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.