Data Analyst Intern
Over this summer I worked for an organization called iO associates in their Philadelphia office. iO Associates is a recruiting and staffing company specializing in the recruitment of people in the cyber, data, ai, and power platform worlds. There are many offices across the country with the total staff being between 100-200 people, however in the Philadelphia office there was a total of 9 people including myself. I worked in the Data and Analytics department and the overall premise of this internship was to aid the recruiters in their work to make it more streamlined and follow trends in the job market. I did a lot of research finding trends on what jobs are really in demand compared to years or months prior and because of this helped my co-workers find different areas to focus and what areas to send their clients to. Additionally I was in charge of data visualization, making the numbers into a pretty format for my boss to present to people across the company, this helped them a lot and I largely improved my ability of displaying data cleanly without any unnecessary bits. I worked on many projects throughout my time at iO, however one of them really sticks out to me. We ran a week long competition between three different offices, Philadelphia, Tampa, and Bristol, where you can gain points for doing different tasks. This competition was to boost moral in the office and make the recruiters have an extra incentive to get deals done. I was put in charge of running this competition and keeping track of all the points. I was put in charge of recording everything in an extensive and detailed excel sheet, mapping out what team did the best for the day, who took most advantage of the bonus point hours, and verifying every single record in the system was accurate. At one time I discovered that the Tampa team was attempting to cheat by double logging meetings and I discovered this and set everything right. It wasn’t just about running the competition I also found myself motivation the people in the Philadelphia office to do better. At the end of the week our team ended up winning the competition by only a few points. If I was not very careful and detailed in recording and verifying each recorded point then the Philadelphia team would have lost due to Tampa recording points twice for a day. Other projects I worked on were things that included going through every company that is at a conferences that my co-workers would be going to and finding the best point of contact so they can talk to them before and after the event to possibly make a deal by sending a client to one of their open positions. Because of this I helped my co-workers a lot and they could focus on their main work by trying to secure deals rather then go through many points of contact finding the best when they can instantly have the number and email of the contact when they are ready to discuss. I did this same thing for four different conferences and my co-workers said to me that it helped them a ton and one of them is even in the midst of making a deal with one of the contacts I supplied them with. Overall I learned a ton over my three months working at iO Associates. To sum it all up the most important things were the importance of true data, like with the competition I ran if I didn’t verify every point the data would not be true and the wrong person would have won, or even things like double checking every email for a contact is put correctly in the system without any mistakes, this mistake could lead to a loss of a deal losing a recruiter close to ten thousand dollars. The other big thing I learned was how to make data very detailed but very understandable in my visualizations. I always had more of a way to read my own data that only worked for me but I was put to the challenge many times over my time at iO to make visualizations that anyone can glance at and fully know what is happening in the data. I also ran some mid week meetings making sure everyone’s goals for the week are staying true and how they can get to their goals. In conclusion I learned a ton from my internship and I will carry on these skills I learned into both my final year of studies and my full time career after I graduate.