Make an Impact with Data

Erica Ho
Erica Ho
Nov 4 · 3 min read

A story of how I start my journey in the Data Science field.


Data is always the most treasurable asset every company wants from an individual. Over the years, data science has become one of the hottest buzz words in the industry. I follow my interest and start building my career in the industry, where I can utilize data analytical skills for decision making.

Coming from Communication and Marketing background, I have been working with data through different ways but mostly in a client facing world. Throughout my journey as a Marketing intern to a Marketing Analyst, the majority of my work is related to understanding customer needs through conversations and negotiations. As a business marketer, it’s critical to collect valuable information from customers for product development and marketing. To improve my capabilities to work on larger dataset, I earned my Master degree in Business Data Analytics as the start of my data science journey.

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

The time that data science has really got into my mind was the time I collaborated with four talented team members to build a data analysis project. The project predicts the best locations for job seekers looking for software engineer roles to reside and analyzes the most frequently asked technical questions during the interviews. The project is built by getting the information from the popular job searching sites to perform data collection and further analysis. The experience I gained from the project excited me about applying the technical skills into the business world after completing the Master degree.

word cloud result from the project done in the Master program

The desires in building my skills in the area, I decided to join a Tech Startup as a Product Manager, where the company allows me to take workshops relating to data analytics.

The Startup attended CES 2019 Unveiled Las Vegas

As the startup world works in the fast-paced environment, it is even more valuable for the decision makers to analyze existing data for determining the product strategy. In addition, being the liaison among the product team, I found advancing technical skills adds values for me to communicate effectively and provide data-supporting research while working with the product development team as a Product Manager. Thus, the situation has led me to consider an opportunity for self-improvement in technical skills.

“It is never too late to learn.”

I joined the data science program offered by Flatiron School this June while working at the startup. The overwhelming workflow does not stop me from work and study as learning and building data science projects prepare me for achieving my goal in making data-driven decisions for greater possibilities of bringing in impactful results.

Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash

LinkedIn: /minyuericaho

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