Irene has been a data insight expert at Online Dialogue since early 2023. She started her career at SEO company Yoast as a linguist. Here she researched methods to assess the readability of texts in an automated way. At Yoast, Irene held several positions including team leader, engineering manager and eventually Head of R&D. She enjoyed her managerial positions, yet she missed the hands-on work and content challenges. That's why she decided to join us. Now she works for major clients such as Beter Bed, Bidfood, FonQ, Hoppenbrouwers, Tebra, Rabobank, Stella, Wickey, and Vattenfall. Read on and let me introduce you to Irene Strikkers!

Source: Superweek 2024 

Skills transferred

At Yoast, Irene learned several skills that she can now put to good use at Online Dialogue. “My time at Yoast taught me to be pragmatic and act quickly, which has proven to be of tremendous value at Online Dialogue.” Irene owes her analytical thinking skills to programming and researching readability. Consequently, this is very useful in her current work. 

She also says that her programming skills come in handy just now. “That comes in handy now for writing SQL queries for BigQuery, and for automating things.” 

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Passion for Data and Interdisciplinary Collaboration

At OD, different disciplines come together, and that is exactly what Irene enjoys. “The coming together of different disciplines brings new perspectives and stimulates creativity, which only enriches our analyses.” She loves exchanging ideas with psychologists, among others, and discovering new insights based on data analysis. “I get excited when things from different disciplines come together, for example in a behavioral study. It's fun to spar with the psychologist about where certain patterns in the data might come from.”

Irene is also happy working with different clients. “With Beter Bed, for example, we have been working together for years and we know exactly what we can do for each other and the process is well put together; with newer clients we are still looking for the best way to set up the collaboration. It is precisely this variety that makes the work fun and challenging.”

And what Irene certainly didn't think she would miss was programming! But soon she found out that she secretly really enjoys this. “I enjoy puzzling in BigQuery. Writing queries and tinkering with them until I get the right data, that makes me very happy.” 

Irene's OD highlight 

One of the highlights for Irene was definitely during the team outing in Dinant. Here everyone had bought personal gifts for each other. “I really liked how much effort everyone made for each other, and how happy it made everyone,” she said.” 

Outlook and Advice

Irene doesn't particularly like to look too far ahead when it comes to her career, so she certainly hasn't come up with a 5-year plan yet. “I much prefer to grow organically toward things or tackle things that come my way,” she said.” 

She does aim to automate more and improve the efficiency of analytics so that less manual work is needed for analytics. “Many of the automations from Universal Analytics we have been able to adopt for GA4 or rebuild with BigQuery, but there are still a lot of manual work in some areas now. It would be nice if we could reduce that as much as possible, even though the data model doesn't look the same for every client.”

Take-home message 

Last but not least, Irene has another great message for anyone who aspires to a career from another field of work. Upon her own start here, she went to work without having any experience as an analyst. “When I made the move to OD early last year, I had no experience as an analyst, but I knew I could think analytically, see the bigger picture and know things about the Web.”

Eager to get back to substantive work, Irene thought an analyst job would be a good combination of analytical thinking and zooming out. So she decided to take a chance on applying for such positions anyway. “I was rejected in several applications before the first round based on my resume because I had no analyst experience, but in OD I found an organization that was fine with me learning many of the practical analytical skills on the spot.”  Research also shows that women in particular sometimes find it difficult to apply if they do not meet all the requirements in a job posting. 

“Should you aspire to move into another field of work, whether it be data analytics or something else, go for it and try to find an organization that adheres to the motto ‘hire for talent, train for skill.’”

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