 What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another video. Today we're going to be taking a look at the seven biggest mistakes you want to avoid in your data analytics job search. Now I just recently partnered with Career Foundry to do an entire webinar on this exact topic but it was like an hour and 15 minutes and that was really long and so I'm going to take everything that I talked about in the webinar, really condense it down because I think this is a really important topic. So we're going to start with the biggest mistakes to avoid and go all the way down to the ones that aren't as important but are definitely ones to consider and if you avoid all of these mistakes which I've made almost all of them then you'll have a lot better shot at landing a job. So let's waste no time at all, let's jump right into it. Number one is not working with recruiters. Now you may not know this but when I was trying to get my very first data analytics job I applied to over 1,000 positions. That's right that is not a typo, that is 1,000 positions. I think it was 1,000 like 50 or something. I had it all in an Excel spreadsheet. I was tracking it all. It was pretty miserable and I realized very quickly that I cannot do this by myself. Working with a recruiter is one of the best and the fastest way to land a job as a data analyst. I even made an entire video and I'll put the link somewhere down below of how you can reach out to recruiters. Now super quickly how recruiters work is essentially a company is going to pay a third party company to find them really good applicants. So if they come over here this company is called ABC company. They're going to hire this third party company. They're going to find me and then they're going to get me in for an interview. If they hire me, if that ABC company hires me, they're going to pay me $50,000. They're going to pay the recruiting company a 10% servicing fee. So let's say $5,000. That money is not going to come out of your salary at all. So you don't have to worry about paying the recruiting company. I've heard of some instances where you do have to do that but don't work with them. Okay. The company should be paying the recruiting company. And so it's essentially a free service for someone like you who's looking for a job. Just the company wants a good hire. And so that's why they pay the recruiting company. The second biggest mistake that I see people see is use generic resumes and I am super guilty of this one. I did it for years until I finally kind of started booping myself in a shave. I'm like, no, can't do that anymore. A generic resume is just a resume that you're going to send out for any job. And imagine you're applying to data analyst jobs, business analyst jobs, financial analyst jobs, marketing analyst jobs. They're all data related jobs, but they're not the same job and the job descriptions for those jobs are going to be different. So if you just send out your generic resume to everybody, well, you might get some callbacks, but you probably get more if you actually created a customized resume. Well, how do you actually do that? Well, first you can look at the job description and see exactly what they're looking for. And then you can say, okay, how can I change my resume to fit or be closer to that job description? And then when you do that, then you send it. It definitely takes a little bit more work. But if you're really serious about certain positions that you're like, I really want this one, that's when you need to create a customized resume. You can still use your generic resume for a lot of the positions or a lot of the jobs that you're applying for. But if there's a few like five or 10 or 15 that you're really excited about, those are the ones that I would create the customized resume for. The next biggest mistake that I see is just having only a resume. So you don't have a portfolio. You don't have any projects. Now this is something that I kind of pseudo did when I was first starting out. I had no portfolio, but what I did was I actually sent in my resume on applications and I sent in an additional sheet that had SQL scripts on it. That's it. I didn't have a portfolio. It wasn't a full project. It was just here's code or SQL code that I've written and here's how it looks. And that's all I did. And that actually landed me my first job as a data analyst at the healthcare analytics company. But if I had known about projects and portfolios and all these things, I would have had a much better chance because I could showcase multiple projects. Now, why do you actually need a portfolio or projects at all? Well, let's say we have two resumes and they're the exact same, but one person has a portfolio. Well, this person has SQL and this person has SQL, but this person can show it. This person can demonstrate that they actually know SQL. So when they get into an interview and the interviewer says, Hey, you know, tell us about how you know SQL, they can point to those projects as experience. If they've never had a data analyst job before, say I built this project, here's what I did. Here's the data. And here's what I learned from it. And here's the insights that I found from it. And you'll have a lot more to talk about. Whereas the person who just learned SQL through a course, isn't going to have any projects or a portfolio that they can point to and say, here's how well I know it. And here's what I can do with it. Now really quick, if you've not heard about analyst builder is my data analytics learning platform. We built it from scratch. I have full courses. We also have a coding section where you can practice coding and you can earn badges and certificates. It is phenomenal. I highly recommend you check it out. I will leave links in the description so that you can go ahead and check it out because honestly, it is pretty amazing. Now onto the next mistake, which is not researching the company before your interview. You've done all this hard work to apply for these jobs to work with a recruiter to land an interview. And when you go into that interview, you want to be really, really prepared to actually answer the questions well and then ask really good questions at the end. I made this mistake only once where I did not come prepared and they were asking me, Hey, what do you know about our company? And I was like, I have absolutely no idea what your company does. That was just me being super naive and not understanding how this works. Like they really want someone who's interested in the company, in the position, who knows what they do. And I didn't. And so I never made that mistake again, but that is one that you can easily avoid. When you're about to go into an interview for a company, you can just go on their website, take a look at exactly what they do. You can find a lot about what kind of data they might collect, what kind of systems they might have, and you can just store that in your memory. You don't have to take super detailed notes, but you should at least have an idea of exactly what they do. When you get asked that question about what they do and what you're interested in and why you want to work there, you'll have really good answers for those questions. And hopefully when you're researching the company, you'll also have some questions for them as well. So you can ask, Hey, I see that you do this in your business. How do you guys actually collect that data? How do you get that? How do you transform it? You can ask really good questions. It generally does just really help show that your interest in that position, that you're excited to actually work there. The next biggest mistake is that you're only focusing on hard skills. And don't get me wrong, hard skills are super important. Learning SQL, Excel, Power BI, Tableau, Python, R, and all these other skills and tools that you can learn for data analytics, they're really important. You have to know how to use them. But in an interview, I think it's about 50 50 knowing the hard skills and having really good soft skills. So when you're applying, your resume is the only thing that they're going to see. And so, of course, your hard skills are super important. That's probably 100% of the actual getting into the interview. But once you're in the interview, they already know that you have the hard skills. Now they want to make sure that you have some of the soft skills that they're looking for. Is this person a good communicator? Are they actually enjoyable to talk to? Do they have good time management, or they spend 20 minutes on one single question? These are things that maybe consciously or subconsciously sometimes they are paying attention to. And also, they just want to make sure that you have a good personality. Believe it or not, personality makes a big difference to a lot of people. So if you're really vibing with the hiring manager, and you're really getting along, that goes a long way to actually getting a job. The very last mistake that you should avoid is neglecting networking. Networking is where you connect with other people, and you join communities, and you get to know people at work, and you connect with others, and you just get to know them. That is what networking is. Now, networking isn't always in person. Sometimes it's online as well. So you're joining an online community, or you're reaching out to someone on LinkedIn, but you're building relationships. I'll give you one example. I was working with someone for two years as a data analyst, and he went away to USAA, which was a banking company. And about a year later, he was messaging me saying, hey, we have an opening on our team for a BI developer, and he wanted to know if I wanted that job. And of course, at that time, I was not looking for a job. I just got any promotion to an analytics manager, but I've had that happen a lot over my career where people will reach out to me and they'll say, hey, we really liked working with you. We'd love to bring you on into this company. That only has ever happened to me once I started networking. Now, of course, these relationships take time. They don't happen overnight. But if you're on the top of someone's mind, you form that relationship with someone. If a job pops up that they're near to, or they have a connection to, they can put in a good word for you as a reference, or they might be a hiring manager and they might hire you. Now, I forgot there's actually one more. And this one's not as important, but there is a piece of it that I think is important. And that's not having any online presence. In today's technological world, not having a LinkedIn is like just shooting yourself in the foot. A lot of hiring managers are going to go on LinkedIn or maybe even Facebook or Twitter or, you know, wherever they can find you. And they're going to look you up, maybe Instagram, for example. They're going to want to see what kind of person you are. And so if you have a really good LinkedIn profile, you have a good headshot, have a good banner, your skills, your experience, that's a good sign. But if someone has a really bad LinkedIn or no LinkedIn at all, that may not be a terrible thing, but it's just not a good thing. You want to leave a good impression when someone looks you up. I've done a lot of interviews in my day and some people don't have any social media. It's not a huge problem. I'm just like, huh, that's odd. I, you know, thought I would be able to find them. And then I get into an interview and they're perfectly pleasant people. They just don't do social media. And I don't have a problem with that. But there have been other people where I'm like, whoa, this is a really great LinkedIn or I found their GitHub or I found other things. I'm like, this is really great. And then when I get into an interview, I talk about those things. I asked them, I say, Hey, we saw your GitHub repo, you know, tell us about some of the projects that you've worked on. And those are things that I can use as a hiring manager. And I can ask you and say, Hey, tell me about that. So those are all the mistakes that I promise you I've made almost every single one. I will tell you one last funny story just because we're at the very end. And why not? Which is the very first time I started working with a recruiter. I don't come from a recruiter world. That's just not how the healthcare industry really was or where I was working. So I didn't know really what a recruiter was. And when I started getting into tech, I started trying to work, you know, get a job and work with a recruiter. One reached out to me and wanted to meet me for an actual interview. And it just didn't sit right with me. I was like, something is wrong with this. And so I told my wife, I said, Listen, in one hour, here's what I'm supposed to be going in. In one hour, if you do not hear from me, I was like, here's my location, call the police, either I've been murdered, mugged, or they've taken me. Like I was genuinely kind of scared. I was very nervous. I had no idea what to expect. Now, everything turned out fine. That interview actually landed me my first day of endless job. And I can look back and I can laugh on it now. But a lot of these things just come from, I didn't know about any of these things. And so all of these mistakes are things that I have done in the past. And so if you're doing them, I highly recommend changing them. Every single thing that you correct, every single mistake that you change and get right is a better percentage of landing a job. So if you start over here and you just have a resume, you have a 10% chance of getting a job. Then if you work with a recruiter, there's another 10%. So you have 20% chance of landing a job. Then you have a portfolio, another 5%. And then you research the company and then you create not generic resumes. It just increases your chances of actually landing a job. And I like to work in that headspace where the more I do, the better things I do instead of making all these mistakes, the better chance I have. I like to focus on that because I like to increase my chances. I don't want 5% chance of getting a job. I want 40% chance of getting a job. So I hope that that was helpful. Now you can identify some of the things that you need to correct and can help you land a job faster. Again, go check out Analyst Builder. It is amazing. Highly recommend it. But thank you guys so much for watching this video. I really appreciate it. If you liked it, be sure to like and subscribe below and I'll see you in the next video.