My Summer as an Analytics Intern at Thumbtack
Hello! I’m Jennifer. This summer, I interned at Thumbtack as a Product Analytics Intern on the Home Guidance team out of Toronto, Canada. In September, I’ll be going into my 4th year of studying computer science and business at Western University. Outside of work and school, you can catch me attending concerts, visiting the hottest dessert cafes, dabbling in photography, going on walks/hiking, and being a seasoned meme connoisseur.
One thing I love about analytics is coaxing a story out of the data — it almost feels like doing detective work! As an analytics intern, I had the opportunity to stretch my analytical skills and wear my detective hat to uncover meaningful insights and stories from the data I worked with.
Why I chose Thumbtack
I was looking for a summer internship with a company that had a product that interested me as well as a great company culture. I remembered hearing about Thumbtack from my friend (former Software Engineer Intern) last year who had a really amazing experience — so when I saw that there was an opportunity to intern, I was super excited to apply!
My day-to-day working in analytics
I was assigned to a couple of projects that stretched across different areas of analytics — research analysis and exploratory. On a high level, product analysts were expected to derive insights and make decisions based on them. Insights could be presented through building/maintaining reports and visualizations that provide perspective into user experiences and business performance.
The process of my projects usually looked like the following:
- Understanding the problem the team is trying to solve and what type of information would be helpful to them (the latter was usually given to me but more useful insights would pop up as we explored the data).
- Exploring the data tables to work with using Google Bigquery.
- Coming up with a plan to get the data we need — ie which fields from which tables will we be using?
- Writing out the queries!
- Visualizing the data with the appropriate charts using Mode Analytics.
- Double checking my queries, vetting them with my mentor, and discussing these insights with the rest of the team.
What I loved about interning at Thumbtack
The people at Thumbtack were definitely the best part of the internship! Everyone I interacted with was extremely kind, supportive, and enthusiastic about their work. There’s nothing more inspiring than working with those who not only love, but own their work. Thumbtack made sure I had all the right support in place from the get-go — they assigned a mentor, onboarding buddy, and set up 1:1 calls with members of the Experience Analytics team and Analytics Director. There was never a second where I felt like I had no one to go to if I needed help on anything.
Plus, the People and Early in Career Talent teams do an awesome job at making company bonding fun and memorable.
Here’s the Analytics team at the Santa Cruz offsite where we connected over sushi-making, professional workshops, hiking, and so much more!
Thumbtack set me up for success
Interning at Thumbtack was a truly transformational experience as an analyst — I learned through many query reps on how to be more detail-oriented and think from the perspective of users. Working in the Home Guidance team’s experimental environment meant having lots of independence and self-direction on tasks — which I greatly value in the work I take on. As the summer months went on, I witnessed the scope of my projects increase and gained a much clearer picture of how my work connected to the larger team and company.
Being surrounded by people in the same space as me (Product and Analytics) allowed me to explore more of what the role entails and pushed me to consider a full-time career as a Product Analyst. Shoutout to my mentors Mong and Xueying, Experience Analytics team, and other Analytics interns who inspired me with their work everyday!
Interested in an internship or full-time opportunity at Thumbtack? Explore our openings at thumbtack.com/careers.
