manager and I was on a hiring manager before even when I wasn't the hiring manager so I have like three years of you know understanding this a lot more in depth um which was really eye-opening when I first started so what you're basically saying is is you know when they're creating these job descriptions which I have you know do they just put everything on there to answer your question in in uh in just one word is mostly yes that's true um I we had a few vacancies one for a database developer and then one for a data analyst on my team that I was at my previous job and when we made these postings I was like okay here's here's my must-haves I was like they need to know servicenow which is a Microsoft product and they need to know SQL and Excel like that's it that's all they need to know like even if they have just a bit of experience in these I would take it more would be better of course but if they just have the basics of this this would be great but because this was a mid-level position I couldn't just put that I my boss would not let me he was like okay yes that's all you need but you need to put on more to fill out fill it out you know make it more competitive make the people who have more skills apply that was kind of the like thought process from him I didn't fully agree with it I didn't really like that I just wanted people who have those skills but that is a very real thing um and it usually comes from the top down you want the best and the logic makes sense and I'm not like you know mad about how we did it but you want the best the best value for your money so if I'm gonna pay a you know a data analyst 75 or 85 000 like we want the best we can get for that money so we'll put more things on there which then we put things like power bi and Tableau and Excel or you know some other skills on there that we did use as well but weren't as important so then when somebody would apply and they're like hey we have a lot of power bi and I'm like okay yeah I know that was on the listing but you know I only need these three skills and so yes I 100 think people think that people should apply before because oftentimes it's much like that situation where you know SQL you know Excel and that's really all they want they have all these extras that are kind of nice to haves and you don't know exactly what it is on that thing that is 100 need to have and isn't important so you don't know it's better to just apply it's also really good to work with recruiters who know it better who then can tell you hey these people really just need to know SQL like you're all right and then they'll help you um so yeah that's kind of that's kind of my thoughts on that it's kind of a slightly deceptive and I'm not a huge fan of it um but yes you don't apply if you know all of them if you know I usually cut it off at like 30 if you if they ask for 10 skills and you know three of them I would apply great advice um just for people watching on online we are recording this session and do pop your questions into the Q a on big marker I can just see some comments coming through I'm going to get around to that there is a great question over on YouTube though from Albert Bellamy um and I didn't know this but apparently Alex who played guitar um I don't know if you've got another YouTube channel for that um but um in terms of study hacks and stress relief do you use music to unlock other areas of your brain or just a stress release do you find like playing an instrument does that help oh hey Al how's it going me and I'll go way back he's a good guy um do I use it as a stress relief um I literally have my guitar sitting right over here I I love playing it but I think music as a whole I've started I've kind of gotten I've gone kind of meta with it I started listening to like classical music in the background which I never used to do but I've personally found that I was like I kept reading about it they're like play Bach played Beethoven and so I play like well I'll play classical music now um and I think it does help it keeps me more calm like I get very tense I like you don't see it when I'm making my videos but I like will be like this like and it helped I think it just helps me be more relaxed which I think I'm looking over here because I'm looking at you but I should be looking right here it just helps me be more relaxed um so music music has been a huge part of my life but for studying I try to keep it super simple um I don't actually like ever play and like try to like calm myself down I just like maybe we'll put someone on in the background um to kind of like help keep my tension low that's about it shout out some AC DC um thanks for that uh question um I'm just jumping into the big Market questions Mary Cruz I think has asked a great question will data analytics assist into veering into a path to a career in data science will it assist it or will it hinder what it was the will it assist so um a data analytics would assist into a create into data science yeah and you know that's a super popular question I I made a few videos on that actually but it 100 will um you know there is definitely overlap in kind of some things that you that you use and you work on things like Excel and working with data sets and um you know understanding the business side of things these are things that you'll learn in data analytics there's a lot of crossover um to give you some context to why I'm pretty confident about it is I was working um on a data collection team and I was a data analyst that's what I did but we were part of a larger data science team and as I was in it about two three years I started working with the data scientists and I got really good at it and they wanted me to become a data scientist within my team they were like hey you really know this stuff we want you to come on and it just wasn't my thing like I was like I don't mind working on this with you but I don't enjoy this like it wasn't my thing but 100 it was a great launching pad to break into that if that was something I wanted to do but data analytics can be an end place or it can be a springboard into you know kind of a different career data engineering data science um you know mostly those two but also business analytics and a few different stuff um but I absolutely think this is a fantastic place because you you get introduced to a lot of different things and then if you're working on a team you're going to be working with database developers data Engineers data scientists all these different things and you can pick up from them um you know know what you need to learn and then internally if you want to move internally in the team you know if they're using like Azure data Factory or data lake or whatever you can then learn that with them and be like hey I really know this stuff you know you guys have you guys have any openings I'd love to apply um so yeah 100 it can be a great launching pad into a data science career if you want to go that path awesome but anybody from the career Foundry audience who maybe joined a little bit later do check out Alex's Channel Alex the analyst there's some great videos some great content over there um definitely if you're thinking about stepping into uh career and data analytics do check that out and at the same time I'm not going to leave career foundries video team um out I know they're in the background do check out career foundry's YouTube channel too uh we're also streaming live on LinkedIn tonight and we've got a great question coming from Vladimir um Alex is it really possible to learn data analytics in four to eight months yes yes 100 um I I have a video coming out I think it's in two weeks so you can look for that um but it's literally how to become a data analyst in 2023 and I look I talk about time frames on the low end you're looking at about four to five months if you have a lot of time to dedicate to it there's just and I say yes but there are a lot of factors right your own you know just personal life do you have a full-time job do you have kids um you know do you have free time to actually study and learn the skills I I imagine it's somebody who has like a completely non-related degree uh or is like right out of college and wants to completely switch careers which is exactly what I did um I it took me about a year from start to finish to follow that path but I had no Mentor I had no guide I had nothing I learned it all my my own took me about one year to make that switch and that's including like applying and finding a job but with I in just in the past five years it's gotten so much easier to like have a learning path ahead of you have tips and tricks to apply like these when I was first starting out I couldn't find anything like that um excuse me and so yes I think six months is definitely doable for for a lot of people it's just very dependent on how much time you have to dedicate but yes I do think it's possible for sure and just to briefly mention here the career Foundry data analytics program if you were going to be working if you could assign 15 to 20 hours a week you go through the career Foundry data analytics um in eight months so um that's just a little bit of a kind of like a just keep that new radar if you've got any questions about that do book a call with a program advisor um following on for that um Alex I've got a great question here on big Margaret from actpour um how to actually cope with studying while working in a full-time non-data role so how do you balance the two yeah that's a good question I the role I was in before um was kind of like a caretaker um is how I like to put it it was called a resident advocate so I worked at a to give some context I worked at a non-profit um I was it was for people who were abused in relationships so they would flee their abuser they'd come and like literally live in that place and I would go in help them go apply for jobs help them do paperwork um feed them food like that's what I used to do um so during that time you know I would do that for eight hours I'd go home and I had just gotten married uh my my wife uh had a child from a previous relationship so I was already a dad so I'm a dad I'm a I'm a husband I'm um I have a job so how do I how do I keep studying or keep that I guess motivation for me it was I was extremely motivated by the fact that I was earning very little money and I had a lot to support um I kind of dove in early with um marriage and having kids I you know money was not as important I was like I just I really wanted to be a family man so that motivation of having kids having a wife I like pushed myself really really really hard to kind of dive into this field I didn't know exactly what I was diving into because I didn't know what data analytics really was but I kind of learned along the way that was my I just I think I had a an extremely huge motivation because my wife was learning like over almost triple what I was making and I was making very little and I was like I gotta like provide for my family I I gotta step it up so that was like I don't know it doesn't really help but that was my motivation that really pushed me to study a lot um when I was first starting out in in a non-data job like at all Wilson thanks for sharing that um Alex um I think Mario is also asking a great question um have you got any examples or what's it what's it kind of like working on a day-to-day as a data analyst what are some examples how how does your day look when you get up for that morning coffee what what does your day look like as a data analyst sure um I'll speed from like two two years ago because I I was an analytics manager before I before I quit my job I was an analytics manager so I was managing a team so it's a little bit different than um when I was the day they had lost so when I was a data analyst I was on that data collection team um and we would get data sources from I worked in healthcare so it was uh you know different hospitals different um you know doctors and stuff and we would we would take that in so usually how it went is I'd get in at like eight eight o'clock 8 30. um we had our stand up at nine o'clock and what a stand-up is is literally just everybody comes together and you talk about all your current projects so we used agile methodology which is basically just a work a way of grouping work and making sure you're on track like uh you know jira or kanban or agile or come on Angel but um you know those different methodologies of tracking work chunking and making sure it gets done so we get in there and talk about what progress we made on our projects where we're at time frames then I'd actually go back and do work now the longer I was in my job after I was in that that same position for about three years or in that same team for about three years I started getting really meeting heavy which um you know that it happens especially it's cyclical as well sometimes like it's really low at at the holiday time because everyone's gone but then like come January February I mean it's like you know two three hours of meetings at least a day minimum and then I you know would work on my projects and so I'm at my computer I'm coding I'm sending emails to to stakeholders and to our data sources with questions and issues and um you know trying to learn the data really well and so the data collection team I love data collection that's one of my a lot of people don't like it but I loved it because I got to do a lot of data cleaning um I worked a lot in SQL in Azure in databricks um I got to use some python so um those are kind of the things that I used um and and kind of the type of work I was working on listen we do a um a career fund we also do a live workshop with Dr Humera who's a machine learning expert and a mentor and uh we do find that a lot of people love data cleaning data cleaning is also has a massive fan base so um if if that's up your street um I think a data analytics will be uh will be a career for you um just moving forward a little bit um looking at skills and in terms of like core skills that you use as a data analyst what what are kind of the core skills that the top two or three skills that you need to be a data analyst sure I'll give you I you know I again I just made a I'm just made the video it hasn't come out yet but I'm Gonna Give You insight into where I think it's actually going in just a little bit even though you didn't ask me I'm gonna do it anyways uh I hope that's okay haven't changed too much like when I say core skills I mean the things I think everyone should know but when you get into a team then they have like their own stack their own Tech stack um which is breaks usually breaks away from the core skills I oh I recommend everybody learning SQL it is a something that has taken my career way farther than I thought it ever would I kind of guessed um that SQL would be useful extremely useful 100 you need I think everyone needs to learn it then I'd say a bi tool in Excel bi tool like power bi Tableau looker something like that um there are a ton of other ones now I'm going to get into what I think is important in like the coming years right now though like you learn those skills and then you look and apply and there are ones that have that on there but then there are other ones you'll see things like redshift or you'll see um you know different bi tools that you've never heard of and there are a lot of them uh like uh cardio or something like that like something that you just have never seen the reason I say stick with those core skills because those core skills are typically transferable you can learn Tableau and then if your company has some random bi tool there's a lot that can transfer to that and so um and and like SQL like the querying a database is fundamental across data you have to be able to access your data and get to it SQL is the most popular but also there are other platforms that do it different ways but you'll know the ins and outs of how to group your data and and sort your data all these things using SQL so those are the core skills I would learn uh and that and again when you get into the actual job you'll find that most jobs don't just use that Tech stack they have their own unique stuff and you learn it but you'll be like okay I recognize that because it's kind of like SQL it's kind of like Excel or you know whatever they use now what do I think is actually going to be really important to know for upcoming data analysts I think that learning a cloud platform is going to be really important in the coming years um it was not when I first started it was still it was up and coming big companies were still using it but smaller companies weren't so most most companies weren't they they have their own servers dedicated like servers on-prem or on-premises which means they bought a server they they store it in their location now Cloud platform cloud computing is becoming so cheap I think that that is going to be a necessary skill in the next even three years five years I I last year was kind of like tentative on saying it now I'm pretty confident in saying it um you know it's just one of those things that you becoming cheaper it's becoming cheaper than owning your own on-prem so even small companies are going towards it and they want you to know AWS or Azure Google Cloud platform um and so these are things that I think you once you learn those core skills that's something you kind of Branch out into and learn the basics of like Azure data warehouse Azure data um Factory for like ETL processes and um it it gets more technical it gets more difficult in my opinion but I think that's where a lot of companies are starting to like they're looking for people who already know it or have used it um and it's not as many people as can fill those roles sometimes listen thanks for listening those I think traditionally they would be kind of classically be seen as harder skills now um if we look at um people like moving into um a career in data analytics are there certain soft skills which really kind of lend themselves to a career in data analytics if we kind of look at softer skills yeah for sure um you know I think there's a at least it was a perception of mine which I was really excited about which did not pan out at all I was really excited about the fact that dead analytics was a tech job and I wouldn't have to talk to people I I believe it or not I'm not a I'm not the most social person in the world I have I I love my own time so I was hoping when I started working as a data analyst I wouldn't have to communicate uh with a lot of people little did I know is you communication skills are extremely necessary so people who are good at talking good at communicating that that is a super necessary soft skill another one and this is probably one of the more obvious ones which is uh problem solving um you can teach yourself problem solving you don't have to be a problem solver to be a data analyst you learn it um you can be taught in so problem solving I think is the next biggest one or you know just because I you run into so many issues when working with data it is like that data cleaning process to me is a problem problem solving issue I just have to probably if I think about it enough I look at it enough I can problem solve it I can fix this data set and then we can use it for what we need to use it for um so problem solving and just you know being able to look at something figuring out a solution to solve it is a very big um kind of like soft skill I don't know if that's technically a soft skill but it's a soft skill to me um that's just one of those skills that's kind of an intangible you just have to learn how to solve it it's like a puzzle we actually have a lot of experience at career found we have a lot of prospective students who are thinking about starting a new career and one of their kind of like main blockers is am I am I really going to be able to start completely from scratch but actually a lot of people forget that um a lot of transferable skills apply to many positions moving forward you know the skills to present to communicate um just as Alex is in um Illustrated these skills are just as important as the hard skills so um remember you know you're not starting from um base one you're kind of studying a little bit further down the road um I'm going to take a couple more sorry yeah actually just say one more thing because you actually prompted me to think it's one other thing um because you said presentation skills and I was like yeah that's really true but then what popped into my head was almost like being almost like a Salesman um you know being able to present the information but also be really personable I think that that got me my first job but I actually I know it got me my first data analyst job because uh I failed the technical interview and they really just like me as a person and how I talk to them and communicate with them that they gave me the like this person can learn we'll we'll teach them that's how I got my first job so I think I really was able to sell myself while I had a good personality in the interview and so you know that skill like that's presentation skill that being in front of people and talking skill that is a lot harder than it seems like I it's that's a really good soft skill I I just I'm glad you mentioned that one um for anyone that's checked out the career Foundry programs too we do have a fantastic Career Services team at career Pantry who are behind you every step of the way um looking over your portfolio products but also um helping you um you know look at your CV look at your LinkedIn resume um to ensure that you get your dream career in Tech just a little plug but um you're not alone in the career change I'm going to take a couple more questions there are so many questions going through Alex you really got your community's on fire tonight thank you everybody for the engagement um lovely to see everyone joining um let's just have a look at portfolios and projects I think Tom's got a great question on big marker how many projects uh how many projects should we do before applying for a job without any background sure uh yeah projects highly highly highly recommend I usually recommend three to five um in one and you can do it on I prefer to do one on each skill so you know the follow-up to that is is why do you even need projects why not just do the projects and not show anybody why do you need three to five projects to show there's two reasons and I again I always I extrapolate too much to just stop me if I'm talking too much um but the first thing is is projects what can help you get an interview and then they can help help you land the job so it can help you get the interview because you can create a portfolio website which then when you apply if somebody clicks on it and sees your work they're like okay this person for sure knows like up to the level of excel we're looking or lots of level SQL we're looking for so then they can be more confident uh interviewing you then when you get in that interview job you know you you have no experience you don't you know nothing about the actual worlds working in and have experience using these skills that is just a fact that's where I used to be but projects allow you to answer questions like you know how have you used SQL in the past well if you've never built a project and you have no experience you really can't answer that you'll say well I I learned it through XYZ you know I I've used Microsoft uh SQL Server I've used MySQL and I just practiced not a great answer projects allow the allow you to answer it like this well I was actually just building this project using SQL where I took data from Excel I imported it in I did the data cleaning process and I did some exploratory data analysis using SQL and I found these insights so you it just sounds so much better when you talk like that and you're you're pointing at specific projects and you can say I did a project on you know this data set or I did a project on this issue and if you have uh projects that are catered to your industry mine is Healthcare so then I did projects on Healthcare and they would ask me questions about things like ICD codes do you know anything about ICD codes and I'd be like yeah I did a project on ICD codes being able to break them out by these disorders or these diagnoses so projects can be extremely helpful so three to five um you know with different skills if they want Tableau make a project in Tableau that's kind of uh some again I could talk about that stuff for hours so I'm just gonna stop there but that's my general tips on like projects cheers Alex now a buzzword I think this year and at the end of last year was uh chat GPT and a couple of questions that come in come in this evening um how do you think um AI platforms such as chat GPT will change the future future data roles or data reporting no I love chat GPT I've been using it actually a lot more in the past two weeks um it's been I mean I've had that exact question so like this is new to me but I can already see in my head how it's going to change things um I think it's going to have actually a slightly bigger impact um than most people would think um and not in the way that most people are thinking a lot of people they worry they say Okay chat gbt is coming out they won't managers or companies will not need data analysts because they'll just go and ask chat gbt which is eventually going to be connected to their data like that's what people imagine um there's a lot of issues in that thinking from an actual technical standpoint so I don't think just to you know I don't see that happening right off the bat I don't see it it replacing fully any type of data analysis or data analysts would work not in the near future not in definitely not like the next 10 years it's just you most people don't understand how technically behind companies are there are very even my company I used to be at was behind um they just chat EBT even if it became it could solve all your issues tomorrow it would still take most companies 15 years to catch up so you know it's not going to happen but in terms of how it's going to change data analytics I foresee that because Microsoft has already starting to play a big game and you know I don't want to get into all the politics behind it but the technology itself if integrated with a lot of different products can be massively useful I don't think it's going to replace data and data analysts I think what it will do is enhance a lot of the work and potentially down the road 10 years down the road instead of needing you know five data analysts you only need three details on a team potentially but that's really speculative and I think at most companies that won't actually be true just because again of how behind they are um but it's fascinating and I have used it myself for SQL and Python and um creating formulas and stuff like that it's it's insanely helpful and it generates it um stuff that I can't find on Google like I Googled the exact same thing it can't give me an answer I can't find anything I'll put it on chat gbt and it'll it'll generate something that's actually usable so it's an incredible it's it it's mind-blowing software I've been messing around with it I'm gonna make a video on it eventually about like my thoughts um how to use it um and just because it's it's pretty it's pretty revolutionary I'm I'm I've been pretty Blown Away by it it's pretty amazing I read a fantastic um post on LinkedIn this morning which said that you should treat um chat GPT as the company intern so getting into your into your work um it's not going to be perfect every time but just you know as a backup as an intern a company intern um definitely a good sorry I don't know who posted that but I just read it in in the digest this morning but um yeah do check it out and I think that was a great answer I'll make one more note I I think chat gbt is actually um it's slightly dangerous and here's why I will say that I have five years experience uh five years ago five years experience as a data analyst but I you know I I have a lot of years experience or many years experience just trying to search things online right that's a skill Googling and using it as a skill the issue with something like chat gbt is if you're just starting out and you try to use it you don't know what is good and what is bad what is right and what is wrong so when I'm using it now I know SQL probably it's about like a developer level I I worked with a lot of developers I think I'm about at like a developer level so I know the ins and outs of like how SQL works the back end the front and everything for the most part not like tattoo my own horn but if you're just starting out and you don't know those things and it gives you this output and you just kind of trust it because you're like well it's challenged to know the issue with that is that I've actually been using it for the past two weeks and I'm like okay it's kind of giving me what we need but I can tell by looking at the code that it's wrong like I just know and so it can be a bit misleading because it's not perfect um and so if you don't know the skill well and then you try to use it like I was saying I don't think it's going to replace um data analysts because you have to charge EBT is going to be a skill just like any other skill you're gonna have to know how to answer it how to interpret it how to actually use it and they're going to want someone to do that that's where a data analyst is going to do they're just going to want you to use that tool um so it can be dangerous because if you don't know what you're looking for and you don't know that skill well enough and you trust it you could it could lead you on just a path that's going nowhere um so knowing the skill before you start using it for that skill or incorporating it in writing SQL code it can be dangerous that's a you know just a just a note that I was thinking about no I think that's great advice and I think if anyone starting out you know don't just leap into check gbt um or use some other sources um but you know it could be a great um assistant um to your learning too so do keep an eye on it um in terms of looking around and like keeping up to date with all the latest resources do you have some places where you keep up to date with all the latest um data information or three favorite blogs or um it's different for me because everybody sends me things they I get LinkedIn messages every single day emails every single day hey check this out check out this article so I I get it from my audience now so it's a little different but mostly they'll send me articles from like um medium they'll send me uh articles from towards data science I'm I can't I can't I'm like this is my like focusing face um towards the a science medium and sometimes like Reddit uh which will take us to like a different different websites but um yeah and then I do a lot of on LinkedIn so like on LinkedIn I get a lot of information or articles that I like to then go and read um so yeah probably like some of those I think this is a great moment to say that we've also got a lot of editors in-house at career Foundry so on Big Market I would just post a link to the career Foundry data analytics blog there's some great specific articles there about things that we discussed this evening um but there's also some more General articles about career change and um I think our editors would be a little bit annoyed if I didn't post it so do check that out they do write some great articles and I would recommend checking that out Alex um I know we haven't got so much time I'm just going to ask a couple more questions but for you what what is the what is the best part about being a data analyst why do you love this career sure yeah no we we can run over my wife's not home so uh I got all the Time in the World um let's see the best part about being a data analyst um you know it's funny because a it's counterintuitive to when I was saying something earlier I said I really wished it was like a uh you worked on your own I've actually found that if you're working with the right people it can be fantastic um you know when I first got into analytics people just like helping uh for the most like if you find the right people people like helping you so you know if you have a problem you can help you help them and work with them to problem solve and I found myself being a very much more collaborative person than I thought I was um and you know I love that aspect of it I like that you can work with somebody and like figure out these really technical complex problems and when you figure it out it's like it is extremely rewarding you feel really good about yourself um and so I like working with um I like working with people I I found that to be very fun then the other side of that is I get to work with really cool Tech Stacks um you know I just really like I like Cloud platforms I like python I like SQL and then you know there's different variations and flavors and and you just have to figure it out and so I like to dig I like to dig into technical things and really understand them well and so you know that's something that I really like because I get to do that for my job I don't just have to do it on in my free time I get paid to do it listen just talk about the community as well it's fantastic to see on your channel Alex that you've really developed a community there which support each other and that's something that we've seen looking at the channel from career Founders perspective but it's great to see everyone you know giving each other advice and jumping in I'd love to see that on your channel so um do check out Alex's YouTube channel Alex the analyst um and taking a couple more questions from Big Market I think this is a great one coming in and I do apologize if I pronounce anyone's names wrong but vanille on Big Market is saying um you know what is the future of data analyst roles what's the future of data analytics foreign the future uh it's hard to predict the future but I can give my best guess um you know as technology since even since I've been in the past five years but especially in the past I would say 10 years since the really the explosion of data science there's a lot of undefined roles even especially in analytics you may not think it but I I've seen it firsthand like you know you'll you go to Silicon Valley and you are you a data scientist is what a data analyst does for some jobs there's a lot of mishmashing of jobs I think that's going to happen even more so in the future where you know they'll want a core data analyst who also can do some data pipelines or um you know they'll want somebody who don't want they're going to call it a data analyst but it's going to be melded with these different positions I think we're looking at more hybridization over the next 10 I I always I always shoot about like 10 years because it takes a long time for adaptation but I have a lot of friends who work in Silicon Valley I have a lot of friends who work in the tech space and I've only seen it more since I've been in the space is that you know most companies look for hybrid roles they don't only look for SQL they want SQL in this they only look for a business analyst they want business analysts in this or data scientists in this so really get more hybridization um potentially in the next you know 10 years for large companies 20 years for smaller companies um that's that's kind of like a prediction of mine that I've had for the past year or two I'm like I just have noticed a lot of overlap and responsibilities and um kind of these hybrid roles definitely we see that too and another question that we get often from prospective students um thinking about doing a course at career country is salaries it's a question that's on everyone's lips especially as we've been talking about recessions a lot recently um and what's the kind of like the wage development like for a data analyst or what is satellite for data analysts yeah I'll talk about I'll talk about it in terms of the United States because I know the United States much better than I know any any other country now how much you make is very dependent on several factors one is location I say that was one of the biggest ones um so like if you live in the Bay Area in Silicon Valley then you know you're gonna inflate those prices like a hundred percent of other areas if you live in New York are major metropolitan area they're going to be higher so for me I was living in Dallas Texas and that's um that's a it's a slight inflated I'd say about 20 more than other places I started out at 63 000 that was my first data analyst job was at 63 000. so you account for inflation you're looking at around like high 40s low 50s just for your first job now the and that might be low for some people or that may be good for some people I don't know but the great thing about tech and this is something that I didn't know getting into it but the great thing about tech is that your salary goes up so fast or it can if you play your cards right because you start out like for me I start out at 63. within two years after that I was you know three years after I was making a hundred thousand so you know the starting salaries I you know they're important but if you have the the the process thought process of like looking ahead even just two years that's where you start making what I would consider very good money you start making 75.85 and then you go up from there so starting salaries um I would usually give the band of around 45 to 75 depending on where you are um just depends on location depends on the kind of company like if you work at a small company you're going to make less if you work at a big tech company or a Fortune 500 company you're gonna make more um so you know there's just a lot of factors but um yeah 45 to 75 and then um even after a year you can look at whatever you're looking at probably about a 15 to 20 bump because now you have experience and experience is gold in the tech world than just data analytics you you get a Year's experience and you can bump that up by 20 you can demand that and especially as inflation continues which is very much a real thing right now you know salaries are going up because cost of living is going up and the demand is going up so you know that made even next year those could be low maybe looking at probably like a 78k bump um on both of those ends so like low 50s to like 80. thanks a lot for that as well and also for those watching on Big Market I'm just gonna post a link to a Blog article which is a salary guide um put together by our editor's career Foundry which also looks at European salaries too um so that's just gonna um you know show what it's like in the European market I think there's also some more information there too so do check that out and thanks a lot for that Alex and another question that a couple of people have asked is um a couple of people in the audience are thinking about career change but they're a little bit older so end of 30s beginning with 40s is it still possible to change careers um when you're older going into data analytics uh yes but there are some small caveats I I do I I just stopped my mentorship program because I just started my own business um started doing that full-time so I took a a small break on mentorship but when I was mentoring I worked with about three people who were over the age of 40. um and well it was exactly three people who were over the age of 42 of them were able to get jobs now the reason why they were able to get jobs and what I helped kind of Coach them as what I'll call or mentored them to do is you when you're at that age it is much tougher if you don't have any transferable skills much tougher if you have a job like one of them was a nurse so he was a nurse for the past like 20 years and he's like I want to get into Tech I don't want like the long nights I don't like doing overnight work like he's like I just he just got married he's like I've been married for two years he's like I don't get a seal that much he's like I want a tech job I was like okay let's do it um what the most important thing that I think I helped him with was changing his mindset to seeing his background as bad to seeing his background is really helpful he eventually got a job um at a Healthcare company and I was like you need to sell yourself on that and say you're an expert in healthcare and you have the data analyst skills the other guy I worked with was a pharmacist and now he's a data analyst at a Healthcare Company um both of those were over a certain age so um but I was like you need to look at your experience as a data analyst what industry can you transfer those skills to that they'll be like this is really valuable this is valuable that that person has that background and now has the technical skills to combine with it um now again it it's it's tougher you're older you may be just trying to get that first job so if you have like 20 years experience in nursing and he's making you know 130 I'm like you're going to take a cut you're going to take a pay cut you know and then you'll build that up over time um back to where you were so there you know it it's tougher but 100 could be done and I've seen it myself and so yeah definitely definitely possible awesome thanks Alex well just post one I feel like I'm posting a lot of blog articles but another blog article looking at exactly that question for those people I knew a couple of questions came through from the audience I'll just link that here um Alex I am mindful of the time thank you so much for presenting this evening on study hacks and also elaborating a little bit further on data analytics as a career and all your tips and tricks uh we love your channel so do check out anyone who's watching from the career Foundry audience once again do check out Alex's Channel um Alex the analyst over on YouTube um for anybody who is considering a career change into data analytics after listening to the talk this evening we are currently offering a new year scholarship um and all you need to do to book that is book a call with one of our program advisors I can actually just change the slide here I'll just change the slide over um yep so we are currently offering a new year scholarship off of our programs but if you've also got any questions about career foundry's curriculum maybe jobs in your locality or how our mentorship model Works um do book a call with the program advisor because they're on the lines to talk about the specifics of the program um and help you out but also talk about the New Year scholarship too I know the more personally super super friendly so do book a call with them and um yeah and that's pretty much um all I've got from this evening um um one more thing to say is that we do have a lot of exciting events upcoming Alex is returning again to the channel I think later this month Alex hey yeah on the 25th fantastic and I know that we're going to be looking at data analytics portfolios so if you want to check out portfolios and data analytics portfolios and remember this is going to be your calling card into a job in data analytics Alex is going to be reviewing some portfolios having a look what's good what's not so good what to put in so do join that and also check out the career Foundry events page for all future events uh info sessions about the programs but I also do a great skills workshop with Dr Humera where we do an intro to data analytics to take your first steps and that's pretty much everything from my side Alex thank you so much for joining us this evening and presenting and thank you so much for bringing your super engaged audience and all their fantastic questions and for all those questions that we had on um on big market tonight as well so thanks Alex and thank you to everybody out there and we'll see you again very very soon