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PSA: I spent 7 weeks learning SQL to get a data job when one 40 minute conversation fixed my resume instead
I kept getting rejected for entry level data jobs in Chicago for almost two months. I figured my skills were the problem, so I signed up for a SQL course and spent 7 weeks grinding through it after work. I got maybe 70 percent done with the course and still heard nothing back from the 40 something jobs I applied to. A friend of a friend who works as an analyst at a bank in Evanston offered to look at my resume over coffee. She looked at it for less than a minute and said my problem was I listed every skill I ever touched, so the recruiter saw nothing that matched the job post. We rewrote it that same afternoon, and I got 3 callbacks in 9 days. So yeah, that SQL class is fine but I basically wasted 7 weeks fixing the wrong thing. Has anyone else done this where you work on skills when the real issue was how you were presenting yourself?
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pat78119d ago
Skills still matter once you land the interview though, so those 7 weeks weren't totally wasted. Your friend just spotted the thing most people can't see about themselves, which is how they come across on paper.
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