From Science Classes to Data Analytics Career in 8 Months
This is the story of how I landed a data analytics job with no degree or experience (and practical tips for avoiding pitfalls I encountered).
Hey everyone! My name is Asa Howard. Today I want to share my journey from studying neuroscience to landing a career in data analytics.
I hope this will inspire you and give you ideas for how you can break into data in a much smoother manner than I did.
Throughout high school, I was always known as the “smart guy”.
I had straight A’s, I’d always win awards for having the highest score in each class, and I just thought that because I was smart, I had to be a doctor.
So I spent my whole senior year of high school trying to get the highest ACT score possible, applying to 10 colleges, and switching up what I wanted to study every week… until I finally landed on neuroscience.
This was a breakthrough for me. I LOVED the brain. I had always been interested in memory improvement and sleep science. This was perfect!
There was one problem though
and one of my classmates summed it up best when I told him I would study neuroscience, he said, “Asa, you have ALWAYS been a math guy. You are decent at science, but has never been your strength or your passion. So why are you trying to study medicine in college?”
I replied
“Well, I just feel like I want to be a doctor. It feels like what I’m supposed to do. Besides, what can I do with a math degree other than finance or accounting?”
As you’ll see later, I should have listened to him.
So I finished high school in May of 2019, and I had accepted an offer to Baylor University.
Starting college
In the fall of 2019, I started off on my neuroscience journey. My classes mostly consisted of biology, chemistry, and a few random classes like English or Political Science.
I had high hopes, so I enrolled in as many classes as possible. I thought “I’ll be fine, I had good grades in high school.”
Well, shocker, I was COMPLETELY wrong.
I failed my first round of tests.
I struggled on the next few.
I barely scraped by with a high enough GPA at the end of the semester to keep my scholarship.
This was a huge reality slap that pushed me to work really hard.
2 years later… starting my senior year (yes, I skipped a year because I did summer classes)
In the spring of 2021, I had a realization that I didn’t actually have a passion for medicine or neuroscience.
My grades were slowly getting better, but it would take doing extra school to even get a high enough GPA to get accepted to med school.
I realized I needed to make a pivot and start learning some other skills because my neuroscience degree was not going to lead to many job opportunities outside of that field.
In the summer of 2021, I started an internship at a startup company where I was doing a lot of manual lead outreach.
I had to save names to a spreadsheet, type up DM messages, then find new qualified people. This was a SLOW and tedious process and I hated it.
So, searching for a way to automate this process led me to discover Python. With Python, I was able to automatically web scrape people’s names from Instagram then put them in my spreadsheet.
Then I wrote a small program to automatically send out the DMs. It was AWESOME.
Learning Python got me interested in the potential of working with data and analytics as a career path. But I still didn’t really know how to move forward with that.
In fall 2021, I took a statistics class at school where I learned to use R, and was actually pretty good at it.
To dive deeper into data, I enrolled in the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate course and started poking around on LinkedIn to see what jobs were available.
I came across creators like Avery Smith and Austin Belcak who wrote tips for breaking into the data field through building projects and networking.
Over the winter of 2022, this is really when I got serious about data as a career.
I followed Maven Analytics and began participating in their monthly data visualization projects to build my skills.
I really didn’t know how to use Tableau or SQL, but I figured if I just dive right in to a project, then I’d be forced to learn the skills.
After struggling for a little while and taking some courses on Udemy, I finally built a few projects I was proud of.
With my new knowledge, I started updating my resume to tailor it more towards data analyst roles.
In spring 2022, I began cold applying for data analyst jobs on LinkedIn.
Like many people seeking jobs, it seemed like doing “quick apply” was the best method.
I mean, heck, I could apply to like 30 jobs a day! That will DEFINITELY get me a job! Right?
hmm
no
I was dead wrong.
I spent 8 months applying and applying and applying.
I started to feel hopeless and frustrated.
Despite applying for dozens of roles, I had absolutely zero success getting interviews.
This method of just spamming quick apply was obviously not working and I needed to switch it up.
Feeling defeated, I watched a YouTube tutorial on building a portfolio website using HTML to showcase my skills to recruiters. I figured if built my own website, it would be pretty impressive.
I realized that if I want to start getting interviews, I would need to take a more actionable approach.
This time around, I picked 3 companies that I REALLY found interesting.
I thoroughly researched the 3 companies and built out a Google doc with TONS of info about the company goals and values. I wanted to become an expert from the outside so they had no choice but to hire me.
Then I went on LinkedIn and directly reached out to 10–15 employees who were working in my desired role at those companies.
I asked them if I so I could learn more about their work. This even further equipped me with insider knowledge about the company.
So I finally applied to the jobs and reached out to the HR and recruiters of each of the companies to let them know that I had applied.
In June 2022, my new outreach method paid off.
I got 3 interviews that month. Two of the companies extended me job offers, and I happily accepted an offer at my top choice company.
A month later, I started my first data analytics job.
The best part is, I didn’t even know how to do SQL and I barely knew Excel (I really only cared about Google Sheets).
But because of the relationships I had built and research I had done, the company was more than confident in their decision to hire me.
I began learning more skills in SQL, Tableau, and Excel through Maven Analytics' courses so I could be as knowledgeable as possible.
Now since July of 2022, I’ve been working at this role, and I’ve already been moved into a little bit more of a leadership position.
I’m training another analyst on my team and I’m on the path to get promoted.
So, that’s been my data journey so far. If you are trying to get into data with no experience, I PROMISE it’s possible. While it was hard at times, it was my consistency and my friendships on LinkedIn that helped me eventually land a dream role.
In fact, for the last few months, I’ve been building a course with Avery Smith to teach you exactly the same method.
We will teach you how to:
- Narrow down your top companies
- Research those companies
- Engage with target company employees
- Break into DM conversations
- Talk on the phone with them
- Apply with a laser-sharp strategy
If this sounds interesting to you, we will be launching this mini-course soon. You can sign up to the waitlist here:
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, shoot me a dm on LinkedIn! I’d love to hear about where you are in your data journey.
- Asa Howard
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