Alteryx Impact Stories: Changing My Career & My Life

[Malvim]

The Story

When my wife told me she was pregnant with our third child, I almost freaked out. Nothing that I tried was enough to provide for a family with 3 kids. And I tried harder: I got a Civil Engineering degree and was in the middle of an MBA while being an exchange clerk for all those years. I even tried to change my career to video game development, creating audio for video games because of my background in music studies.

I was in a hurry to switch to a job that could compensate me better for my family, so I started to study the financial market. I jumped into a word of mental insecurity, where your mind needs to be strong enough not to keep thinking in terms of paying the bills while taking action in just minutes. But my mind was all about paying the bills at that point.

In the middle of that mess, my father-in-law encouraged me to take a look at the software that was helping him a lot in his job, and I did—I took a weekend Power BI course. I remember the feeling of being impressed with all those graphs changing around with just a few clicks to provide fast and powerful information to anyone that needs it.

Not so many weeks later, I was at a dinner to meet some cousins whom we hadn’t seen for some years. During the dinner, I remembered that one of them, Diogo Martins, was in the analytics area for almost ten years. I asked him for a talk to see if he could give me some more light about the area.

When we talked, he did a deep dive into the analytics world. He showed me the big picture about data and visualizations, and that was the first day I ever heard the word Alteryx. I was delighted with the idea that with Tableau and Alteryx skills, I could work anywhere in the world. And my cousin was the one that filled me with this hope, but I knew I had to prepare myself for it.

That night, on my way home, I set up a goal for myself: get hired at an international company.

After some investigation, I decided to start learning Alteryx because of its free certifications and lessons. In the beginning, I was not aware of local communities, and it looked like the right thing to watch lessons in English so I could improve that language for my goal. I downloaded the Core Certification Exam Prep Guide, printed it, and started to tick down the lessons and articles I watched. All of this before having Alteryx Designer itself.

In my mind, I did this math: 14-day trial divided by 7 days period wait on every exam attempt, with luck I will have 3 chances to nail Core Exam.  When everything was ticked down, I got my hands on Designer and tried my first attempt. I can say that I learned a lot in those two hours! So the next 7 days came to be ‘the thrill of solving’ weekly challenges!

At the end of those days, I remember staying in front of the computer, watching the clock tick down the final minutes before I could try it again. And then I nailed it!

It was only after I got the Core Certification that I found out about two things: The one-year license of Alteryx Designer for students and the local communities. In the global one, I was afraid of saying something in English, while in my natural language, I felt comfortable doing it.

From that point, I made the weekly challenges my main game. It was an amazing mix of feelings: Angry while doing it and great sadness when it’s done because it’s over, and you want to do more! I lost count of how many nights I put the kids to sleep and then went through the night solving a challenge. After finishing it, I would look at the late hour, thinking about the few hours of sleep, and just find myself diving into another one.

Interacting in the Alteryx Community gave me the ability to meet amazing people with different perspectives of the same situation, ACEs all around with videos and tips to improve your knowledge and efficiency on Alteryx and best practices on data manipulation.

My family

The Impact

After amazing months of study, with the Alteryx Designer Core Certificate and Tableau Desktop Specialist certificates, I thought that these should give me a good chance on LinkedIn. I started to add everyone I knew in the Alteryx Community, and people know people that work in companies that have more people until I was added by an HR person from RED Innovations.

While checking RED’s website, I could note its partnership with Alteryx and Tableau. Without thinking twice, I just sent my resume on the ‘work with us’ tab. The next day, I received the “We have an opportunity…” call.

In 8 months, I was able to change my career—after 8 years of being an exchange clerk. And the Alteryx Community was the driver of that major change. And the funny thing is that it is all free. Free learning, free certifications, free community.

While at RED, I had an amazing time. Early on, I got the Alteryx Advanced certification, and soon they gave me a chance to work for a big client. I was able to learn in months what would take years to learn on my own. And most of the time, I’ve used what I’ve learned in Alteryx Community to resolve situations. Every request feels like a new weekly challenge for me.

I never hid my desire to work for an international company from RED. And they were funny about it, asking me to close my LinkedIn. But I never thought it could come so quickly. And once again, Alteryx Community was intertwined with it.

I met Nicolas Colombo (@nicolascorreiacolombo) in the Alteryx Community, and one day I received a call from him about an opportunity in RED. He was not able to come to that position, but from there, a friendship began. Some months later, he was hired by the Traxion Group, and a few months after that, he encouraged me to try the same.

I joined Traxion on July 5^th, 2022, and since then, I’ve been doing my best to deliver valuable automations and visualizations while learning a lot.

This year, I was invited to talk about my journey at Alteryx Inspire ‘23 at The Venetian in Las Vegas. It was an amazing experience to leave Brazil for the first time and to be at an event where I could feel what community is.

Inspire 2023

 

For everyone that reached out to me in these years asking about my journey, I always point to where I found free gold. That place is the Alteryx Community. And you do not need to dig that much!