Yan Jia

Dear GMU Admission Committee,

My name is Yan Jia, a student of INTO Mason data analytics(DA) graduate program. I wish to work as a Business Analyst or Data analyst in the U.S.A.

To build the basic technology skills and confidence in data analytics field, I have completed Java Development courses with grade A at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC). Except the promoted English writing and speaking skills got  from INTO pathway,  I have grasp the risk management models acknowledges, known how to use R, VBA, Tableau, Risksolver Plateform to analyze and visualize the data. Besides, the AIT580 builds me the framework of big data project. For example, how to do data collecting, data storage,etc. Moreover, during this Summer, I learned the data structure, reviewed the statistics on Coursera..I hope to have the opportunity and honor to explore more in GMU Data Analytics graduate program for my future improvement in both the knowledge and horizons.

The work experiences made me confused, and motivated me to explore more about IT and Big Data. In the last semester of my associate degree study, I was working as an intern in the partner service department of China Mobile, Beijing branch. My work was maintaining the supplier profile for the rewards center where customers can buy merchandises using reward points. During the work, I found that most of the merchandises in home accessories category are out of date and that customers rarely buy them. What is more, probably due to the bureaucratic work from purchasing representatives the procurement price is much higher than the market value. Aware of this, my brother started a small company, Beijing Kun Yu Heng Cheng, which concentrates on searching the most popular and well liked home accessories and sell them to the Rewards Center. I joined his business in July 2010 and was in charge of stock management and searching the supplier who can provide us the best price over Alibaba and Taobao. It was an amazing experience and by the middle of 2011, 7 of 10 bestselling home accessory items were from our company. However, in the end of 2011, China Mobile changed their policy of certified suppliers with more strict restriction of company size, which filtered us out. Although our business failed, I have gained valued experience on management and e-commerce which gives me the confidence that I may run my own business in the future.

In March 2012, I joined Beijing Bailey-sst Control Tech Co. as a human resource specialist. At first, I was responsible for managing the documents of employee and candidates. However, when I tried to pursue more responsibilities in my work, my education level became an obstacle. In order to enhance my skill as well as earn a bachelor degree, I enrolled into ZheJiang University to study Human Resource Management. I had to work and study at the same time. It was difficult and challenging to juggle my time but I was able to accomplish all the classes and the final thesis and I got my degree in 2015. In the end of 2013, I participated in a project of reconstructing the company website. My responsibility was representing my company, coordinating the company resources for the engineering team from outside and ensuring the tasks were on schedule. Working like a “project manager” in this four months long project, I had got a lot of troubles such as understanding the technical reason of why some features have to be delayed or changed. However, when I reviewed the work performance of engineers, I realized programming is like magic and with a few lines of code, we can achieve so much. This experience also told me that there are so many things I need to learn on the way of chasing my dream.

Since programming skill is an essential technical skill to the data analyst field, and to get closer to the goal, I have enrolled two programming classes at NVCC. It is not easy to learn programming from scratch especially in a foreign language. I have had to spend plenty of extra time to review what the professor had taught in the class, read textbook more times and watch many online java tutoring videos. It costs time, but it is worth that it made me thinking and practicing more. In the beginning. I asked myself if I could survive in the world of programming. But now I’m not hesitant, because fortunately program problems can always be solved by logical thinking and step by step working, which I’m good at and have used a lot in my previous jobs. I decompose the problem to several sub tasks, implement them using the tools I just learned, then assemble them and do test. It’s really a creative adventure that each time I fix an issue I feel like I have conquered Mount Everest.

In AIT580, I’m doing a group big data project that like Uber, helps drivers to predict where and when next driving trip will come. We have vary roles, such as user, DBA, developer, analyst, etc. We need to communicate and working together in each step, because each of us has different perspectives on the big data problem. I’m working as the developer. This role is a challenge to me, not only because I need to know how many big data tools in data processing can be used, but also I need to spend more time on knowing how exactly to use them, what problems could have. Luckily, I’m a quickly learner, and efficient information searcher. I did a good developer work.

Again, hopefully, I have the honor the deeply explore more about data analysis in GMU data analytics graduate program.

Regards,

Yan Jia