How one Pathstream student leveled up his career at Waste Management with a Tableau Data Analytics Certificate. 

Robert’s journey into data analytics has been far from traditional. After majoring in environmental science in college, he spent four years serving in the Peace Corps in Peru. There, he became involved in a community recycling program where he discovered his passion for sustainability and minimizing environmental impact. To make a positive impact on the environment, Robert joined Waste Management, a company that manages and reduces waste from collection to disposal. There, he quickly learned how important metrics are in the field.

“I ended up getting my foot in the door with a dispatcher role in Waste Management, but prior to going into the role, I didn’t realize how metrics-driven it would be and how much technology we really use in the industry to track everything that we’re doing to make sure we’re making the best decisions.”

Robert quickly discovered his excitement for the data-related aspects of his job — he enjoyed generating reports and digging into data to make decisions backed by real numbers. Over the years he spent as a lead dispatcher at Waste Management, he moved up into a supervisor position and soon found himself unofficially serving as the de facto data reporting lead on his team.

This made him realize that he wanted to pursue a formal data analyst position so that he could apply his data skills to his passion for environmentalism and managing waste. He began applying for several analyst positions within his company, but without any formal training in data analytics, he struggled to get into any of these roles.

“There were a couple different positions related to analytics at my company, and that’s where I put the majority of my efforts— trying to get those positions. I had, over the course of a couple years, applied five times to two different analytics positions. But regardless of whatever I tried to learn and whatever experience I was able to get my hands on within my position at the time, there were some things that I just didn’t have the opportunity to get trained on, so I couldn’t get hired into those roles.”

Robert remained tenacious. He knew he’d need to acquire formal training in data to move forward with his career. He considered going back to school for an additional four-year degree, but with a 2-year-old son to care for, he knew he needed to find a more flexible option that allowed him to learn on his own time. That’s when he discovered Pathstream’s Tableau Data Analytics Certificate offered through his company’s education benefits program, Your Tomorrow. Your Tomorrow is partnered with Guild Education, an education benefits provider that works with Pathstream to deliver digital skills training.

Pathstream’s data analytics certificate was ideal for Robert’s situation. It only required Robert to commit to 18 weeks, making it easy for him to fit learning into his busy life as a working parent and still prioritize learning the data analytics skills that he needed to launch his career as a data analyst. Pathstream helped Robert develop a strong foundation in data analysis and provided a window into all the careers that required data analytic skills.

In addition to equipping him with high-demand data analytics skills and tools, Pathstream’s career services were invaluable to Robert’s career search.

“Pathstream’s career services were really helpful. My background is diverse; I worked in the Peace Corps and a couple of nonprofits prior to Waste Management. It’s hard to effectively summarize my skills and experience on a resume, but I got some excellent feedback on my resume from my career coach at Pathstream. I really loved the changes they made to it and how they helped me highlight the project work I did in the Pathstream courses.”

Within days after graduating from the Pathstream certificate program, Robert landed an interview for a pricing analyst position at his company and was quickly offered the role. He noted that Pathstream’s courses gave him several talking points about data analytics. His interviewers found it refreshing to hear someone who was so excited and knowledgeable about data.

His advice to Pathstream students:

“Don’t hesitate to explore what is out there. I jumped into Pathstream’s Tableau Data Analytics program hoping to walk away with a single skill and ended up walking away with so much more than that. I can’t express how satisfying it is to take a course and walk away feeling that you’ve learned something new, or that you have a new skill to add on your resume as you navigate future careers.”

Learn more about the Tableau Data Analytics Certificate program here.