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Each week, you will receive two newsletters written by the Oppstartr Team. Mondays — Our career-focused newsletter. Fridays — Out of Office where we discuss life and other thought-provoking ideas.

Today’s Pillar: Craft the Skills

I assume you are already well aware of the fact that data is everywhere. I cannot think of a company that doesn't deal with at least some data, and the utilization of data is expanding rapidly across industries.

In this series, we usually talk about soft skills or evergreen skills. In today’s post, I’ll be talking about one of the few tech skills that may just make you a superstar in any industry. That is SQL or Structured Query Language.

Ace in the Hole

As I look at my career, besides the soft skills I’ve developed, SQL may be the best skill I’ve honed. This technical skill boasts diverse applications across industries and settings, yet surprisingly few individuals are proficient in it, making SQL a highly marketable asset. This skill, in my opinion, is one of those evergreen technical skills, because as long as we have databases, we’ll have SQL.

What exactly is SQL? It’s a programming language that allows for the retrieval of data from relational databases (think tables, columns, and rows).

The majority of business data resides in relational databases, and chances are, you'll need to access that data to compile reports or make informed business decisions. But, you have to extract it first, and instead of exporting it to Excel (boo), you could do the work yourself with your SQL knowledge. Trust me, once you understand SQL, your work will be much more productive and faster.

Spreadsheets Only Go So Far

If you have to export it to Excel, I suppose you can (I’m an Excel fan). However, Excel sheets can only accommodate a limited amount of data, whereas databases can store vast amounts of information, necessitating the use of SQL for effective data retrieval.

With SQL, you can select the columns you need, filter the data down to certain criteria, and connect more than one table to another. You can do basic calculations and analytics with the built-in formulas.

Example

The below code gets you the count of different job types in the USA, where you can work remotely in the Medical Industry, where the job description contains “SQL”, and where there is more than one job posted and orders the JobType by count descending. In Excel, you would need to export thousands of rows and make a pivot table with filters. However, the below would probably run in less than a second.

SELECT JobsType, COUNT(*) as NumberOfOpportunies 
FROM Oppstartr..JobsTable
WHERE Country = ‘USA’ and WorkLocation = ‘Remote’ and Industry = ‘Medical’ and JobDesc like ‘%SQL%’
GROUP BY JobsType
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC

Final Thoughts

One of the greatest things about SQL is it's relatively fast to learn, particularly compared to other languages. Mastering the basics of SQL can be achieved within a month, and SQL follows the 80/20 rule, where understanding 20% of its functionalities yields 80% of the desired results.

So if you deal in data, even a little, perhaps you should consider learning SQL. I think the time investment is worth it.

Thank you for reading Career Advise. Be sure to read our upcoming Out of Office issue on Friday.

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