“One of the best pieces of advice I received was to talk to everyone. Being new to this career, it was helpful to branch out across departments and learn what I could about others in the business. I used my free time to sit down with people I thought had interesting roles to learn about how they got there, what they do now, and how it relates to the business. ”
After completing the Series A: Data program, I worked as a product analyst intern at Foursquare. Although I had no previous experience in a similar role, it was a great opportunity to better understand the role and how to use my insight to contribute to a team. In this role, I was responsible for analyzing how users interacted with the product – in this case the company's mobile apps. Some of my responsibilities included understanding how users typically used the apps, the features available, and collecting data points to provide insight on how to improve the apps.
“In any internship you should try to learn as much as you can, but also maintain focus so you can build at least one specialty skill while at an internship. Any skill you pick up, no matter how small, will be a great example you can use in your next interview or add on your resume. ”
This was the first role I’ve ever held that I was able to provide actionable insights that were implemented rapidly and resulted in a positive change. One of the projects I worked on, was uncovering a specific feature that was valuable to users, but was not readily accessible. I performed some analysis to understand how much of our user base could benefit from this feature, uncovered why it was inaccessible and provided a recommendation to make the feature appear earlier in a user's initial interaction with the app. My recommendation was implemented and I could see immediate results. It was such a great experience knowing that I could provide insight that was valuable for the business.
While I worked with a team of analysts – we were all focused on a different part of the business. This internship was a great opportunity to learn from an experienced group of analysts while also building out a specialized skill. One thing I’ve learned is that businesses all have their own preferred methods and technology to build and analyze data. I was able to use the baseline skills I learned in the program to build a more specialized knowledge in tools like SQL. I’m much more comfortable looking at large data sets and data tables than I was even after practicing in the program. I’ve been able to make inferences and present my work to stakeholders in order to answer business questions or provide valuable insight.
