117: Why Landing a Data Analyst Job Feels IMPOSSIBLE

[00:00:00] Hello there, and if you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, I might suggest tuning into the video version of this episode. You can still enjoy everything in the audio, but the video is really cool. We put some nice graphics and editing on there.

[00:00:12] So you can check that out if you're on Spotify, but just opening up, you can watch the video there. And if you are on some other app, you can watch on YouTube.

[00:00:20] Just search Avery Smith data on the search bar and you should be able to find my channel. You're still going to enjoy everything on the audio, but the video is a good experience this week. So I'm going to let you know, let's get into it.

[00:00:30] Welcome to the Data Career Podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring data professionals land their next data job. Here's your host, Avery Smith. Are you sending countless applications for data analyst jobs and hearing nothing back? Well, you're not alone. Many people are experiencing the exact same thing.

[00:00:50] Everywhere you look, the media is talking about how in demand data analytics is and how low unemployment is as well. But something's happening in today's job market that makes it feel near impossible to land a data job.

[00:01:03] I'll walk you through what's happening and what you can do despite this difficult market to land your data job, even if you have no prior experience. If you've been applying for data jobs on platforms like LinkedIn, you've probably seen the number of applicants is absolutely insane.

[00:01:20] Take this job posting, for example, from a company called Carbon Direct that got over 3,700 applicants in less than one week. And the truth is it's just really hard to compete with 3,700 people.

[00:01:34] Or take me for example, I posted this job here on LinkedIn for my bootcamp students to apply for and see who ranked highest. Now I'm a small one person company in Utah. You wouldn't think that have that many people apply to this job, right?

[00:01:48] Well, we got over 500 applicants in less than 24 hours. And the kicker, in the job description, I actually told people not to apply to this job. It was the first thing that I said. Now imagine if I'm getting this many applicants in 24 hours and I'm saying don't apply to

[00:02:03] this job. Imagine how many applicants these big companies are getting for real job postings. And with so many applicants to these different types of jobs, it actually requires AI and automation to sift through all of the applicants.

[00:02:17] This means a computer or an algorithm may look at your application, your resume, your LinkedIn profile, but it could actually never get seen by a human possibly. LinkedIn jobs for example, allows you to set a screening criteria of a series of questions to weed people out.

[00:02:32] If a candidate doesn't answer these screener questions appropriately or with the right amount of experience or whatever, their application won't even be seen by a human and will get automatically rejected. This idea infuriates me. It makes me so mad.

[00:02:44] The idea that you and I could spend all this time filling out an application only to get auto rejected straight into the trash can from an algorithm is infuriating. But I also get it. These recruiters, these hiring managers, they're humans and they have limited time.

[00:02:57] And if they receive so many applications that they can't handle, what are they supposed to do? But more importantly, what should you and I be doing to stand out in such a crazy pool of applicants? That actually takes me to point number two. Remote analyst opportunities are scarce.

[00:03:12] Data analytics jobs are often thought to be remote friendly and they are to a degree. I've been fortunate enough to work remotely as a data professional for a couple of years now and a lot of my bootcamp students land remote jobs as well.

[00:03:25] But the harsh reality is there is less remote data analyst positions than you think there are. Pause and answer this simple question. Would you rather work in person, remotely or hybrid? If you're like me, you probably voted remote or hybrid.

[00:03:39] And if you did one of those, well, you're like 97% of job seekers. In a recent study, 97% of workers said they prefer working remotely or hybrid. Now remote work is fantastic. Don't get me wrong. But the issue is that most data analyst positions aren't remote or hybrid.

[00:03:58] They're actually in person. According to data I've been collecting from LinkedIn jobs, 67% of data analyst positions are actually in person. This means the remaining 33% are hybrid or remote with about an even split between the two. Basically out of every three jobs, two of them are in person.

[00:04:17] But remember that 97% of workers want to be hybrid or remote. This means that we can extrapolate that 97% of workers are competing for only 33% of the jobs. In fact, both of those jobs I showed earlier in the video were remote data analyst positions.

[00:04:34] And that's probably one of the reasons why they were so competitive. The harsh truth is the demand for remote data analyst positions is high, but the supply is actually kind of low, which causes a ton of frustration. If you're looking for a remote data analyst position, it's great.

[00:04:48] You can apply to any opening in the world, but that also means so can everyone else and everyone else does. And that's why you get so many candidates applying to the same job. For me, it's actually a little bit easier to think of it like fishing.

[00:05:02] Basically you have Lake A and you have Lake B. Lake A has only 33% of the fish in the lake, but 97% of the fishermen are fishing in Lake A. Lake B has actually 66% of the fish, but only 3% of the fishermen are there. Which Lake would you rather fish at?

[00:05:20] Lake A or Lake B? Lake B, right? You have a much higher chance of catching a fish in the pond that has more fish and less fishermen. The same goes with the job market as well. Everyone wants a remote job, but there's not that many.

[00:05:33] And so when you're applying to only remote jobs, you're going to get lots of rejections and it's going to feel near impossible to actually land one of those roles. So that's my suggestion. Try to focus more on hybrid or in-person roles.

[00:05:46] Hybrid is great because you get many of the benefits that are the same as remote work without the bigger pond because you're only competing with people from that geographical reason. So there's less fishermen, but you can still have a lot of the benefits of the remote work.

[00:05:58] In fact, I have a few students in my bootcamp who work hybrid and they only have to come to the office once a month or even once a quarter. To me, I would almost rename that 98% remote and I think people would be a lot more interested

[00:06:10] in that than calling it hybrid. The third reason it's so hard to land a data job right now is something called ghost postings. Companies actually post data jobs that they actually have no intention of filling and these are called ghost postings.

[00:06:23] In fact, in a recent survey, one out of every 10 managers has had a job open for over six months for varying reasons with maybe the intention of never actually filling it. I know that sounds crazy, right? Why would these hiring managers and recruiters be doing this?

[00:06:38] Well, there's a couple of reasons that they do it. Number one is so that they can have people in their pipeline. A lot of jobs actually have high turnover with people who are maybe leaving for whatever

[00:06:47] reason and so the recruiters and hiring managers want to have a good base of potential candidates that they could hire in the future. So it's almost as if they're putting people in the hiring pipeline in preparation that

[00:06:58] there will be an opening down the road, but there isn't right now. Now if this is the only reason that companies did ghost postings, I would still be frustrated, but I would understand and I think a lot of job seekers could understand as well because

[00:07:09] potentially you could be getting a call for a job opening down the road and at least they already have your information in the system. But unfortunately, companies do these ghost postings for a lot of other reasons that are a lot more nefarious than this.

[00:07:22] For example, 43% of managers who admitted to doing these ghost postings said that they do it to keep current employees motivated. And I absolutely hate that. It makes me so mad that a company would think that the best way to motivate their employees

[00:07:35] would be to make them think, to gaslight them into thinking that their job is in jeopardy, that it's on the line. It's like you couldn't just pay them more or give them bonuses or treat them better. You have to make them scared. It makes me so mad.

[00:07:48] But that's not the only evil reason companies are doing this. Another one is actually to get information about the current market. When you're filling out those applications, you're giving them your education, your past work experience, your current salary, your past salary, what your salary expectations are.

[00:08:05] And you're actually feeding their database of compensation. You're giving them access to what Facebook pays and what ExxonMobil pays and what Airbnb pays. And they take all that information, put it into an AI or machine learning algorithm,

[00:08:18] and that creates their compensation packages for the people that they hire. That way they know that we're paying the best in the industry or we're right below or we're average. You're basically giving them data that they use for their compensation algorithms. Incredibly frustrating, I know.

[00:08:32] Another evil reason that these companies do these ghost postings is for shareholders and stock price. They want to make it appear as if the company's growing, that they're hiring, that they can say we have 400 jobs listed right now that we're ready to hire for.

[00:08:46] In reality, they have no desire to fill those roles, but they want to appear to shareholders and stakeholders that they're growing. Once again, super frustrating and there's not much we can do about it. These job postings are hard to know if they're job postings or not.

[00:09:00] The only thing you can really do is try to stick to fresh job postings within the last two weeks or so and to cross check the company's website as well. All of this to say that the data analyst job market right now sucks.

[00:09:12] It feels nearly impossible to land a data job currently. There's just so much competition for each job posting, especially the remote ones. But it's possible. It's a promise and I see it happen every day. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode.

[00:09:25] I have two links in the show notes down below. One will go to a couple interviews I did with hiring managers and recruiters, and the other will go to some awesome success stories of normal people like you and me landing data jobs this year.

[00:09:37] Go take a listen to those. Talk later.