Google Data Analytics Professional

[Google Data Analytics Capstone: Complete a Case Study]

WEEK2 - Optional: Using your portfolio

Your portfolio is meant to be seen and explored. In this part of the course, you’ll learn how to discuss your portfolio and highlight specific skills in interview scenarios. You’ll also create and practice an elevator pitch for your case study. Finally, you’ll discover how to position yourself as a top applicant for data analyst jobs with useful and practical interview tips.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the benefits and uses of case studies and portfolios in the job search.
• Discuss the use of case studies and portfolios when communicating with recruiters and potential employers.

Sharing your work with recruiters

Intro to sharing your work

Discussing your portfolio

Welcome back. Now that you've successfully created your first case study and added it to your portfolio, it's time to talk about using that portfolio to wow potential employers during your next job search.

In this video, we'll learn about developing an elevator pitch. Having the portfolio in your resume will help you stand out, but being able to use your portfolio to effectively highlight your skills will make it so much more powerful. When you're discussing the case studies in your portfolio, you'll want to develop an elevator pitch to give interviewers a quick, high-level understanding of your work.

Basically, an elevator pitch is just a short statement describing an idea or a concept. It should be just a couple of sentences, short enough that you could explain it to someone in an elevator. It's always a good idea to prep your elevator pitch beforehand. Then once the interviewers have that high-level understanding of your case study, you can give concrete examples of your process and how you solved problems in your data analysis before.

For example, if an interviewer asks you to talk about how you approach data cleaning, you might highlight your case study to outline how you've cleaned data before. After giving them a quick explanation of the case study, you can describe your process and show them how you successfully completed the analysis.

Let's check out our example, Data Partners Real Estate case study, and brainstorm an elevator pitch for it. Earlier, we talked about how the executive summary in this presentation focused on answering the business question. This summary can help us develop our elevator pitch too. We just need to condense this into a couple of sentences. You can also think back to the business tasks you based your case study on to help you decide what context's most important.

For example, you could say, "In this case study, I used real estate company data to evaluate resale performance, determine trends, and theorize what was causing them. I was then able to develop an action plan based on those findings."

Then, if they're interested in discussing these findings in more detail, you can. This is where you can share more about how you reached your conclusion and your recommendations for this company. Or maybe the elevator pitch was all you needed to start explaining your process with the person conducting this interview.

The best way to showcase your skills effectively is to remember your audience and what they're interested in. Potential employers and recruiters want to get to know your thought process and your approach to problem-solving.

This means that when you are discussing the case studies in your portfolio, it's useful to focus on your process and not just your results. Let's think back to our example. The interviewer asked us to talk about our approach to cleaning data. They probably don't need to know the exact functions we performed on our data set, but they might be interested in knowing how we chose the right tools and what steps we took to make sure our data was clean and useful. This gives them more insight to our cleaning process and how we think about data cleaning in general.

Your case studies are a powerful tool that you can use to enhance your resume, but you can also draw on them to help you outline your thought process and how you perform your analysis. Developing an elevator pitch and using case studies to highlight your skills as a data analyst to potential employers and recruiters can help you discuss your work more effectively with interviewers.

Just like everything else we've learned, this is something that gets easier the more you practice. It's a great idea to practice beforehand. Try your elevator pitch out on a friend or practice talking through your process with a trusted colleague. You'll get it down pat in no time.

Coming up, you'll have the chance to practice showing your portfolio in interviews. See you soon.

Self-Reflection: Polish your portfolio (Practice Quiz)

In the interview

The interview process

Scenario video series introduction

Scenario video: Introductions

A: "Hi Jordan, how are you?" B: "Hi, Sally. Nice to meet you. Can you hear me?" A: "Yes. Perfectly. Awesome." B: "Well, thanks for taking the time to meet with me." A: "Of course, I'm excited to meet with you, but it's a little nerve-racking. B: "Well, nothing to be nervous about. This will just be an opportunity for me to get to know you and for you to understand a little bit more about this junior data analyst role and what it entails. Why don't we start off, tell me a little bit about yourself." A: "Sure. I originally thought I was going to be a teacher, but life had other plans for me and I decided it wasn't what I really wanted to do with my life. I took some time off and worked in retail for a bit. Then someone told me about the Google Data Analytics Certificate Program. I decided to give it a try, something different. It turns out, I really like the stuff and I was pretty good at it. I decided to apply for the junior analyst role." B: "What specifically drew you to data analytics?" A: "I really like that is centered around digging into things and learning more about them and improving them. It's like working with puzzles, but when you finish the puzzle, you're helping companies make smarter business decisions. I mean, that's pretty cool." B: "That's awesome. I love puzzles too. Speaking of which, not all puzzles have a direct solution and sometimes things can fall apart. Is there a time when you've dealt with a really difficult issue that you had to take ownership of?" A: "Definitely. When I was a teacher, we frequently had problems, issues with budgeting for things like school supplies and after-school programs. We always seemed to run out of money because we were working with one budget for everything. I rallied the other teachers together and we created budgets for each category and that worked a lot better." B: "I can imagine that was really frustrating." A: "Sure. We had to figure it out all ourselves because no one was going to fix it for us. Since no one was initiating it, I decided to take it on as a side project. B: "Well, I know you mentioned working with other teachers and in retail in the past. For this role, there will be times when you're working with other team members and times when you're just by yourself. Do you have a preference or what is your preferred working style?" A: "I have experience working in both situations. I love working with people and collaborating just like I did for the budgeting project and in retail. I'm also really good at working independently and getting things done. After all I was a teacher, so I created my own teaching plans and managed my own classroom. I just try to keep an open mind and bring people in as needed." B: "Very good. Someone like you who is transitioning from a completely different field to being a data analyst, how would you adapt to that change if hired?" A: "Well, though they're very different fields, I think a lot of my prior experience would translate well in analytics. My ability as a teacher to sift through a lot of information and distill it down to what's important and easily understandable. That would be very beneficial as a data analyst when I'm explaining data and numbers to someone who might not like math. Working in retail made me really good at communication and managing classrooms and difficult customers both made me really good at people managing too. I think these skills will translate really well as a data analyst." B: "Great. One last question, how do you stay motivated when you're working on a project?" A: "Good question. For me it's the people I work with. I love getting to know the people I work with because that's what's going to motivate me to put in that extra time and that extra effort. Because I know my work means something to someone I know. That's what motivates me and keeps me going." B: "Excellent. Well, that's all the questions that I had. Do you have any questions for me?" A: "Yes, I do. What does a typical work week look like in this role?" B: "Good question. In this role, you would be working mainly with our technology teams and a couple of data scientists. We do have a stand up meeting every Monday to go over important tasks, align on goals and check everyone's progress. This company is really about open communication. You'd be brought in to different meetings and you'll find that you're constantly talking to your colleagues about all manner of things, especially if there's a deadline coming up. A: "That's good to hear. Open communication is always important. Can you tell me a little bit more about the day-to-day?" B: "Yes. For sure. I think your job would mostly involve analyzing large datasets like administrative data, insurance, billing claims, basically a lot of different information. It's heavily dependent on the specific project." A: "Great. Thank you. I like that there's variety depending on the project. One more question. What's your favorite part about working for this company?" B: "Sometimes a difficult question, but I definitely love our team. I think it's a really smart and dedicated group of people who really love what they do. We're all very collaborative and respectful of each other, which is especially important when you're dealing with stressful situations or a problem that comes up out of nowhere. I also really love how comfortable I am communicating with everyone, even stakeholders. That really makes life so much easier." A: "That's awesome. I think it's really important for a work environment to be approachable." B: "Yes, for sure. When you realize everyone pretty much wants the same end goal, there's really no reason not to be cooperative and communicative. I agree." A: "I know I said that was my last question, but I have one more. Can I ask what the next steps in this process will look like?" B: "Yes, for sure that's where I was going to go next anyways. Thank you for that question. We will be contacting candidates within the week and emailing a case study to solve. We'll set up a second interview for you to present that. Obviously we'll be looking for how you work, what skills you utilize, and just your technical abilities throughout this assignment. All of the details will be in the email that I send out, so please keep an eye out for that and I look forward to our next meeting. Sound good?" A: "Perfect. Thank you so much Jordan and it was really great talking with you and I appreciate you going through the details of the job. B: "Of course. Thank you so much for your time, Sally. It was great getting to know you. I'll be in touch and I look forward to you speaking soon." A: "It was a great meeting as well. Have a great week." B: "You too. Bye."

What makes a great pitch

Scenario video: Case study

Jordan: "All right, well, let's get right into it. We sent you a case study of a hypothetical scenario where a school needs to improve its communication with parents, and we asked for basically your top insights into how this can be solved. Can you take me through your thought process?"

Sally: "Sure. I just want to say this is such a great scenario. I really enjoyed working with it, and it's something I imagine a lot of schools have to deal with. This is what I came up with. Here's the presentation that I put together, "Bridging the Communication Gap between Teachers & Parents" for Creekside Middle School. The background problem was that there were sporadic or non-existing communication between teachers and parents.

Jordan: "Well, great work Sally. You've really covered a lot of ground for a short amount of time and based on what you've examined, you understood the objective and captured who the client is and what they want and used data and visuals that supported your hypothesis. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you would recommend as next steps?"

Sally: "For sure. My recommendations for next steps is twofold. One, we want to share these insights with the person or the team building the app so that they can build an app for parents to easily move between those three tabs, the three activity categories, and two, once we enter the testing and iteration phase, we should prioritize building for seventh graders for the biggest impact.

Jordan: "Great, well done. I really appreciate your time on this. I'll take a further look into your presentation and my notes and I'll reach out soon with my final thoughts. Thanks, Jordan. I look forward to it."

Scenario video: Problem-solving

Jordan: "Okay Sally, can you please tell me about a time when you dealt with an unexpected challenge at work?" Sally: "Of course. In retail, all sorts of problems can show up out of nowhere, which I'm sure is the case for a lot of other industries as well. But there's this one time I was working in a store as a sales clerk and then an extremely unhappy customer came in. She was really unhappy about a recent purchase she made on an exercise bike and demanded someone go to her car, retrieve the bike, and give her a refund. I explained that I'd be happy to provide a refund, but I wanted to learn more about what happened so we could potentially salvage the situation. I asked her if there was something wrong with the bike and she told me it was difficult for her to clip into and out of the bike with her cycling shoes. She was upset because she spent so much money on a bike that couldn't do what all exercise bikes should be able to do. But upon further examination, turns out she was wearing the wrong sized shoes."

Sally: "Yes, that is the problem. Absolutely. We got her a new pair of the right sized shoes and to double-check I walked her over to one of our display bikes, the same model that she purchased. I had her go on the bike to try it out. But she was unable to click in and out of the bike as we expected, and then I noticed the issue. The clips themselves were incompatible with the shoes. This was a manufacturing issue rather than a user error. I apologize to the customer. I informed my manager. Then called the bike manufacturer to let them know that defect right away. They issued a recall immediately and asked for the customer. I offered her two options. One, we can take that back and issue her a refund immediately. But the problem with this is, she would be without a bike, which is what she originally wanted. Number 2, the other option was to offer her a voucher for any bike in the store, as well as a free pair of cycling shoes that we ensured would fit into the bike clips. After discussing these possible solutions with both my manager and the customer, she chose the second option. The result was a happy customer this time who despite coming into our store really angry, left the store extremely satisfied. My manager was also very pleased because a happy customer is a customer who is going to return."

Jordan: "Wow, and what went through your thought process as you were trying to solve this problem?"

Sally: "Well, first, I had to assess what the actual problem was. Did the customer simply not like the product or was there a deeper issue that had a possible solution? After I figured out what her issue was with the shoes, I had to figure out the why. Why did her shoes not fit into something they were designed to fit? After that resolved it was a matter of coming up with solutions that would make the customer happy."

Jordan: "Is that typical for how you usually approach problems?

Sally: "Yeah. Pretty much, obviously every problem's a little different. So I adjust my approach accordingly. Generally, I just like to use empathy whenever possible to understand the context. Then find the root cause and map out a couple of solutions to choose from."

Jordan: "Well, that's really great work, Sally. You used both critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, which is what you'd need to constantly succeed as a data analyst."

Top tips for interview success (Reading)

Test your knowledge on effective interview techniques (Practice Quiz)

Before you go

Before you accept, negotiating the contract (Reading)

Scenario video: Negotiating terms

Jordan: "Well, Sally we've been very impressed with you throughout this process. Although you have limited experience working as a data analyst, I'm really confident in your abilities and I think your past experience coupled with your current certificate will make you an excellent junior data analyst."

Sally: "So with that being said, I would like to officially offer you a position with us. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much Jordan."

Jordan: "That's fantastic news. Well, as we established earlier, this role has a starting salary of $50 thousand, and of course you will be getting health care benefits, stock options in the company, paid time off, all of that as part of our hiring package.

Sally: "That sounds great. Can I take some time and think about the offer?"

Jordan: "Of course. I'm going to send you everything so you can take a more comprehensive look, and feel free to email or call me with any questions."

Sally: "Amazing. Thanks so much for the offer, Jordan, I promise to get back to you soon with my answer.

Jordan: "Thanks, Sally, and I look forward to your response."

Sally: "Hi, Jordan."

Jordan: "Hi, Sally, it's great to hear from you. Have you given more thought to our offer?"

Sally: "Yes, I have. I know this is an entry-level position, but I believe that based on transferable past experience that I'll be bringing to the table, that my compensation should be higher than 50 K."

Jordan: "I understand, and can you remind me what your initial ask was?"

Sally: "I asked for a base salary between 58-60 K."

Jordan: "So with the salary that you're looking for, it is a little bit higher than the average. Can you tell me more about what skills and experience you feel support that range?"

Sally: "I understand, and I'd love for us to agree on a competitive salary based on the skills and experience I'll be bringing in. In terms of my experience, I'll be particularly strong in the communications department after managing difficult customers and rowdy kids. Furthermore, due to my diverse background, I'll be able to translate complicated topics easily into understandable snippets for others who might not be as numbers-based as I am. Those are the soft skills that I'll be bringing in. In terms of hard skills, I earned the Data Analytics Certificate, where I picked up the technical tools of the trade like SQL and data visualization. So that's why I believe my experience qualifies me to having valuable and transferable skills that I can bring to the table, which is more than what an entry-level analyst with absolutely no experience would be bringing in."

Jordan: "Well, I feel like that's impressive, and like I said, we think you'd be a great fit for this team. So we would like to meet you in the middle and offer you 56 thousand with obvious room for growth.

Sally: "I appreciate this offer and your willingness to be flexible. I think that's fair. So I'd like to officially accept the role of junior data analyst with your company."

Jordan: "Wonderful. Well, I will be sending you all of the proper paperwork and get you started onboarding as soon as possible. You'll be an excellent addition, Sally. We're really glad to have you join us."

Sally: "Thank you, Jordan, and I'm super excited to get started."

Nathan: VetNet and giving advice to vets

Hey, I'm Nathan. I'm a principal data analyst in a trust and safety organization at Google. At Google, I'm a member of an organization called VetNet which is an employee resource group for veterans and Googlers who want to support veterans. One of my favorite ways that we give back every year is through an annual resume review workshop.

In the resume workshop, either virtually or in person, we have veterans or veteran spouses coming to the office or we meet via video chat, and we go through the resume and really focus on impactful things they've done and how to make their accomplishments jump off the page and show really how awesome they are.

Veterans, in particular, can have some unique challenges when it comes to translating their military experience to a really effective civilian resume. The first is removing military-specific jargon. The second is being willing to claim correct credit for the accomplishments that you did because a lot of times veterans are going to always say that it was completely the team that did it and then third is coming up with a really good measurement of the impact of the activities that they're showcasing in the resume. Just as service members have to communicate really clearly, work well as a team and really exercise really good attention to detail. That's also the case when you're working as a data analyst.

You can't know everything, so it's important to be able to work with cross-functional stakeholders in a very collaborative setting and the best analysis in the world is worthless if you can't clearly communicate recommendations and influence the stakeholders to adopt those and of course if you overlook some important details that could also derail your analysis and your credibility in the eyes of those stakeholders.

Attention to detail is critical. It's important to get some training. Of course, the Data Analyst Certificate is a great set of training but also just other courses either on tools that seem interesting to you.

It's important to think about what sorts of problems you find the most interesting, and then find data for those problems and do some analysis on your own. That's a really high-impact way of being able to get some great experience on your own that you can then talk about during interviews and even informal chats with people in your network. Why veterans should consider a career in data analysis is that they already have a strong foundation of being able to be really persistent while also remaining really humble and that's super important as a data analyst because if your ego is out of control, you're going to have big blind spots that lead you to make mistakes in your analysis.

One of the best pieces of advice that I still think of is that it's better to get speeding tickets than parking tickets. Especially means as a data analyst is sometimes you have to jump into situations that you're not totally comfortable, and you need to learn your way out of it and collaborate your way out of it.