Intern Update: Chad Cruz

Chad Cruz

Analytics & Technology, College of Business, Influence, and Information Analysis

Intouch B2D - Data Warehouse Intern

One of the most valuable experiences for me was getting to work on the Intern Project. This project has given me great experience on what is like to work on a project that has multiple departments involved. It was very interesting to see in person all the moving parts that are involved in working in an agency. I got to see how the different departments work together to create whatever a client may request. Additionally, this internship has allowed me to connect with a bunch of professional connections. Working in the Data Warehousing industry has provided me invaluable experience for any sort of back-end development job. In addition, since it involves data collection, Data Warehousing relates to jobs in the data science and analytics fields as well. It has allowed me to see the steps that come before the analytical processes and where and how data comes to analysts.

When I initially began at Intouch I expected things to be a lot simpler. I thought our databases would be small and easily accessible, and that our data files would be clean and easily manageable. These original expectations are due to all of my previous class experiences, all of the data sets and databases that I had worked with in school were super clean and small. These expectations were completely flipped on their heads my first week here, as I saw the type of data my co-workers were working with, and the sheer size of all the data we had to store.

To make my experience at Intouch as valuable as possible, me and my manager came up with a couple of goals for me to achieve by the end of my internship. My first goal is to learn as much as possible about warehousing and data management, and to ask questions when I am confused. The next goal we set was to have me shadow a couple of other departments to get a feel of how everything connects in an agency. My last goal has been to complete as many upgrades of SSIS packages as I possibly can. There are around 50 of them and right now I have completed around 30; so this is a project I am still working towards finishing as well.

Thanks to this internship, I have concluded that working in data related fields is something that I want to pursue a career in. Whether this be in the back-end of things or the front. I have found that I really enjoy working with data and this internship has been an invaluable resource in helping me develop skills and understanding of what working with data entails.

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