This may come as a surprise but from October the 3rd of 2022, I’m going to be employed as a Data Analytics Trainee at The Data School Australia. Depending on how well you know me, you might be confused about where this came from so buckle in and let me tell you a story.
I’ve been various kinds of self-employed since 2011, my last year of high school. I started as a Freelance Photographer capturing odds and ends for a variety of small clients towards the end of school up until the end of my Bachelor Degree (in Architecture). From 2015 I operated a business called Prop & Pose Co. offering Event Photography and Photo Booth Hire, and kept running it while I studied a Masters of Marketing part-time until I graduated at the end of 2019. I loved running that business, the clients I got to work with and the experience I was gathering was priceless, well almost priceless. What it cost was my work-life balance, because I was working almost every weekend for almost the entire year. It strained my friendships and my personal life, and it left me frequently burned out. Running a services business in the events industry is an exercise in working while everyone else is having the time of their lives.
When I graduated with my Masters I had already been thinking about my next move, away from events and towards something else, maybe Marketing, maybe something completely different. I needed a change, but what I needed more was structure and consistency.
To put it plainly, working weekends sucks. Being self-employed comes with a lot of flexibility, but also inconsistency. As a photographer, I had to work when the events were and I wouldn’t know when that would be more than a few weeks ahead of time, making long-term planning really challenging or just expensive if I had to block out time and say no to opportunities.
Anyway, you get the idea, I wanted stability. I wanted a job I could arrive for at 9am and go home at 5pm, with clear boundaries between my work life and personal life. I wanted a pay check and my 4-weeks of annual leave. Don’t even get me started on sick leave…what is that? I was getting none of this from working for myself.
I’ve had a lot of pivots, and I’ve hatched a lot of plans on my journey up until now. Before the pandemic I had plans to move towards Marketing to use the skills I picked up during my Masters. I’d been thinking about making a change right up until the pandemic gave me no other option than to stop. In late February 2020 I had a year’s worth of bookings evaporate as the world began to lockdown. I was lucky that my business received a generous amount of financial support so I was able to use the time as some kind of long-service leave. Towards the end of 2020 I hatched a plan to rebrand from Prop & Pose to TouchContact and focus on producing content for business rather than private clients. For the most part this worked, I was working on more interesting and challenging projects, working more during the week than ever before. But as we came in and out of lockdowns I realised that I just wasn’t connecting to the work anymore, I wasn’t enjoying it.
I’ve also had an interest in programming and data, and whenever I could I’d try to learn more about it. I love figuring out how things work, especially things I interact with every day. The more I learned the more I realised I didn’t know, and the more motivated I’d become. I learned to develop WordPress websites for my businesses, and how servers worked including how to use Linux. Over the years I tried to learn JavaScript, the language of the web, but didn’t get very far. Then I turned to Python and fell in love with it. Throughout lockdown I threw myself into learning it and eventually enrolled in IBM’s Data Analyst Professional Certificate through Coursera. Upon completing it I realised that maybe this hobby of mine could become something much more.
At this point I had my eyes on becoming a software developer, and even considered learning C# after a close friend found a job after a similar career transition. But thankfully I decided instead to focus on my strengths and invest in the language that I loved using, and also to turn my sights towards data analytics instead of software. I’ve been obsessed with data ever since I learned enough to understand it. In 2020, I downloaded a copy of my TikTok data which included my watch history. With a little bit of wrangling I was able to create a chart in Excel showing how many TikToks I watched. It might seem a pretty simple exercise but it sparked an excitement in me that I’m still riding today; I now knew enough to analyse the data around me and answer questions I’ve had for years. There was nothing that could stop me now.
Up until April 2022, I was still working with a handful of clients as a photographer, accepting anything that would come my way. This was great to generate a bit of cashflow, but it wasn’t helping me move forward at all. So it was in May that I decided that I’d no longer accept photography work and instead focus all my efforts into learning, working on a portfolio of projects, and preparing myself to apply for my first data analyst position.
I also travelled, first to Alice Springs and Uluru with my partner Rachel, then to the UK to spend some time with my best friend in London. When I came home in late July I hit the ground running (almost) and started looking at positions, and creating a resume.
Finding the right entry-level position is vital at this stage of my life, and could make or break my new career. From job listings it’s impossible to know how well a company accepts and nurtures entry-level employees. I was confident that I had enough skills to be productive as an analyst at that stage, but I wanted a role that would help me bring it all together in the real-world.
In my search I stumbled upon The Data School, an organisation that began in the UK, with locations in Melbourne and Sydney as well. The Data School works by operating a 4-month training program, in technologies such as Tableau and Alteryx, and then places you in four 6-month placements at client companies as a consultant. The best part is that they pay you from Day One, for the training and the 2-years of consulting work. The pay isn’t great compared to other entry level roles in the industry, but it may be the perfect onramp into Data Analytics so I’m willing to take a short-term L.
I was actually late to apply for the Data School, missing the application deadline by a week(for the cohort starting in October). But luckily I was able get in touch and successfully begged for an opportunity to be considered anyway. With a green light to apply I threw myself into creating the Tableau Visualisation that formed the basis for my application. The subject of the Viz was up to us, so I decided to use my own data and created a dashboard to analyse my home energy usage. Fortunately, it was good enough to get me a first interview with a chance to present the Viz as if I was pitching to a client.
I was really happy with how the presentation went, and at the end of the call I found out that if I made the cut that I’d have another project to put together, but this time they chose the data and it would have to be presented in person.
So, I made it to the final round! One week later I found out that I was one of 16 applicants that were invited to prepare a project, and the data they provided was AFL Data from 2012 to 2021. I was stoked, and feeling confident in my chances. I worked so hard on that project, day and night, pouring over the data and extracting a story from it. I decided to tell the story of how the Melbourne Football Club broke the 57-year Norm Smith Curse and won the Grand Final in 2021.
I arrived at the office of MIP Australia, for my presentation at 11am. I brought a bag of Melbourne scarves I’d accumulated as a member and upon beginning my presentation, I put a scarf on each of the three panellists. In hindsight, the presentation went really well, but on the day I was really nervous that I messed up by including a very broken correlation matrix. Thankfully though, I did enough to get accepted into Cohort 17 of Data School Australia.
As I write this it’s exactly one week before I start and I’m so excited. This is the start of a 28-month journey that will form the foundation for what I hope will be an exciting career. I’ve been working towards this for a long time, and I’ve worked damn hard.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
With Love,
Dan
PS. Here's the Dashboard that got me into the Data School
