Can you give an overview of your role?

I'm in a client-facing analyst role, where I work with some of our company’s biggest clients to help answer their workforce-related questions using our large dataset. A lot of the time, they come to us with broader industry questions too, and we use our data to provide insights.

During COVID, there was a huge demand for this kind of information. We created reports that showed which industries were struggling, which were hiring aggressively, and what new job trends were emerging from the crisis.

I specifically work with staffing companies. Since hiring is the core of their business, they’re always interested in understanding who might need their services next. At the same time, our corporate clients want to know which roles are evolving, so they can adapt and reposition their teams accordingly.

I still can't believe I get paid to do all of this cool analysis. I sit on the analytical side, but my role isn’t super technical. I don’t work with machine learning. My team and I use SQL and sometimes Python—both of which I taught myself—to dig into the data and create reports, slide decks, and infographics that help bring our findings to life.

Can you talk about your career history?

When I finished my studies, my original plan was to go into HR. I wanted to be a trainer and help people—at the time, I believed that the only way to truly help others was by working directly with them. It took a few years for me to realize that wasn’t necessarily the case, and looking back, I feel really lucky that I figured that out.

I started out in Ireland, doing talent management for an international organization. That experience made me realize that training didn’t actually give me energy—I began to realize I might be more of an introvert. The role just didn’t feel like a good fit, but I also wasn’t sure what would be.

So I decided to try something different and moved to Berlin to do sales for a startup. I’d learned that large organizations could be slow and inefficient, so I wanted to see what a faster-paced environment might be like. I joined the business development team, doing cold calls. I figured it was a useful skill to have—but I quickly found the constant people interaction was even more draining. I was using up all my energy at work and had nothing left for life outside of it.

Eventually, I told my manager that it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I went back to the non-profit world and helped a friend with her organization. I also continued working in HR part-time at the startup.

Eventually my boss asked me, “What are you going to do next?” I told him, “I’m going to go back to school and study economics—I want to do data analytics.” I don’t know where the idea came from and I’d never done it before, but I wanted to figure it out. My boss said, “Cool, we have a data analytics team. Do you want to work here?” He handed me a link to an online Python course and told me I could start in two months.

In the beginning, I was slow, but it was a small team and I had space to grow. I worked on projects that stretched me—and that’s how I got into data analytics.

Looking back, I wish I had told my manager from day one that I was interested in data. I just didn’t think it was possible to get into a field simply because someone believed in your potential, not your past experience.

For a long time, I felt like the time I spent in HR and sales was wasted. But now, I work at an HR-focused company—I understand our customers’ challenges because I’ve been in their shoes. I also work in a client-facing role, and my sales background helps me understand exactly what our salespeople need. When I applied to my current company, everything on my resume ended up being relevant. Nothing was wasted.

I realized I love data analytics because of the problem-solving. That’s something you can find in so many types of work. The more roles you try, the more you learn it’s not just the job itself you like doing, it’s something within it.

When people ask how to break into data analytics, I always say: look for roles that sit adjacent to it. When I was in sales, I had to do my own data work because there wasn’t a dedicated analytics team. If you’re on a small team, take on projects that get you closer to the kind of work you want to be doing.

What’s the most challenging thing about the role?

I think one of the most challenging parts of the job is making sure the work you produce is actually useful—not just interesting from a data perspective. It has to be relevant for both your sales team and your customers, and it also has to be easy to understand.

That can be tricky. You might spend time on a really cool, complex analysis, but if no one understands it, it doesn't matter. In those cases, you often have to pivot quickly. At the end of the day, you're in a support role—you're there to help the sales team and the customer.

What strengths do you leverage in your role?

I love finding answers to things — I could just dig and dig. Sometimes I have to remind myself to stop. I’m also able to pick things up fairly quickly. Even if it’s a brand new programming language, I’ll Google my way through it and figure it out as I go.

In a data role, things change fast. Even at my company, we build our own data tools, so there's no formal training—you just have to learn independently. That ability to self-learn quickly has worked to my advantage. I focus on learning just enough to solve the problem at hand, rather than trying to understand everything all at once. That mindset has been key for progressing in data analytics.

But I think one of my biggest strengths is that I genuinely care about the people I support. If my salespeople hit their quota, I’m the happiest person in the world. Like I’ve said before, I’ve always wanted to help others, and I bring that same passion and loyalty into my work. This helps me take the time to listen, understand what they need, and make sure what I’m delivering is useful—because I really care about their success in the company. That’s made a big difference in the results I’ve been able to achieve.

What’s one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?

On my very first day at my current company, I heard about a team working on an exciting government-related analysis project. I immediately thought, Wow, that’s the kind of work I’d love to do—but also, there’s no way I have the skills for that. It actually took me a year to finally tell my manager that I was interested. His response? “Cool—two other people have taken that same path before you.”

That experience taught me a valuable lesson: your manager is there to support your growth. If they’re not, then it might be worth reconsidering whether it’s the right environment for you.

What is your advice for others?

There’s no shame in taking different jobs and trying out new things. Once you’re in a company, look for opportunities to move around internally. If you’re good at what you do, chances are they’ll want to keep you in some capacity.

It can also help to start at a smaller company, where you can potentially move around a bit more freely compared to a more traditional, structured organization