Welcome to The Meeting. This podcast is hosted by Luba Yudasina, a self-taught software engineer that has been working in the Tech industry for many years now. In this podcast, Luba interviews professionals across different industries and functions on the impacts of Coronavirus on their day-to-day lives. By creating a community, The Meeting encourages people to stay happy, motivated, and inspired, despite the crisis. 

Today’s guest is Akhil Reddy, a driven analytical professional with progressive experience in data analysis, statistical modeling, and quality assurance. Akhil transforms critical data into meaningful analytics to drive informed business decisions and enhanced alignment with powerful goals. Just as Luba, Akhil is convinced that data and science are the future.

In this episode, Luba interviews Akhil to chat about his career, and how he’s been affected by  COVID-19. A few years ago, Akhil worked in PayPal as a Data Engineer, and just recently, he had a full-time job at ZipRecruiter as a Data Analyst. Everything was going smoothly until March hit: He got fired from his job at Ziprecruiter without any previous notice (through a 2-minute group meeting), and his life took a 180-degree turn. However, within 3 weeks, he got 3 different job offers and started working at Autodesk as a senior data analyst, with an amazing 50% pay increase.

Thanks to the power of the internet and a positive mindset, Akhil took advantage of having finished a Data Science degree at UCLA to level-up his job opportunities. Listen to this full conversation and discover how Akhil used resume services for free and other free trials to elevate his knowledge while he was looking for his new job. It's amazing how, despite the lockdown, people are coming together and helping each other. As you finish listening, you will know how to show companies that you are a valuable piece in their puzzle. 

Key Takeaways: 

• March, 27th: Akhils' contingency/emergency plan to save money and try to not pay rent during April.
• Why Silicon Valley is still the perfect place to take your tech career to the next level. 
• How keywords and extra classes are a super powerful tool for recruiters to know that you are being proactive these days.
• Akhil’s experience in interviews with Facebook and the beauty of LinkedIn’s InMail credits.
• Rules to manage confidence as you receive higher level offers.
• Differences between being a data engineer, a data analyst, and a data scientist. 
• What makes Data Science the dream role for Akhil’s career.
• Machine Learning: a powerful vertical of data science. 

Resources

Data Science: Online Courses from Harvard, MIT, Microsoft | edX

What is SQL (Structured Query Language)?

Connect with Akhil on LinkedIn