Story #67
Q: How did you decide on your undergraduate course of study?
A: I happened to ace a statistics test in junior college and decided that it was useful so chose it by eliminating other choices in university.
Q: In retrospect, what did you think were the most useful lessons/ skills/ knowledge you'd gained from your undergraduate education?
A: Working in project teams, analysing code and numbers. Self-studying. Importance of networking.
Q: How has your undergraduate education influenced your career choice?
A: It was easy to get into the industry with a statistics degree. And I knew I couldn't do complex statistical forecasting and market research was less statistical heavy. I know that I don't want to do heavy data theory work anymore.
Q: Briefly describe your current job scope.
A: Understand client business objectives, create questionnaire and timelines, manage project with suppliers to ensure on time delivery with data accuracy, and analyse final data.
Q: To what extent is your current job related to your undergraduate course of study?
A: Somewhat related.
Q: What are some additional areas you wish your undergraduate education could have covered?
A: More presentation practice as both career choices of market research and data analyst requires a lot of presentation. There are some programs required in the field which was not taught in university aka Tableau, SQL query, SPSS, Excel Macro. More practical applications instead of theory all the time. And more relevant to the industry. Eg: data analysts use R and Python. Statistics students learn a bit of R, Matlab, SPSS etc. And we have one core module, to choose from either Java, C++ or C. Nobody knew why a statistics student needed to learn programming, nor were any of these languages typically used by data analysts. Also a market researcher or data analysts need to give presentations and consult with clients all the time, no EQ based learning was covered at all.
Updated on 11 Feb 2019: Jocelyn's current role is a Web Developer in the Media industry, where she proposes ideas for data visualisation or interactive graphics projects. Her current job scope requires her to use HTML, css, and Javascript to code up interactive articles. New inputs to some questions above have also been appended.
If you would like to contact Jocelyn for more information regarding education/ career choices, feel free to drop us a mail via the Contact Us section below. We'll link you up!