#018: Analytics Advice for the Recent Grad

The following is a straight-up machine translation. It has not been human-reviewed or human-corrected. However, we did replace the original transcription, produced in 2017, with an updated one produced using OpenAI’s WhisperX in 2025, which, trust us, is much, much better than the original. Still, we apologize on behalf of the machines for any text that winds up being incorrect, nonsensical, or offensive. We have asked the machine to do better, but it simply responds with, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

00:00:03.67 [Announcer]: Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. Three analytics pros and the occasional guest discussing digital analytics issues of the day. Find them on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash analytics hour. And now, the Digital Analytics Power Hour.

00:00:25.76 [Michael Helbling]: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 18. 18! Don’t act like that’s some kind of milestone. On today’s show, we’ve got my other two co-hosts, Tim Wilson and Jim Cain.

00:00:45.26 [Tim Wilson]: Hello. Like the Digital Analytics Power Hour, I am old enough to serve in the military.

00:00:51.14 [Michael Helbling]: And of course, I’m Michael Helblink.

00:00:53.24 [Jim Cain]: Don’t forget drinking Quebec. Our podcast can drink in Quebec now.

00:00:57.27 [Michael Helbling]: And I think our podcast can smoke cigarettes in most states, right?

00:01:02.95 [Jim Cain]: Wow. It’s a big, big episode. It’s a big episode for us. There’s a segway in here, though, to first job. There is.

00:01:10.28 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, actually at the age of 18 and older, that’s where folks are getting out of high school, getting into college, and starting to make those career transitions.

00:01:19.49 [Tim Wilson]: Dropping out of college so they can pursue a career in web analytics.

00:01:23.25 [Michael Helbling]: Actually, that is a great idea because you will relieve yourself of all that college debt and get into a great career. Boom. Let’s talk about it. Tonight’s topic, analytics advice for the recent graduate or a person who dropped out and doesn’t want to go back to school. All right. Not that we’re anti-education because we’re not. Some of us even have degrees. However, that’s what we want to talk about.

00:01:45.72 [Tim Wilson]: I gotta say degrees of vulgarity when it comes to Mr. Kane.

00:01:51.72 [Michael Helbling]: Is it called something else in Canada? swearing no a degree it’s like yeah we just thought you’re like a you got your letters I don’t know all right we’ll cut that part out All right, so let’s say you just got into the workforce, you’re just wrapping up school, or you’re somebody who’s looking to hire somebody junior and just starting out. What are the kinds of tips and tricks people can use to get in this awesome digital analytics space? And this actually is a topic that came to us from a listener, Ben Cates. a listener who suggested this topic to us and we’re very thankful. So Ben, this one’s for you. All right. So guys, what does a college grad need to do to separate themselves in this doggie-dog digital analytics market?

00:02:38.90 [Jim Cain]: We’ve talked before about some of the courses and programs that are available that you can take as college courses. Or I just saw one on, I could find it. Coursera? Coursera, thank you. There’s a Coursera one on digital analytics. I was intrigued. Those things are fine and well. I would actually recommend looking at doing the schooling after you have the job. When we’re interviewing, again, we’ve talked about the interview discussion and hiring recent grads. We hire a lot of recent grads. But I’m looking for people who think a certain way. We can teach someone what buttons to click in Adobe. We can talk in more details about certain things, but just going right into the, do you immediately throw yourself at a bunch of online schooling or college courses or web analytics? And my default right now would be, no, just get out there. You guys agreed?

00:03:25.43 [Tim Wilson]: I agree. I think a lot of the courses, I think that it generally, and this goes beyond digital analytics, that it is a lot easier from a post-secondary education view to have actually been trying to do something and exposed in the real world, and the education then makes a lot more sense. I think there’s also some education out there that sort of operates in an ironically academic or not ironically academic level of these are the things you should be doing and making the leap to the actual application of what can I do day in and day out that’s going to make me better. I think education is going to have taken course era courses. I’ve gone to conferences. I’ve taken, you know, am a big fan of training. I’ve read books. But I agree. I think that digital analytics almost requires that you’ve got to get your hands dirty first. If you’ve never logged into Google Analytics and you go and sit and take a Google Analytics course, it’s going to be really hard to absorb as much as if you’ve been struggling through Google Analytics and Googling for content about Google Analytics and then go take a course and then can ask some really smart questions. So from a Learning the tools absolutely. I think you need to dive in first figure a bunch of stuff out and have the the handful of things that are bugging you that you want to ask an instructor or your classmates, but I also think that there’s still a lot of education that is kind of envisioning analytics as maybe it could or should be or as it was eight or ten years ago. And that can be counterproductive. You know, much better to say, I’m a new grad. I want to find somewhere to add value in my, let’s assuming you have a job. And that means really two things. One, what are people asking me to deliver explicitly? Okay, let me deliver that and show that I can be helpful and useful. But then the second part, which is where the development and growth comes from, is do I really, really understand their business challenges? Do I understand their business questions? Am I finding ways to try to help them? And am I asking them a lot of questions? Am I asking my peers and my manager a lot of questions to try to understand how I can actually contribute to the business? So now I sound like the academic theoretician that I was railing about.

00:05:54.50 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, and I think that’s the other really critical thing. Your major is actually not as important as you think it is when it comes to a career in digital analytics. It’s about connecting what you know to what the field of analytics is and being able to show somebody that you can bridge that gap. And so all of those experiences, whether they be classroom, extracurricular, those kinds of things, all of those can be a building block to get you in the door into those kinds of roles. I would also say that more often than not, agencies will hire a college graduate before, say, an or a company or organization will for a web analyst or digital analytics role. And usually you have to kind of think about that because There’s different ways that those roles express themselves, especially at a large agency versus in an organization. That being said, I’m a huge fan. If you can find it, organizations, a lot of times some organizations have rotating analyst program where you actually rotate through multiple disciplines. And if digital analytics or web analytics is one of those rotations, that’s great.

00:06:58.71 [Tim Wilson]: Really? Like, do you know, can you name any of those that have, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where that’s on a rotation. It seems like it’s always just kind of like a service, like the help desk, and they’re like, oh no, no, we’re not gonna send anybody through there.

00:07:10.85 [Michael Helbling]: At one of my previous employers, we had a rotating analyst program that sent folks through accounting, sent folks through analytics, marketing, and merchandising.

00:07:22.34 [Tim Wilson]: What was the expected destination role for them?

00:07:26.47 [Michael Helbling]: So after that program, which I believe was a two year program, then they would have some input into where they would let land full time within the organization. So they would go into one of those organizations that was part of that program. And it was phenomenal. A, the people in the program were outstanding, really high quality people. And when they rotated through web analytics, we just made sure to show them why web analytics was so awesome. And then we ended up with some pretty awesome talent.

00:07:55.31 [Tim Wilson]: What was the, how long was the stent?

00:07:57.64 [Michael Helbling]: Well, yeah, six to eight months, something like that. I think you did three rotations over two years.

00:08:03.53 [Tim Wilson]: So that’s fun. And I’m realizing now how often I’ve been in or seen organizations that have somewhere in kind of the marketing world, they have some sort of rotation kind of structurally built in, or they have even programs where they kind of send people off to some mothership to kind of get immersed in some other aspect of, you know, with the intent of rounding them out and yet none of those organizations that I’ve worked with have included an actual rotation in analytics. And that seems like a phenomenal job. Although I think we talked on earlier episode that if you were in analytics and realized maybe it wasn’t for you, it was still going to hold you in good stead. So I think even people who they don’t find that as their home having six months in it, it’s going to hold them and make them fantastic.

00:08:50.73 [Michael Helbling]: just like it would have been amazing if I’d spent nine months in a finance organization early in my career. So I would understand some of the things I had to learn the hard way throughout my career. There’s a lot of, I would say if you’re at career fairs and things like that, really seek out those kinds of opportunities. I think those can produce over a couple of years a really well-rounded starting point into the field of digital analytics. The other thing I want to say is I feel like analytics gets this sort of bad rap where people think they’re going to spend their lives feeding punch cards into a mainframe in a basement somewhere. Probably no one who’s actually a recent grad will even get that reference, but hey, that’s how, that’s how computers used to work. Well, actually it was even before my day.

00:09:35.03 [Tim Wilson]: I was going to say, that’s even predate to you.

00:09:36.93 [Michael Helbling]: When I was a youngster and accounting for my boss told me stories about how that would happen. But actually being an analyst is a super sexy role that is so multifaceted. And that’s something that everybody needs to know. So if you are in school now and you’re hearing this podcast for some crazy reason, because we went viral because of something Jim or Tim said, because it was funny. Remember that point. Being in analytics is actually super sexy. And also your five year salary trajectory is outstanding right now. Your first year salary trajectory is pretty crappy, but after five years, you’re going to be doing okay.

00:10:16.76 [Jim Cain]: One of the things I wanted to add in is, because whenever we talk about career development or skills, I always kind of flag the play and say, doesn’t this apply to everybody and everything? And I think this one is kind of exclusive, maybe to digital in general, but definitely to analytics in that, you know, there’s, again, we’ve talked about this before, but there’s still no good university level programs or what they would call colleges in the United States. You know, you kind of have to get in and apprentice and learn your stuff. And something that I would say is I would bet a lot of people look at digital analytics and go interesting, but that’s not my career. And what they don’t understand is that digital analytics is a shortcut to a lot of very, very senior roles. You know, when you look at a big, big company and you think, You know, I want to be a CMO or I want to be a vice president of e-commerce or I want to be more senior, senior jobs. You got to work your way all the way up through that org and there’s a way to come in and be a very visible dynamic digital analyst and shortcut your way into a lot of places. I’ve seen it. I don’t know if you guys have.

00:11:16.29 [Tim Wilson]: I have not seen. Yeah, seriously. I guess maybe I’m more orbsly working with that people who get passionate about analytics, not that they don’t wind up senior and highly regarded, but that’s actually I’m trying to think of the CMOs where I know their background or even leaping over to, you know, head of product marketing or it’s been much more. I want to just Googling a guy who used to work for me, who was like really good, really motivated and really likes what he was doing, but it was clearly kind of driven to be kind of out a little farther out and he successfully made that transition. But I feel like right now the people who really are killing it in analytics really love what they’re doing and feel like their work isn’t done.

00:11:59.21 [Michael Helbling]: The other thing that I think is worth mentioning about considering this career as you come out of other disciplines, say you’re a marketing major or finance major or just at a general business degree, as you come out of school, the other thing that’s really awesome about digital analytics is that there’s so much room to be fairly entrepreneurial, which I think is one of the real strengths of you know, this generation of folks, millennials or whatever you want to say. And I hate to stereotype people. And obviously in other episodes, we scoff at millennials, but we don’t actually hate millennials. We love them. They’re just different and they expect things to happen more quickly.

00:12:35.52 [Tim Wilson]: Lip service paid? Check. Yeah, exactly.

00:12:37.41 [Michael Helbling]: Carry on. But that’s what’s so awesome about this industry is it gives you, to your point earlier, Jim, it does give you room to expand into other roles more quickly. It gives you the opportunity to learn very quickly, become an expert in your area over the course of five to 10 years, and then be able to be a leader in the space, which is very rare for most places. And obviously, digital analytics is maturing a little bit. We’ve all been in this space for a little while. It’s certainly 12, 15 years ago, there was literally five, quote unquote, thought leaders in the entire industry. And now there’s a lot more than that, but there’s still plenty of room. There’s still plenty of innovation happening. There’s still plenty of opportunities for people to be very entrepreneurial.

00:13:24.49 [Tim Wilson]: I was thinking the entrepreneurial a different way that when earlier I said that you can do what people are asking you for from deliverables. I want a weekly report. I want you to pull this number. Can you tell me X or Y? And to me, the opportunity for the analyst from an entrepreneurial is not necessarily thinking what is my next role? Where am I going to transition? How am I going to get out of what I’m doing? Now, if you’re actually recent grad, a new hire and you’re in analytics and saying this is really fun, I just want to kind of push my career and I wouldn’t mind pushing it in analytics. The entrepreneurial aspect to me is how can I carve out 10 or 20 or 30% of my time or how can I just selectively choose which of these things I’m going to deliver what was asked and they will be happy and I will be fine and I will get a check mark and that will lead to advancement you know, positive performance reviews, what are the other things that I think, oh, I could really do something interesting, and I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’m gonna find the time. I’m gonna definitely clear the bar of I delivered what I was asked for, but I feel like you’ve got to be pushing to, where’s my interest? What’s the business problem? How can I, I’ll use the surprise and delight. What can I do that kind of goes beyond? Like that is my, if we get back to that, to Ben’s question, you know, what advice do you have for new grads? It’s like, well, don’t do just what you’re asked. Do just what you’re asked for somebody who is going to get upset if you do any more or not exactly pulling exactly the data in the table and in the Excel spreadsheet they asked for. But for the people who actually spend just a smidgen of time articulating the problem they’re trying to solve and telling you what table of data they want, figure out, try to solve their problem and you’ll miss as often as you hit that you’ll learn along the way and you’ll figure out if you really really love it and do you want to now move into the role they’re doing or do you want to stay in analytics and keep doing more of that.

00:15:20.09 [Jim Cain]: So, it’s funny that Ben’s asking this one because, you know, I know the team he’s a part of, he’s on a really badass team at a great brand, and he actually got one of the really rare, fantastic entry-level jobs for an analyst. But let’s say you’re someone who wants to be in the discipline and there’s nothing entry-level that you can get your hands on. I think Michael touched on it earlier. Pick a companion industry where there is a ton of complimentary value and go there. Like, I want to be a web analyst in two years. So for the next 18 months, I’m going to go work for a finance department somewhere where I’m going to be, I mean, my recommendation is always going to be inside sales just because that worked out for me. But I’m going to go be in an entry level sales role for 18 months to ask questions and learn how businesses work and stuff. But in 18 months, I’m going to use that. I’m going to take it somewhere else. I interviewed a young woman earlier this week and she has several years of project management experience. She’s ready to take her role to the next level. We were having a great conversation and really a project manager in a business that only does web analytics is basically a specialized web analyst role in my opinion. So I said, hypothetical scenario, you’re going into a large company and you’re going to help them implement the tag manager and then an analytics tool in the tag. How would you do it? She said oh easy So I would ask these people these things and we’d build the requirements and then I’d make a Gantt chart and there’d be these dependencies And I said okay, so now let’s operate under the scenario that the director of marketing and the director of sales Fucking hate each other and she went as like that’s every single company you’re ever gonna work with an analytics. How do you play that? No, but the thing is that a good analyst is going to immediately get the vibe for, I need to sit between marketing and sales and here’s how I interact with those people. And that’s something that you can learn eventually and you will learn as a web analyst. We kind of live in that weird hybrid line. But then to be able to take those two groups when you have them in line and build and execute a good project. Having 18 months or two years of digital project management experience is solid gold as a web analyst. That’s going to get you places fast. Same thing with 18 months to two years of experience as someone doing like a crappy job in a finance department. Like those skills and those chops and those calluses you’ve built up, you can immediately turn into value to move your analytics career forward.

00:17:31.68 [Tim Wilson]: But I think some of that, that we’re getting back to sort of stumbling into the profession and maybe part of it is it’s useful to have been somewhere else doing something else that’s complimentary. Time is going to be off on this because we record obviously a bit before we edit and publish, but very recently, extremely recently from when we’re recording. So he has no Ryan, Ryan Praskey turns out his name is longer than that. I did not realize GSC his recent blog post on how I found my career in digital analytics on Craigslist seven years ago.

00:18:05.20 [Michael Helbling]: I did see that. And it was a really great article.

00:18:08.25 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah. So that was, I think, sort of playing into this and that he was in analytics but certainly not in digital analytics and then it’s kind of kind of comical that at the time Symphonic was posting on Craigslist and he wrote a nice cover letter and got in and kind of the rest is history, but I think that’s legitimate. I hate to tell someone who is a new digital analyst that what they should do is go do something other than digital analytics, because I don’t think that’s fair advice. I’ll call out Ben again. He’s in Philly, right? Philly’s got a hell of a strong group of people in digital analytics from firms. They’ve got, you know, Sierra Interactive is there. Moess Media, I think is there. Aren’t they in Philly? Aaron Moess? I don’t know if I’m pronouncing his last name correctly. They’ve got, they’ve had a web analytics Wednesday that is fairly strong, and that’s only saying fairly strong because they’re super strong, but I’ve got competitive tendencies in Columbus. They’ve got, you know, Chris Johansson, so Randy’s Witch. I think there’s a lot of people in Philly, and there’s a part that if you’re in a community and start doing a little bit of exploration of Are people getting together and talking? Are there web analytics Wednesdays? Are there AMA meetups? Go to meetup.com or there are tech groups that meet up. There’s something to be said for don’t think that all of your education is going to come from within your company. If you’re at one of these places that’s large enough and kind of I’d say forward thinking although these programs have existed for a long time that are doing rotational programs and they’re looking for developing their employees, that’s great. But the fact is most major metropolitan areas have lots of other people who are doing digital analytics and they’ve been doing it for a while and with luck there is some sort of loose community, a DAA chapter, DAA symposiums, that it does make sense to get out and meet those people and you don’t have to go with a you know you’re networking and that sometimes gets the label of you’re looking for a job well no you’re not looking for a job now you might not be looking for a job in two years you might never be looking for a job but I can definitely say in Columbus that it has been it’s really nice to know the people locally who have expertise in areas that I don’t and I know that for the recent College grads and some of them had been coming to Web Analytics Wednesdays for their last couple of years at college because we had some awesome professors who were encouraging them to come. They’ve got a network I get you know Google chatted by a guy who I’ve known since he was. a couple years into his degree program at a local university and he’s now on his third job out of school and doing quite well and he reaches out to me and I reach out to him. So I think, you know, millennials or not, it’s useful to meet other people. It’s part of this reason we like to go to conferences and hang out in the lobby bar, it’s good to make personal connections because jobs, there may be future jobs there, but it could go both ways. You could be hiring people, bringing them into your organization at your level, above you or below you, but also you could be saying, oh, this is somebody who I once had a conversation about with this weird paid search thing. I wonder if they really figured it out. Let me reach out to them. So I think the nature of our industry is the broader the network you have, from tapping into resources when you hit a challenge and somebody in your organization might not know how to solve it. You might not know how to solve it, but it’s good to know someone and even better if they’re local who can help you solve it.

00:21:50.61 [Michael Helbling]: So would you say, Tim, from a digital analytics perspective, it’s always sunny in Philadelphia?

00:21:57.86 [Tim Wilson]: You got a tune for us?

00:21:59.00 [Michael Helbling]: Well, I was wondering if you’re about to break out into Rock Flag and Eagle there.

00:22:02.83 [Tim Wilson]: Well, how does that sound? What does that go like?

00:22:04.50 [Jim Cain]: Yeah, I don’t know. Take us through it. Is there, if only someone.

00:22:07.22 [Michael Helbling]: If only. I’ll tell you what. Someone out there knows that song, records it for us. We will play it on the show. Absolutely.

00:22:15.90 [Tim Wilson]: Only I know exactly when I hit the record button. So.

00:22:18.86 [Michael Helbling]: That’s right. Okay, so you make some really good points and especially getting into industry events and networking. And I think one thing that I would say to help people kind of turn that on its head in their advantage or in their favor a little bit is bring something to that that you are doing. A lot of times I hear people get into those environments and they sort of ask questions like, well, how do you break into the industry? How do you There’s no breaking into the industry. Just start doing stuff and have something to talk about. People will take an interest in what you’re doing. And I think there’s a couple of really great ways to do that. The analysis exchange is outstanding. And I just saw there were some recent postings of new ones. So it’s not dead. It’s actually still alive. And that’s all that’s but that’s awesome it is such a great opportunity to get involved with a real deal analytics project working with an experienced mentor who’s going to kind of give you the give you some structure and help you get through it.

00:23:21.78 [Tim Wilson]: loosely affiliated with the analysis exchange that if you have any nonprofits that you know of or that you work with it works really really well if you say they have a website no one is doing anything with it you’re a volunteer no nonprofit ever in the history of mankind has said no to a volunteer if they’re doing something that’s could potentially be productive that if you have a nonprofit you work with and say, hey, you have a website, you have Google Analytics on it or you don’t have Google Analytics on it. I’d love to spend a little time kind of poking around with your site. If you help them sort of post a project, guess what? They will select you as the student and then you get a mentor. And just because you’re not a student in a university, in a school, like that’s not the intent of an Alice exchange. Yeah, it can be anybody. It can be anybody. And even if you’re working and have a day job as an analyst, you are still absolutely welcome to be a student. And then you wind up connecting to a mentor who you can pepper with questions about other aspects of your career.

00:24:26.07 [Michael Helbling]: And if you knock it out of the park and that project, like it has happened where that mentor is going on to hire that student, like that kind of stuff happens for sure.

00:24:33.92 [Jim Cain]: So Tim, what you’re saying, because you are loosely affiliated with analysis exchanges, let’s say someone wants to start a career measurement and they basically go to a decent nonprofit and say, I want to sign you up for this. If you’ll participate, they will for sure be the ones who are students.

00:24:50.14 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, because the non-profit gets to kind of pick who they want to work with. Like the people who apply to be the students and the mentors, the organization gets to say, oh, we got four people who submitted. We’d like to go with this one. So yes. I assume that is public or known. I mean, it makes sense.

00:25:08.76 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, the organization can choose their team if there’s more than one. Actually, that would be a really good test, Tim. You and I should apply to be the mentors of the same project and we see who gets picked.

00:25:18.27 [Jim Cain]: It’s always got to be a thing. I was just gonna say.

00:25:22.06 [Tim Wilson]: Is Jim gonna be the student?

00:25:23.93 [Michael Helbling]: No, Jim can apply to actually be a three-way.

00:25:26.19 [Jim Cain]: I can’t keep up with you guys.

00:25:28.01 [Michael Helbling]: Come on. Actually, I’m kind of scared after I said it. I was like, they’re gonna pick Tim.

00:25:34.50 [Jim Cain]: But I’ll tell you, I mean, if this episode applies to you and you get yourself on Analysis Exchange, I haven’t mentored in a couple of years, but if you go to the Facebook page or whatever and say, you know, hey guys of DAPH, I’m in there, I’ll mentor one, I’m in.

00:25:49.42 [Tim Wilson]: I probably will.

00:25:51.41 [Jim Cain]: Yeah, I haven’t done one in years. I really I actually really enjoyed doing an analysis exchange mentorship It was something for doctors without borders and I think it was like about three and a half years ago four years ago Really enjoyed it. I would totally do that again. In fact, I’m gonna go check out the site myself tomorrow.

00:26:06.29 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah No, it’s great. I’ve mentored four or five different projects and loved it every time. It’s been really great. It’s one of those just really, really great ideas that came out of some of the career building and things like that that was happening in the industry. It’s a great way for someone to get a fresh look at a set of analytics problems. Other things that Millennials right out of school trying to figure out what I can call these young adults when you’re coming coming up straight out of the school is get involved in Twitter and the measure slack I think that’s another way even just to ask questions It’s so great the measure slack has really taken off as a great place for people to get information about

00:26:50.21 [Tim Wilson]: has it really? today and was like I am seeing this weird thing what the hell and and I had a two links and a detailed response followed like four hours later by another super useful response so because of the organization of it I absolutely do and it not that it’s it’s not it’s not everybody in analytics right there are people who are like what still what slack the the ones that are on there are because they’re on there because they’re they want to help people and they’re really good at what

00:27:35.99 [Michael Helbling]: I mean, there’s really three keys to digital analytics success today. There’s listen to this podcast be on the measure slack and Well, maybe there’s just two keys to being a successful digital analyst analyst today. I thought it was rock flag and eagle Oh, yeah, no, I don’t know which the eagle is sore learn how to use Excel

00:27:58.89 [Jim Cain]: Okay, I was going to totally make fun of Measure Slack, because I thought it was starting to get a little stagnant, but I haven’t logged on lately. But I’ll tell you, that Yahoo Forum kicked off my career as an analyst.

00:28:08.91 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, that’s where I started my career too. And maybe we all can remember what it’s like to be a friend.

00:28:17.00 [Jim Cain]: Okay. But, uh, you know, I was at the beginning of my career. There was this forum with some senior people and some people at my level and it was off. So, you know, if measure slack is turning into something like that, then I take back all the shit I just talked, you’re starting it off, get in, get in there and read everything.

00:28:32.00 [Tim Wilson]: Which just, I mean, we don’t have to put in the show notes. It’s literally, it’s a bitly and then it’s add, measure, slack, with capitalized capital A, capital M, capital S, it’s a Google form and you’ll get added. And even if you don’t get a lot out of the measure of Slack, you will learn about Slack, which is just a phenomenal platform. And we I mean, even if you’re if you’re Jim Cain and you log in once every 12 days, it’s not as not as awesome. But for the rest of us, it’s fantastic.

00:29:01.26 [Michael Helbling]: It’s definitely growing. And I think it’s being more and more useful to a lot of people. I think it’s it’s great.

00:29:07.47 [Tim Wilson]: And for podcast planning, it would be fantastic if all three of us were right.

00:29:12.15 [Jim Cain]: You’re not going to name any names, are you?

00:29:13.83 [Michael Helbling]: Not going to name any names. I don’t see how that would really be helpful at all.

00:29:17.52 [Jim Cain]: I think these slacks, these slacks, they’re on the internet, and it’s going to be a big thing. Yeah. This internet of slacks.

00:29:27.50 [Michael Helbling]: Internet of slacks. Well, you know, I’m using a new tool called Trousers, and I’m just waiting to see how that hands out.

00:29:35.61 [Jim Cain]: In Canada, it’s called Chesterfield. It is the next big thing.

00:29:40.64 [Michael Helbling]: All right. What else? How about somebody who’s looking to hire? How would you encourage them to hire? Because I think the challenge is when you’re a hiring manager, you probably actually want to go get somebody with experience most of the time. When would you be willing to go out and take a chance on somebody that’s just starting out in the industry? How do you line that up?

00:30:02.72 [Tim Wilson]: Funny, if I actually needed to hire, I would go raid agencies. If I was a brand new, this gets to something you were mentioning earlier, I think agencies are actually, my entire career has been backwards from a, what I think it should have been, but I am increasingly finding myself telling new grads or soon to be grads, if they can get in at an agency and maybe they will love it and they will be there for their careers, in which case they’re probably not fantastic analysts. Maybe that didn’t come out right. It is a fantastic way to get immersed because agencies, regardless of the role, have kind of a reputation well known for chewing people up and spitting them out. And if you’re an analyst and you’re Eric Matasoff and have an amazing fortitude, you’ll last longer than two or three years before you’re chewed up and spit out. But people at agencies get burnt out, so if I’m hiring, I actually would probably be saying go find the junior analysts and agencies who are ready to put their head through a wall. And chances are they will have gotten five or six years of on-the-job education in a year or two. And the only risk is that you’ll need to maybe break them of some habits.

00:31:12.28 [Michael Helbling]: Well, and they’ll already have some wackadoo title like associate director of strategy and analytics after four years.

00:31:19.33 [Tim Wilson]: Rear Admiral of the API, but you’re definitely for the ones who are frustrated and then you actually probe as to why they’re frustrated.

00:31:28.14 [Michael Helbling]: So and I don’t disagree with you. I think it’s a it’s a very fertile ground because and this is the way I describe it to people is the difference between breadth and depth when you’re in an agency, you’re going out really broad and you’re getting exposure to lots of different things. If you’re in an industry, if you’re in an organization, you’re going deep into the problems of that organization and you’re getting a deep look at those particular problems and how to solve them. And that’s the kind of the way that I kind of look at those very, and that’s a really broad description, but it’s kind of how I view those two things. And honestly, anyone listening who’s only ever worked in an agency or anyone listening who’s only ever worked in an organization, there’s some definite merit to spending a little bit of time on the other side of that to kind of round out your perspectives and exposure and build that capability. But I think you really learn how to be a great analyst working inside an organization. I think you learn how to be a good supplier of solutions when you’re working at an agency.

00:32:25.17 [Tim Wilson]: I think you also, depending on the agency, generally you get a broader exposure to business and business models. So I think that being one who started on the inside of company organization, I knew high tech B2B digital marketing, lead marketing inside and out. When I was in an agency and all of a sudden it is e-commerce and it’s CPG. and it’s some B2B. I learned probably not as much about analytics, but a shit ton more about business and different businesses and business models that then going back, not that I’ve gone back into a single organization, but going back and saying, now I understand because I’ve seen enough different models. How do these different industries make money? How does marketing work differently? And I mean, holy crap, Eric, was it Razorfish for like six and a half years? So can we just be clear?

00:33:20.07 [Jim Cain]: There’s two kinds of agencies that we’re talking about, right? Ones that only do analytics. Like, are we talking analytics only agencies? Yeah, no, we’re talking big agencies like the big boys. So companies that will do anything for nickel agencies?

00:33:33.74 [Michael Helbling]: pure play. No, I don’t want to say bad things, but mostly just do analytics as a as one piece of a much broader level of services.

00:33:42.57 [Tim Wilson]: Creative strategy dev and analytics is just like project management. That’s got to be part of that.

00:33:48.52 [Michael Helbling]: It’s reporting. Yeah, it’s a bolt on.

00:33:50.77 [Jim Cain]: I know I’m going to get all shitty about it. But it’s just yeah, I know it’s To be clear, when we’re saying agencies, we’re not talking about, you know, search discovery or napkin or… Yeah, we’re not calling all of us to mystify an agent. Or, okay. Yeah, they’re a consortium. Or dudes in a van in Portland.

00:34:08.02 [Michael Helbling]: No, but I mean, that’s the thing is those pure play organizations will typically require some experience, probably most of the time, because they’re usually operating at a little bit higher level, or at least should be operating at a higher level.

00:34:22.66 [Jim Cain]: Okay, cool. I just I wasn’t I wasn’t sure where where I fit into that. And you were talking about agency this agency that I was like, well, I think I think analytics.

00:34:30.65 [Tim Wilson]: I think analytics agencies are a little bit of a little bit of a true description. But I think when you go to nine out of 10 marketers and say agency, they’re thinking my digital agency, my print agency, my brandy, my agency of record, that analytics agency is actually my stint in an optimization agency. It was kind of labeled as an agency very, very deliberately because they wanted to get in as a permanent relationship. So it makes sense to call yourself an analytics agency, but I think when most people And that’s actually another good thing for new grads is that the terminology, what’s fluid and what’s fixed? Like, what do people mean when somebody just generically refers to an agency? What do they generally mean when they refer to, I mean, hell, I feel like I’m still learning terminology between UX, IA, you know, different things like that. That’s the sort of stuff you want to learn, which is if you’re in one organization, agency or internal, they’re probably going to have their own little twist on whatever that terminology is. And there’s another reason to get out and talk to people digitally or in person who are in other areas to sort of learn what’s kind of the industry norm. Oh, you’re a director. Oh, at an agency. Okay then. Two years out of school? Great.

00:35:51.25 [Michael Helbling]: No, this is great. Alright, we need to wrap up before Jim makes another anti-agency comment. I just wanted to know what you meant.

00:35:59.04 [Jim Cain]: Is that so hard? Is it so hard?

00:36:01.48 [Michael Helbling]: I think this is good and we’ve kind of ranged all over. What would you take away as a core nuggetary item for the recent grass?

00:36:10.15 [Jim Cain]: Firstly, don’t ever say nuggetary.

00:36:11.91 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, never say nuggetary.

00:36:12.71 [Jim Cain]: I would never hire anyone that said nuggetary.

00:36:14.48 [Tim Wilson]: I think Ben, Kate, I hope you enjoyed the first 17 episodes. And I’m sorry you now realize that when you actually have a topic that was focused on exactly what you wanted, that potentially you got nothing useful out of it. And you’ll never listen to it again. And I’m sorry.

00:36:29.36 [Jim Cain]: In this week’s episode of Rambling and then Found Wanting, we discussed new grass. So I think maybe I come from a little bit of a different experience because Canada does have a bit of a different job market. We do have a bit of a different digital market than the United States. But, you know, again, I really think my biggest takeaway from today would be, and again, we’re fostering and mentoring new talent for napkin all the time. Take the classes. learn as much as you can learn whenever you get the chance to learn but web analytics is this lovely touches all departments discipline where no like you never say that two years I spent in supply chain was wasted or that 18 months I spent in web development was wasted it’s one of those that nine months I spent in US Postal Service compliance was pretty was raw value pretty close to being wasted I worked for Corel for five and a half months. So that five and a half months of trying to get people to buy WordPerfect was actually wasted. I did that. Everything I’ve done ties into this very nicely. So, you know, if you’re having a hard time finding a digital measurement job, but you want one, find something complimentary and you’re going to be able to leverage the hell out of it. And then finally, don’t ever say, meet you at the beginning of an email or warm regards at the end of an email. That’s probably the best advice I can give anybody ever.

00:37:46.88 [Tim Wilson]: TTFN though. That kills, right?

00:37:50.87 [Jim Cain]: WTF is TTFN.

00:37:52.81 [Michael Helbling]: Warm regards. I think we just found our show sign off.

00:37:56.98 [Jim Cain]: If you ever throw one of those at me, you’re on a spam list. Like immediately. That’s my kryptonite right there.

00:38:02.22 [Tim Wilson]: I have to stop. Sure, there’s a guy who worked for me a couple of times, and he signs off his emails, and in a way that I’m like, that is just, I can’t say what it is, because there would be too many people who would say, yep, we know who that is. I’m like, that needs to stop. But I never, I managed him twice. I never got to say, not that.

00:38:24.37 [Jim Cain]: I’m gonna throw in the- You can respond with milk toast regards. That’s my favorite response.

00:38:29.88 [Tim Wilson]: You can have that.

00:38:31.68 [Michael Helbling]: burning hot regards.

00:38:33.55 [Tim Wilson]: That’s helping is working on his sign off for this podcast right now. I will throw my one, I think my takeaway is connect with others outside your organization. as kind of the one digitally or in person that and maybe that’s because I look at that throughout my career. What has I’ve grown the most is because I have established relationships outside. You guys are good examples of that. So I’d probably put that put that in.

00:39:05.16 [Michael Helbling]: I would agree with that. Early in my career, I found a few people that I could trust, that could mentor me, and they played a very important role in my development as a professional and a voice of reason as I tried to navigate throughout my career. I still talk to some of those folks today. I would put you in that category, Tim, as a friend. Um, I would say the other things is, you know, we talked about it in the show, but the analysis exchange is it’s just unique and it’s capability to give you real hands on experience and a real project to work on. I can’t say enough good things about it. So, you know, recent college grad and you want to even try out the space and sort of see what it might be like to do analysis. It’s a great way to go if you can get in there and find a nonprofit that you’re excited about and drag them into the program. even better if you’re a soon-to-be college grad and crap absolutely don’t know what you’re gonna do in six absolutely yeah you’re staring $90,000 of college debt in them in the face and you’re gonna figure out what to do senior years are great time to get serious about your future now There you go. All right. Well, hey, this has been a great discussion. I think there’s more that could be said. We’d certainly love to hear your comments and feedback, especially if you’re starting out in this space. It’s all up to you, Ben, to get this show in the hands of other recent or soon to be college grads. See whether or not any of this resonates with them and we can grow the ranks of the digital analytics space and with more and more awesome people. Thanks again for the topic and we look forward to hearing from anybody who’s listening. Tell us your stories on Facebook or on Twitter and we look forward to hearing from you.

00:40:42.82 [Tim Wilson]: And since it was Jim’s turn last time, it’ll be my turn this time because Michael just won’t say it, but we really could use a few reviews on iTunes. So that does help spread the word, helps other people find it, helps provide some credibility deserved or undeserved. So if you’ve listened to more than one and a half episodes and you tilt marginally in the positive direction, we would love to have you go to iTunes and give us a rating and a review. Positive or not, we’ll take either one, but not really. We’d really like the positive ones.

00:41:15.60 [Michael Helbling]: And while we’re at it, you might as well just like our Facebook page too.

00:41:18.90 [Tim Wilson]: All right. Yeah, there you go.

00:41:20.30 [Michael Helbling]: Hey, why not? And you know what makes Tim’s day is when you say nice things to him on Twitter. He loves that also. Jim’s immune to that sort of shenanigans.

00:41:31.11 [Jim Cain]: I have a tagline for shenanigans.

00:41:32.78 [Michael Helbling]: For Tim Wilson and Jim K and Michael. And we’re signing out.

00:41:37.02 [Jim Cain]: And for Vesit Regards. See ya.

00:41:41.59 [Announcer]: Thanks for listening and don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter. We welcome your comments and questions, facebook.com forward slash analytics hour or at analytics hour on Twitter.

00:42:03.51 [Michael Helbling]: And this is the episode where we’re finally nice to millennials, right?

00:42:07.80 [Jim Cain]: And they’re me first mouth hooking ways.

00:42:10.96 [Michael Helbling]: So what is awesome about millennials? No, five really good reasons to hate millennials.

00:42:20.21 [Tim Wilson]: No, I’m… Can we get a little rec flag and eagle?

00:42:24.35 [Michael Helbling]: Rock flag and eagle.

00:42:29.18 [Tim Wilson]: She’s danced in an Apple store like 50 plus times.

00:42:32.93 [Michael Helbling]: I think we should probably steal that.

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