I help entry-level, non-technical professionals get their first data analyst role | Data Analyst @RBC | Data Career Coach

I help immigrants and career-switchers land analyst roles—without burning out on certificates.

By day I build decision-grade analytics (currently at Autodesk). By night I run Data Career Compass, where we treat your job search like a product launch:
Market → Positioning → Portfolio → Distribution → Interviews.

My POV:
Most candidates try to add more tools. Winners learn to package their value. Your portfolio isn’t a gallery; it’s a sales page for your judgment.

Receipts:

→ Professionals land interviews by aligning projects to business outcomes (not toy datasets).

→ My frameworks have been used across finance, tech, and education to translate experience into results.

→ Built data products and controls in regulated environments (RBC Capital Markets) that leaders rely on daily.


What you’ll get here:

→ Weekly breakdowns of real projects (SQL, Python, dbt, DuckDB, Looker/Tableau/Power BI).

→ Storytelling patterns that turn insights into action.

→ Templates that remove friction: portfolio briefs, stakeholder one-pagers, interview scorecards.

Coming February:

I’m launching a coaching program designed for mid-level and senior professionals ready to transition into analytics.

This isn’t an entry-level bootcamp—it’s a career accelerator that helps you reposition your existing experience, communicate business value, and step confidently into data-driven roles.

Work with me:

↳ Cohorts + 1:1 coaching → DM “HIRED”

↳ January program for mid/senior professionals → DM “JANUARY” for early access

↳ Guest workshops for teams and communities → DM “WORKSHOP”


I build analysts who think like product managers and communicate like consultants.

Peter Ndiforchu

Most candidates think they’re being evaluated on what they built.

They’re not.

When you explain a project, hiring managers are quietly assessing something much deeper.

Here’s what’s actually happening behind the scenes 👇

1️⃣ Can you think in business outcomes—or just tasks?
If your story starts with “I used SQL to…” and ends there, that’s a red flag.
They’re listening for why the project existed and what changed because of it.

2️⃣ Do you understand the problem—or just the solution?
Strong candidates explain the constraint, the tradeoff, and the decision.
Weak ones jump straight to the dashboard.

3️⃣ Can you simplify complexity?
If you can’t explain your project to a non-technical stakeholder in 60 seconds,
they assume you’ll struggle in real meetings.

4️⃣ Did you drive the work—or were you just assigned it?
Ownership shows up in language:

“I noticed…”

“I proposed…”

“I pushed back when…”


That’s leadership without the title.

5️⃣ Do you sound like someone they can put in front of executives?
Clarity. Structure. Calm confidence.
That’s what earns trust.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Two candidates can build the same project.
Only one gets the offer—because they frame it differently.

Your projects don’t get you hired.
Your interpretation of them does.

If this resonated, next time you explain a project, ask yourself:
“Am I telling a story—or reciting a task list?”

Helping Non-Technical Professionals Build Data-Driven Careers That Travel Globally | Data Career Strategist | Senior Data Analyst @ Autodesk

What Data Hiring Managers Really Evaluate on Interviews

Most candidates know the STAR method.
Very few use it in a way that actually signals seniority in data roles.

Here’s how hiring managers experience it 👇

The STAR method for data roles (with a real example)

S — Situation
❌ Weak: “We didn’t have good dashboards.”
✅ Strong: “Sales leaders were making weekly decisions using spreadsheets pulled manually from three systems.”

Why this matters:
You’re showing business context, not just a messy data problem.

T — Task
❌ Weak: “I was asked to build a dashboard.”
✅ Strong: “I was responsible for creating a single source of truth that leadership could trust for forecasting.”

Why this matters:
This reframes you from executor to owner.

A — Action
❌ Weak: “I used SQL and Tableau.”
✅ Strong:
“I audited existing tables, wrote validation queries to reconcile numbers across sources, aligned definitions with Sales Ops, and designed a dashboard focused on decision-making—not vanity metrics.”

Why this matters:
Tools are expected. Judgment is not.

R — Result
❌ Weak: “They liked the dashboard.”
✅ Strong:
“Forecast variance dropped by 18%, manual reporting time was reduced by 6 hours per week, and the dashboard became the default reference in leadership meetings.”

Why this matters:
Impact beats effort. Every time.

The real mistake candidates make:
They treat STAR like a storytelling template.
Hiring managers hear it as a decision-making framework.

In data roles, STAR isn’t about what you built.
It’s about:

How you understood the business

How you made trade-offs

How your work changed behavior


If your STAR answers don’t reveal those signals,
you’re underselling yourself—no matter how strong your skills are.

📌 Save this before your next interview.

How I went from Cameroon → Canada → a US data role (without ‘local experience’).

When I moved, I assumed the biggest hurdle would be visas, credentials, or “local experience.”

It wasn’t.

The real question global recruiters were silently asking was:
“Who can vouch for this person when we can’t observe them directly?”

Here’s what made the difference on my journey 👇

1/ Relationships reduce hiring risk
Recruiters outside your country can’t see your work day-to-day. They rely on people they trust to validate your judgment and impact.
I focused on building genuine connections with:

Hiring managers

Senior data practitioners

People in the ecosystem who could confidently say,

 “I’ve worked with him. He delivers. I’d hire him again.”

2/ Visibility beats invisibility
I didn’t just rely on a resume. I made my work and thinking visible by:

Sharing real projects publicly

Discussing trade-offs and decisions

Engaging with communities in LinkedIn, Slack, and Discord

This gave recruiters context before even meeting me.

3/ Skills matter, but signals win
SQL, Python, Excel—all necessary. But what got me hired was showing:

Structured thinking

Clear communication of impact

Ability to navigate ambiguity

Coupled with endorsements from people who could vouch for me, geography became irrelevant.

Global hiring isn’t about ‘local experience’—it’s about trusted signals.

Ask yourself: “Who in this market can confidently vouch for my work?”

That’s the real game.

Cameroon → Canada → a US data role

The first time I realized hiring expectations weren’t universal…
I thought I had done everything right.

Strong technical skills.
Solid projects.
Clear results.

Then I walked into an interview outside my home market and something felt off.

They weren’t impressed by what tools I knew.
They kept probing how I worked.

Questions like:

“How did you influence stakeholders who didn’t agree with you?”

“What trade-offs did you make under pressure?”

“Who trusted your judgment and why?”


That’s when it clicked.

In some markets, hiring is about capability.
In others, it’s about credibility.
And in global roles, it’s about signal alignment.

Same resume.
Same experience.
Very different evaluation lens.

I stopped optimizing for: 
❌ tool checklists
❌ keyword stuffing
❌ “local experience” myths

And started optimizing for: 
✔ decision-making stories
✔ business judgment
✔ proof that someone would trust me in the room

That shift changed everything.

Global hiring isn’t harder.
It’s just calibrated differently.

If you’re preparing for roles beyond your home country, ask yourself: Are you proving skills…
or earning confidence?

Because globally, confidence hires before competence.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most candidates don’t hear early enough:

Most data portfolios aren’t evaluated as “work.”
They’re evaluated as signals.

And most of them send the wrong ones.

I’ve reviewed a good number of portfolios as part of the hiring team.
The pattern is consistent:

What candidates show:
• Dashboards with no business question
• Kaggle-style analyses disconnected from real decisions
• Tools-heavy walkthroughs (“I used SQL, Python, Tableau…”)
• Perfect charts that solve imaginary problems

What hiring managers are actually scanning for:
• Can this person frame a messy business problem?
• Do they understand tradeoffs, not just techniques?
• Can they explain why something mattered — not just how they built it?
• Would I trust them to influence a decision with imperfect data?

Here’s the part most people miss:

A portfolio isn’t proof of skill.
It’s evidence of judgment.


That’s why two candidates can use the same dataset —
and only one gets a callback.

The one who: 
• Anchors the project to a real stakeholder decision
• Explains assumptions and constraints
• Shows what they didn’t do and why
• Communicates impact in plain business language

Strategic shift to make today:

Stop asking, “How do I show more tools?”
Start asking, “What decision does this help someone make?”

That question alone will put your portfolio ahead of 90% of applicants.

If you’re building a portfolio right now, build it like you already have the job — not like you’re trying to pass a course.

Greg Coquillo

Product Leader @AWS | Startup Investor | 2X Linkedin Top Voice for AI, Data Science, Tech, and Innovation | Quantum Computing & Web 3.0 | I build software that scales AI/ML Network infrastructure

Product leader with a passion for solving business use cases such as Growth, Go-to-Market, and Price Optimization. I owned P&L for commodity-based products, and leveraged AI to increase the average customer contract values across business industries. As a Product Leader at Amazon, I own a roadmap that drives the adoption of AI products through the Media Automation charter, which supports Private Brands’ YOY growth. I work with Data Scientists, Software Engineers and Business Intelligence Engineers to leverage Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics to design predictive models that enhance business decision-making and performance to accelerate growth, reduce Time to Market of products, monitor cross-geo compliance and import requirements, and ensure customer safety.

I am always curious and eager to learn how new technology affects our daily lives, and I love to support communities on their quest to adopt Artificial Intelligence across industries. Feel free to contact me if you have Data Science projects that you’d like to be showcased on this platform for visibility.

🌐I am a Global Business Leader with 12 years of experience and skills including Product Management, P&L management, Global Networking, EBITDA Optimization, Pricing Management, Margin Management, Product Management, Program Management, Operations and Supply Chain Management, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and Continuous Improvement.

🧘🏽‍♂️Soft Skills include: Communication, Collaboration, Lateral Thinking, Adaptability, Inspiration, Innovation, Empathy, Listening, Diplomacy, Organization, Responsibility, Leadership...

🎬🎥🎞 I really enjoy watching movies, and if I could redo it all over, I’d be a Sci-Fi script writer so I can be bounded by the limits of imagination.

(Opinions are my own)

Product Management, Media Automation

Owner of the AI vision and roadmap for Private Brand’s Compliance Division. Driving adoption of new technology, allowing my customers to scale their processes and increase productivity. Core responsibilities include:

-Building cross-functional teams consisting of Data Scientists, Software Engineers, Data Engineers, Product Managers and Program Managers, to plan and implement sophisticated AI projects
-Manage the New Initiative Intake Process
-Gather Business requirement artifacts
-Communicate roadmap definition and prioritization
-Coordinate User Acceptance Testing
-Manage Launch Announcements
-Prepare and communicate annual planning artifacts

AI Agents are task-specific, autonomous systems that integrate large language models with structured tools, APIs, and real-time data sources. 

They operate across domains such as cybersecurity, supply chain logistics, and healthcare by executing workflows that traditionally required human-in-the-loop decision making. 

These agents leverage vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation, and fine-tuned embeddings to enable contextual reasoning and dynamic response generation. 

As orchestration frameworks mature, multi-agent systems are increasingly capable of handling end-to-end processes like demand forecasting, patient triage, and adaptive tutoring with minimal supervision.

The below chart shows just how broad their impact is:

1.🔹 IT & Security : Phishing filters, threat detection, patch suggestions
2.🔹Healthcare : Patient alerts, medical chatbots, symptom matching
3.🔹 Education : Flashcards, concept explainers, AI tutors
4.🔹 Sales & Marketing : Lead scoring, campaign ideas, email outreach
5.🔹Logistics : Fleet tracking, demand forecasting, inventory updates
6.🔹Manufacturing : Predictive maintenance, robotic control, energy monitoring
7.🔹 Research : Academic writing, data cleaning, topic expansion
8.🔹 Customer Support : FAQ bots, emotion detection, chat summaries
9.🔹 Smart Environments : Digital twins, voice commands, access control
10.🔹Ops Automation : Shift scheduling, system alerts, order tracking

What used require significant manual effort, now takes a few smart agents.

I believe it’s a great time to start exploring and experimenting in this space…

If you’re learning AI automation without a roadmap, you’re guaranteed to get overwhelmed.

People usually “learn AI automation” by jumping straight into tools… and then wonder why nothing works consistently.
Real automation requires structure - thinking, logic, testing, and a gradual build-up of skills.

This 18-day roadmap breaks down the exact sequence to go from zero → confidently building automations with AI, APIs, tools, and no-code platforms.

Here’s the full breakdown, day by day:

Day 1 - AI Automation Fundamentals
Learn what automation really means, how it differs from AI and agents, and see real examples.

Day 2 - Automation Thinking
Break work into steps, triggers, and outcomes - the mindset behind every good automation.

Day 3 - APIs & Webhooks Basics
Understand how apps communicate and how events trigger workflows.

Day 4 - No-Code Automation Platforms
Explore Zapier, Make, n8n - and how no-code tools actually run workflows.

Day 5 - Build Your First Automation
Create a simple trigger-action workflow and connect two apps.

Day 6 - Data Handling
Pass data between steps, map fields, and work with text, numbers, and dates.

Day 7 - Logic & Error Handling
Add filters, conditional logic, retries, and fallbacks to keep automations reliable.

Day 8 - AI Model Basics
Learn prompts vs system instructions, tokens, limits, and LLM behavior.

Day 9 - Using AI Inside Automations
Insert AI steps into workflows and parse structured AI outputs.

Day 10 - Prompt Design for Automation
Write consistent prompts and reduce hallucinations with JSON outputs.

Day 11 - Text-Based Task Automation
Automate email replies, summaries, CRM updates, and document tasks.

Day 12 - Knowledge Automation (RAG Basics)
Connect AI to internal documents and fetch accurate answers from real data.

Day 13 - AI Agents Basics
Understand agent planning, tools, and identify use cases for agents.

Day 14 - Business Use Case Automation
Automate lead qualification, ticket routing, and internal processes.

Day 15 - Sales & Marketing Automation
Personalize outreach, repurpose content, and automate follow-ups.

Day 16 - Operations Automation
Manage approvals, notifications, and repetitive operational tasks.

Day 17 - Monitoring & Optimization
Track workflow success, cut costs, and improve performance.

Day 18 - Build & Ship Your System
Design, test, document, and finalize a complete end-to-end automation.

You don’t master AI automation by learning tools, you master it by learning systems thinking, data flow, and structured execution.

Follow this roadmap, and you’ll build automations that are reliable, scalable, and business-ready.

Data ➝ AI ➝ Value.
That’s still what companies think AI Looks like

But in the real world…

AI inside companies looks nothing like that.

Because value doesn’t come from “building a model”.

Value comes from building a working system around the model.

This guide explains what AI actually looks like in companies 👇

It’s a full production chain, not a single step:

1) Data
Selection, sourcing, synthesis - getting usable data is already 50% of the work.

2) Data Science
Exploration → cleaning → normalization → feature engineering → scaling
Then modeling: selection → training → evaluation → tuning

3) Value (Operationalizing)
Real value starts only after:
registration → deployment → monitoring → retraining

So ML is not “AI work”.

It’s data engineering + modeling + MLOps, all together.

What GenAI-enabled AI actually looks like

GenAI doesn’t remove complexity.

It shifts complexity from “models” to workflows + control.

The real GenAI path is:

- Understand the decision process
What decisions are being made today? Where does judgment happen?

- Workflow experimentation
Iterate with prompts, APIs, tools, retrieval, automation, coding — until it works reliably.

- Guardrails
Policies, safety filters, access control, cost limits, prompt rules, grounding.

- Monitoring
Track quality, drift, failure modes, user behavior, data leakage, hallucinations.

- Human in the loop
Because the highest-value workflows still need supervision, approvals, and feedback.

The takeaway?

AI isn’t a “feature.”

AI is an operating system change.

And companies that understand this early…

ship faster, safer, and with real ROI.

If you're building enterprise AI, stop chasing “Data → AI → Value”.

Start building: Workflows → Guardrails → Monitoring → Value.

#AI

Knowing RAG is easy. Measuring it is the real skill.

Everyone can plug in a vector DB and call it a RAG system.
But only a few can actually evaluate whether the system retrieves the right knowledge, avoids hallucinations, and answers with confidence.

That’s where retrieval metrics matter, they turn guesswork into engineering.

Here’s a simple breakdown of the 20 metrics that actually show whether your RAG system is good… or just lucky.

1. Precision@K - Checks how many retrieved chunks are truly relevant.
2. Recall@K - Measures whether all important chunks were found.
3. Hit Rate - Confirms if at least one correct chunk appears.
4. MRR - Rewards results where the correct chunk ranks high.
5. NDCG@K - Evaluates ranking quality, not just correctness.
6. Top-1 Accuracy - Tests whether the first chunk is the best one.
7. Query Coverage - Checks if retrieval answers the entire question.
8. Evidence Sufficiency - Asks: “Is this enough to answer fully?”
9. Context Relevance Score - Measures alignment between query meaning and chunk content.
10. Chunk Redundancy Rate - Tracks repeated or duplicate chunks.
11. Chunk Diversity Score - Shows whether results come from varied, reliable sources.
12. Source Coverage - Checks if retrieval pulls from the right documents.
13. Citation Accuracy - Confirms the final answer cites real, correct evidence.
14. Groundedness Score - Tests how strongly the answer stays rooted in retrieved context.
15. Faithfulness - Ensures the model doesn’t distort the evidence.
16. Hallucination Rate - Measures unsupported claims the model invents.
17. Retrieval Latency - How fast chunks reach the model.
18. Token Efficiency - How much useful context fits into the token limit.
19. Freshness - Checks if the retrieved info is up-to-date.
20. Retrieval Failure Rate - Tracks how often retrieval returns irrelevant or misleading chunks.

Anyone can build RAG.
Only skilled teams can measure retrieval, and that’s what decides whether your system scales or breaks.

Which metric do you think is the most underrated right now?

Single agents are powerful.
But multi-agent systems?
That’s where AI starts behaving like a real team.

As AI moves from “answering questions” to doing actual work, the real unlock isn’t a bigger model, it’s how multiple agents collaborate.

Different patterns fit different types of tasks, and choosing the right one can be the difference between a smart system and a chaotic one.

Here are 8 multi-agent collaboration patterns every builder should understand:

1. Manager–Worker Pattern
One agent breaks down the task, others execute the pieces.
Great for large, structured work like research + writing + QA.

2. Specialist Agents (Role-Based Team)
Each agent has a defined role - researcher, analyzer, writer.
Best when accuracy and expertise matter.

3. Planner–Executor Pattern
A planner decides the steps; an executor runs tools and actions.
Ideal for automation tasks, workflows, and system integrations.

4. Critic / Reviewer Agent
One agent generates, another fixes mistakes.
Useful for RAG responses, code checks, compliance-sensitive tasks.

5. Debate Pattern
Agents challenge each other with alternative solutions until the best idea wins.
Good for strategy, architecture, and trade-off decisions.

6. Voting / Consensus Pattern
Multiple agents propose answers, the system picks the best one.
Great for open-ended, ambiguous, or high-risk queries.

7. Swarm / Parallel Exploration
Many agents explore multiple sources at once.
Perfect for fast research and time-sensitive retrieval.

8. Tool Router / Dispatcher Pattern
A router agent decides which tool or agent should handle the request.
Works best in enterprise setups with many databases, APIs, and systems.

AI isn’t becoming powerful because models are getting bigger.
It’s becoming powerful because agents are learning to work together.

This is what turns AI experiments into real products.

Teams get excited about the model… 
but the model is only one slice of the stack.

Real AI products work because every layer around it is engineered with intent.

This breakdown shows what a modern, production-grade AI product stack actually looks like: 

1. Application Layer
The user-facing shell - authentication, UI, APIs, monitoring, analytics. This is where reliability, speed, and trust are felt long before AI runs.

2. Agentic AI Layer
The intelligence engine - reasoning, retrieval, tool use, orchestration, and memory. This layer decides whether your system simply answers… or actually acts.

3. GenAI Ops Layer
The guardrails - tracing, evaluation, experiments, and quality checks. This is how you keep an AI system stable as it learns and evolves in production.

4. Tools & Services Layer
The essentials - model APIs, data warehouses, and external integrations. These services give your AI the inputs, structure, and capabilities it needs to function.

5. Infrastructure Layer
The backbone - compute, storage, GPUs, networking, and security. If this layer is weak, nothing above it scales safely.

AI products don’t succeed because of one great model.
They succeed because every layer, from UI to GPUs - works together as one system.

RAG is not just “upload PDFs + chat with them.”

But that’s like calling every vehicle a “car.”

Because in real AI systems, there are 3 completely different architectures hiding behind the same word:

Naive RAG vs Agentic RAG vs Agentic Memory.

And if you don’t know the difference, you’ll build the wrong system… and blame the LLM later.

Here’s what’s actually happening : 

1. Naive RAG (Basic Retrieval)
Naive RAG is the most common setup: documents get indexed once, stored in a vector database, and whenever a user asks a question, the system fetches the closest chunks and sends them to the LLM. It works well for simple document Q&A, but the accuracy completely depends on retrieval quality  - if the wrong chunk is retrieved, hallucinations become inevitable.

2. Agentic RAG (Tool-based Retrieval + Reasoning)
Agentic RAG is not a fixed pipeline - it’s a decision-making system. Instead of blindly retrieving from a single database, an agent dynamically decides which sources to search, which tools to use, whether the answer needs verification, and when to retry retrieval. This is what enables enterprise-grade search across documents, CRMs, knowledge bases, and even the web - but it also introduces more complexity and cost.

3. Agentic Memory (Long-term Learning Loop)
Agentic Memory is not about pulling knowledge from documents - it’s about building continuity. The system stores useful signals from past interactions (preferences, decisions, repeated tasks, user context) and retrieves them later to give better responses over time. This turns the assistant into something that evolves with usage but if memory isn’t governed properly, it can quickly become noisy, irrelevant, or even risky.

The easiest way to remember it:

Naive RAG = answers from stored docs
Agentic RAG = answers using tools + multiple sources
Agentic Memory = answers that improve over time

If you’re building agents in 2026…
understanding this difference is not optional, it’s architecture.

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The Battle

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