Big SQL Energy Beginner Course: Lesson 31 Next Steps in your SQL journey
Got BDE?⚡️
Hi BDEs! Welcome to Lesson 31 of the free Big SQL Energy Beginner Course⚡️ Today we’re doing discussing next steps and how to move forward from this course!
Return to Big SQL Energy Beginner homepage here to access the other lessons:
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💁🏽♀️ Who Am I?
I’m Jess Ramos, the founder of Big Data Energy and the creator of the BEST SQL course and community: Big SQL Energy⚡️. Check me out on socials: 🔗LinkedIn, 🔗Instagram, 🔗YouTube, and 🔗TikTok. And of course subscribe to my 🔗newsletter here for all my upcoming lessons and updates— all for free!
⚡️ What is Big SQL Energy?
🔗Big SQL Energy Intermediate is an intermediate SQL course designed to solve real-world business problems hands-on using realistic data and a modern tech stack. You’ll walk away with 2 SQL portfolio projects, portfolio building guidance, access to the Big Data Energy Discord community, and lots of confidence for you upcoming coding interviews! You also get access to all monthly events including masterclasses, office hours, and guest speakers. This course is all of the most important things I’ve learned on the job as a Senior Data Analyst in tech who grew from a $72K salary to over a $150K salary. And now I’m sharing it with YOU! It’s more than just another course— it’s a challenging program designed to upskill your SQL to the intermediate level, get ready to ace your live coding interviews, and build connections in the data community through the Discord and events.
Lesson 31: Next Steps & Finding Data to Practice
WOOHOO! We’re finally at the very last lesson. We went through 30 lessons together to learn the basics of SQL. We learned basic syntax, filtering, grouping, string and date manipulation, casting data types, boolean operators, arithmetic operations, case, coalesce, handling nulls, inner joins, and more! We even did 2 mini case studies to put our skills to practice. There are a few next steps I recommend to really level up after this Big SQL Energy Beginner course!
1. Upskill in SQL to an Intermediate Level
Even though beginner SQL is an AMAZING start, it’s not enough SQL knowledge to land a first job in data or move to the senior level. You’d still need to learn:
Left/Outer/Anti joins
Self Joins
CTEs
Subqueries
Set Operations (like UNION)
Window Functions
Pivoting Data with Case
Optimization
And most importantly, you’d need to master solving REAL-WORLD business problems in a modern tech stack. And build your own projects to add to your data analytics portfolio... which you also have to build and make sure you clearly communicate and sell your skills to hiring managers.
I help you with all this above and provide you with a Discord community for individual help and monthly events through my 🔗Big SQL Energy Intermediate course! It’s seriously something you don’t want to miss out on because it’s everything I’ve learned in my career sprinkled into one course.
2. Do your own full projects
After upskilling in SQL, you need to build your own projects and get comfortable with being UNCOMFORTABLE. Be okay with being challenged and lost and ChatGPTing your way through. Of course you can start with guided projects like in my 🔗Big SQL Energy Intermediate course or on YouTube and other places, but eventually you want to build completely from scratch to gain confidence and solidify your problem-solving skills.
Where can you find datasets?
🔗Kaggle is a great website for that! Also, many government websites have LARGE datasets for free, so check those out as well. I highly recommend choosing datasets that align with your target role or industry to stand out the best on the job market.
Here’s a secret:
I made the datasets and data dictionary for this beginner course with Google Gemini. With a little prompt engineering to get the columns I wanted and specify certain restrictions, I was able to create this amazing dataset that supported us through 31 lessons of beginner SQL! Let me know if I should make a video on how to do this!
3. Build a Data Analytics Portfolio
A portfolio is the best way to show off your skills when job searching. You don’t have to build a fancy website or anything— just put your projects neatly in GitHub. But don’t just throw the code in there and expect results. You have to make sure you clearly communicate your work and provide the business context and buzz words that will get the attention of hiring managers. I show you how to do all this too in my 🔗Big SQL Energy Intermediate course as well!
Thanks so much for tuning into the Beginner Big SQL Energy course! It means the WORLD to have so many people who have followed along.
🚨🚨🚨 This beginner course is a good intro to SQL, but it will NOT get you interview and job ready! Head on over to intermediate to level up🚨🚨🚨
If you’ve enjoyed the free BEGINNER Big SQL Energy course, grab my intermediate course. There are no deadlines or timelines for this course— you start and take as long as you want. It will take your beginner skills to the next level and get you ready to ace your interviews. DM me or email me at courses@bdeanalytics.com if you have questions on the intermediate course!
Return to Big SQL Energy Beginner homepage here to access the other lessons: