How Juan Pablo Sada Keeps His Skills Current in an Ever-Changing Field

Juan Pablo Sada was wearing a nifty pair of glasses when we spoke to him via video chat from his apartment in Mexico City. He works for a trendy eyewear startup called Ben and Frank, so that makes sense. 

Like many prospective boot camp students, Juan Pablo was looking for a simple way to enhance his understanding of data analytics. Tecnológico de Monterrey Data Analytics Boot Camp helped him build essential skills — and provided him with the foundation he needed to launch a promising career in data science. 

Learn more about Juan Pablo’s journey below, and find out how a boot camp near you can help you chart a path toward a fulfilling career. 

What drives success? 

“Learning is king and data is queen,” says Juan Pablo’s LinkedIn profile. It’s clear Juan Pablo understands that success — in any field — hinges on an unremitting desire to learn. In a constantly evolving field like business analytics, this is especially true. 

Like most boot camp students, Juan Pablo doesn’t just preach his ethos; he lives it. That’s why boot camps have always been an integral part of his career development. He’s taken four online courses in data analytics and coding to date and has no plans of slowing down any time soon. 

“Ultimately, I want to get a masters degree in technology management,” shared Juan Pablo. “It’s important to have a strong understanding of data analytics’ more foundational components if you want to succeed at a higher level.” That’s why the data analytics boot camp offered at Tecnológico de Monterrey was the perfect resource for Juan Pablo. It offered him an in-depth overview of myriad data analytics concepts — and an opportunity to develop practical skills in any area that interested him. 

Picking up the right skills 

There will always be new tools, processes, and languages to learn. As a result, Juan Pablo’s data science journey will never truly be over — but that’s what excites him the most. In his most recent boot camp endeavor, Juan Pablo was after a particular set of skills. “I really wanted to learn more about Python. Specifically, I wanted to be able to use APIs and SQL more effectively.” 

In addition to providing Juan Pablo with an avenue to dive deeper into the tools and software that he was most interested in, the boot camp gave Juan Pablo an opportunity to practice his new skills with hands-on, project-based assignments. It’s in the projects where the real learning took place, according to Juan Pablo. “Every topic you cover has a project attached to it. That’s where you find out if you really understand something.” 

During the boot camp, Juan Pablo had a chance to build a predictive analysis tool designed to forecast economic trends based on the behavior of the Central Bank of Mexico. While building his own project from start to finish, he realized that there really is no substitute for application-based learning. In addition to providing some impressive content for his portfolio, working through real-world scenarios helped Juan Pablo cultivate knowledge in a way that seamlessly translated to on-the-job performance. 

Putting new skills to the test

Directly after graduation, Juan Pablo began working at Ben and Frank as a business analyst. 

“In my current job, we have these enterprise resource planning (ERP) databases. Instead of downloading Excel or USB files (the process they had in place), I knew it would be very efficient to use Python to make automations.” Having the right set of tools prepared Juan Pablo to put what he learned to the test and revamp the startup’s databases. 

“Before we started using Python, all of our analysis was about the past,” said Juan Pablo. “I saw my role as looking at what we can improve or optimize in our current business operations.” There is no denying the value of this pre-Python analytics practice, but Juan Pablo was convinced that so much more could be done. 

As it turns out, he was right. “Now, we can do more predictive analysis. We can anticipate inefficiencies or errors before they even happen,” shared Juan Pablo. As Ben and Frank’s lead customer experience analyst, Juan Pablo and his new skills are helping the quickly growing business reach new heights. 

Finding the right path

Ultimately, the boot camp gave Juan Pablo a low-risk and relatively low-cost opportunity to explore new areas within the field of computer science. Before taking his first course, he was studying industrial engineering. Juan Pablo enjoyed engineering but recognized that there were a lot of things in the tech world that he didn’t understand — and a lot of opportunities that he was missing out on as a result. “The boot camp really opened my mind,” Juan Pablo summarized. “It also helped me realize that this is exactly what I want to be doing.” 

Not everyone can step into their passion as quickly or as easily as Juan Pablo, but finding a boot camp that speaks to you is a great first step. 

Looking for a change? Explore boot camps in coding and data analytics at Tecnológico de Monterrey.