"The world of data analytics was initially intimidating to me, but I conquered it and feel more confident now. For those considering upskilling: It is never too late, as you never know what you might accomplish tomorrow."
Aw Yong Ke Ke was a final-year student studying chemical engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). During an internship, Ke Ke realised that her day-to-day role required frequent interactions with data, and became more aware of the importance of data analytics skills when she was asked to build a business data dashboard. Recognising this importance, she began looking at online training programmes that led to a professional certificate for data analytics, as this wasn’t covered much in her undergraduate programme.
Ke Ke came across the Google Data Analytics Certificate, and although she initially felt cautious about the time required to pick up a new skill whilst also completing her final-year projects and internship, she decided to step right out of her comfort zone and apply.
Ke Ke felt that the Google Career Certificate was different to other courses she had taken in the past, as the curriculum was more practice-based than theory training. She found the course to be well-structured, which was helpful when juggling it with her busy schedule as a final-year undergraduate. During the certificate training, her learning really sparked her passion for how the skills are used in real-life work scenarios and helped her appreciate the whole concept of data cleaning and organisation. Ke Ke was pleasantly surprised to find out how transferable her new data skills were and found herself applying them in both her final year projects and internship, which was earlier than she expected! Upon graduating, Ke Ke was more confident as a job seeker, as she was able to talk about her positive learning experience with the Google Data Analytics Certificate, and how she had applied her skills during job interviews.
Ke Ke works as a Process Engineer now, and applies her data analytics skills on a daily basis, whether it is extracting data and visualising it for management stakeholders, or organising data for analysis on optimising processes.
Ke Ke’s advice for anyone considering upskilling: even if something is intimidating to you, face your fear and try it anyway - you never know what you can achieve tomorrow until you try.
