Arielle Metaxas
BSI ’19 (Data Analytics)

Product analyst for Condé Nast

Condé Nast is a publisher for brands like the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and GQ. I do a lot of user behaviour recording based on how people are engaging with our websites, and give recommendations to the product team who work on the engineering and design of the website to educate future initiatives. There are a couple different types of product and I do work across them, which is really fun because no two days are alike. The environment that I work in is very similar to the way that I learned Python and SQL in the School of Information, so it's been a really easy transition.

Motivation for pursuing this field

 For my capstone course, my client was Qualtrics and I did product analyst-type reporting where we gave recommendations on how they can improve a certain part of their website based on their data. I always knew I wanted to do something around user behaviour on websites but I didn't really have a preference on the type of company, it just so happens that I work for a company that I feel super connected to.

Most valuable UMSI experience

So many of the skills that we learned are applicable to my job. UMSI also gave me a really cool lens that I can introduce others on my team to. I definitely loved the courses around behaviour within social networks, that is something that was super interesting that I am looking to apply. I took a behavioural economics class that was super interesting as well.

Advice for getting into the information field

If you are in SI, just feel really confident in your skills. That's something that I didn’t really feel when I was looking for jobs. A lot of the descriptions seem really intimidating and I maybe would have shied away from applying to thing I didn’t feel that I was totally qualified for but now being in the workplace I see how relevant so many of the SI skills are and I think others should feel empowered to apply to those positions and feel confident in them as well

Published Dec. 21, 2020