Learn more about Liu's experience, from the time he applied to The Data School, to his career as a consultant at Accenture. Liu was part of Cohort 24 of The Data School London, which took place from June 2021 to October 2023.
Interviewed by Mel Niere | Edited by Lyon Abido and Liu Zhang
Before The Data School
Q: What brought you to The Data School? What factors influenced your decision to apply and ultimately join The Data School?
I was doing tutoring before but during COVID everything stopped. I found out about The Data School because of my friend's recommendation. They worked with The Information Lab in the past. My friend said, “Why not give it a try?” I took a chance on the application and I didn’t get in the first time I applied. It’s the second time I applied that I got into The Data School. It was quite easy to decide, I was jobless. If there was an opportunity for a job, I said “Why not?”
The unique application process allowed people from all different backgrounds to join. The diversity in The Data School is good and you learn from people’s different perspectives on how they would handle things. So there’s a lot of valuable experience at The Data School.
During The Data School
Q: What was your training experience like?
Over the first four months of training, I found it really enjoyable. During the application process, I had to apply again. That meant there was a six-month gap between each cohort (because of COVID). I took the time to learn more about Tableau so when the training started it was quite an easy transition for me. It's more of a polish of your knowledge rather than learning everything new. Alteryx, the new stuff, was good for me because I liked its logical workflow process. (editor’s note: Alteryx is our data preparation tool). So I didn’t spend much time on Tableau learning, instead, I spent more time on Alteryx. I enjoyed the Alteryx challenges! It was smooth sailing for me for the four months of training.
Q: How did your placements at The Data School enhance your skills and knowledge?
We got four placements for two years, but there's a little bit of mixed experience. The first and second placements I did together at Northern Railway. It’s a placement I really loved. It was probably one of the best I could get because they are a big enough company with data but they weren't still totally mature. It was like a green field in terms of data analytics, which was good for me because I didn’t have all the framework. I can go in and use Tableau, Alteryx, and Snowflake to build and create solutions. The team was nice as well. I really think I learned a lot during that one-year placement.
After that, I spent more time on bench where I had the opportunity to do more internal projects instead, some are short projects (1-2 weeks) and some are slightly longer projects (a few months). I learned how to scope projects myself rather than being assigned a project. Among those projects, I learned how to and how not to manage a project with a client. Regardless of the outcome, it was all a good learning experience.
Looking back at my two years, it was a good experience.
Q: What kind of support did you have during training or placement?
I think of myself as being a bit more extroverted so it's easy for me to go looking for things when I need something rather than constantly looking for help. However, the biggest help I received from The Information Lab & The Data School was in a particular engagement. I was having challenges with a client and I was trying to figure out what to do on that front, when the client made unreasonable requests, the company supported me in the decisions to push back.
For two years we have gone to different clients. We weren’t always going to enjoy every client because different people had different ways of working. Same company, different manager, different project, you’ll have a different experience. However, I learned that’s my valuable experience as a consultant, it’s about the people skills, stakeholder engagement, and management. Consulting is 50% technical skills, and 50% personal skills. At The Information Lab, we had a chance to rotate clients and learn. It was a good experience.
Q: You competed in the biggest Alteryx Competition, the Inspire Grand Prix. Can you tell us how you ended up at the Alteryx Grand Prix?
For Tableau and Alteryx, you get the best in the community in the Information Lab, and the best people to learn from who are your benchmark for success. For me, Alteryx was a better learning journey compared to Tableau. I remember at the interview I was asked “What’s my weakness?” I said maybe I’m a bit competitive. So when I came to work at The Information Lab, I would hear people saying “This person is very good at Alteryx. He did what and what” So that became my benchmark. I thought to myself, I can actually beat that. So the competitiveness came out, and that’s what drove me to have my skillset in Alteryx today.
I spent so much time practicing Alteryx, there are an excess amount of community challenges. One day I realized I’m actually pretty good at it. I didn’t even realize then as I was unconsciously training for it rather than treating tasks as a job. That’s probably a piece of advice I’d give to people, gamify the learning. For me, gamification is more about setting a goal and giving me the motivation to achieve it.
For me, I’m quite lucky I think. I would say I’m proud of myself, I worked hard for it so I made it to the Grand Prix. The same thing goes for anyone going through the Tableau Community route, there are a lot of activities as well. The Information Lab has a lot of community engagement in Tableau & Alteryx. If you put yourself out there, you’ll have a platform to speak and present yourself. If you do a good job, you will have a chance to shine. I think that’s what makes The Information Lab different from a big company. The Information Lab was a big enough company to give me support, but small enough to provide flexibility and freedom to do these types of things.
After The Data School
Q: How did The Data School and The Information Lab serve as a launchpad for your data analytics career?
I moved to another consultancy Accenture and I am part of the Data & AI team. Which is still in a very similar job, it's about data. I joined them as a Tableau and Alteryx consultant, which is part of the bigger team. I'm quite interested in learning more in terms of the technology industry and becoming more of a generalist. I’m learning the cloud, machine learning, and all kinds of the hype stuff. Because of the Alteryx experience at The Data School, and getting the opportunity to do the Grand Prix, that’s how I ended up meeting this team. There I picked up a connection for this role. I really recommend people do more community engagements and networking, you never know when an opportunity will come up.
I recommend people to apply for The Data School because it’s a great way to start your career or make a transition into data analytics. It’s a launching pad for you. It helps you overcome that ironic issue of three years of job experience requirement for an entry-level job, which happens a lot in the tech and the data world. It’s a unique application process. It's not about your CV (editors note: CVs are similar to resumes) or experience. It's more about your numeracy skills, storytelling skills, and your passion for data. If there was a CV process, I don't even think I would be able to get into Data School in the first place. My CV was rubbish before then.
Advice About The Data School
Q: What advice would you give to individuals considering applying to The Data School?
I think The Data School application process kind of stands out because it helps you to learn a new skill set using Tableau, regardless of the outcome. If you haven't used Tableau before but you commit to it, you will build sound dashboards. It’s actually useful for your future job anywhere because you’ve built up a project profile. For me, I applied during a very special period during COVID. There was a six-month gap rather than a traditional 2-4 month gap between cohorts. I persisted throughout the six months. I actually learned a lot more in creating Tableau dashboards and built up my profile. By the time I applied for the second time, I already had plenty of dashboards in Tableau Public which made it much easier. In fact, I didn't even build my second dashboard, I just reformatted one of them I did during the six months. Along the way, I learned visual best practices.
Don't worry if you don’t get in the first time or even the second time. Keep trying and definitely get something out of the process. The Information Lab will give you constructive feedback, so you’ll learn something throughout the process.