Kickstart Your Career With Python – Techstrong Unplugged EP 1

Hey everyone, and welcome to episode one of the Techstrong Unplugged Podcast. I'm your host, Atan Solomon, and I'm excited to kick off this journey with you all. Um, we'll be diving into all things tech and I'd really like to get young adults everywhere up to speed with what they need to know and the skills that they need to learn.

We live in a digital world, and I feel like that's something we're all starting to get used to, but not everybody understands what that means. Um, the jobs we all grown up dreaming about are transforming and adapting every single day. The skills you need for those jobs, you're changing too.

There's one thing we're all told, and it might be the biggest stressor in some of our daily lives. It's something that shapes many of the decisions we make. The schools we go to, the people we surround ourselves with, it's getting a job.

Your parents are telling you, your friends are asking you, and you might be thinking it yourself. How do I get my dream job? How do I apply what I'm good at and find something that I wanna do?

It's not a simple task, and it's elusive and it drives many of us on a daily basis, but I will say there might be some steps that we can all take, skills that we can all learn, and knowledge that we can all consume that will give us the very best chance at it. I'm not here today to tell you how to get a job, but I do wanna shed some light on the intersection between getting a job and this digital world I re I referred to before. There's no facet of our world that isn't being affected by technology and digital innovation.

So staying up to date, having an understanding, or even a mastery of tech is vital. It's that competitive edge that many people in our generation are lacking, and it's what's setting applicants apart on a daily basis. So instead of diving into the most complex topics that you might not be all that familiar with, I'm here to unplug.

I wanna start by talking about some of the skills you might need. What should you focus on? If you're trying to get that competitive edge?

How do you gain knowledge in tech when it might not be your thing? We all know how important it is, but it is intimidating, it's complex and seemingly never ending, but you have to start somewhere. So today we'll be welcoming Brandon PR to the show.

Brandon is a student at Boston University and he taught himself how to code immersed himself in this digital world on his own and found a path. Now he has experience for a Fortune two 50 company. He just finished his second round interview with nasa and he's on a trajectory that many people hope to be on.

One day he'll be joining us to walk through how to become acclimated in the digital world, how to network, and the skills you need along the way. So stay tuned. Hey everyone.

Welcome back to Techstrong Unplugged today. I'm excited to welcome Brandon Pru to the show. Uh, welcome on Brandon.

Hey, how's it going? Uh, it's, uh, nice to, uh, nice to talk here. Yes, sir.

So I've known Brandon for a few years now, and, uh, recently we reconnected. When I saw he had just interviewed with nasa. Um, something that intrigued me is that many students going into college enter money majors, if you'd call it business finance, econ.

And, um, being that Brandon is an econ major and has made that jump to applying to a dream organization like nasa, I'm really interested in in that journey and the skills that he's added along the way to put him in consideration for such an esteemed organization. So, um, so Brandon, yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself, your academic and professional journey, and how you got here. So I, uh, started off as a, um, basically a business administration major at a community college down in Florida called Broward College.

And, um, through my work there and at AutoNation and uh, a healthcare startup, I was able to get a full ride up to Boston University. Um, while I was back down in Florida, uh, the first company I interned with was, uh, a healthcare startup. Their name was, uh, wellness that X, Y, Z.

How they worked is they start, uh, started a ai uh, that would help doctors screen patients for, you know, uh, medical problems, right? Because whenever you go into hospitals, you would have to fill out long intake forms. So basically they wanted to streamline that process.

So right now they're at George Washington University and in the John Hopkins Medical Centers. So, um, a lot of, uh, cool stuff happening there. What I did for them is I basically did their corporate structure, making sure to, uh, protect their IP with the way I set up their company withholding and, uh, structuring the LLC.

So I worked more on the finance side of that, but the, uh, the tech side of that was fascinating to me. Um, after that I went to be a summer financial analyst at, uh, AutoNation, where I had my internship extended because I built, uh, a large language model named Bumblebee, which would handle customer service and clerical tasks for them. So that is my experience with Python and finance.

Interesting. And, and now you're up at Boston University? Yes, I, I'm a student full-time now.

Awesome. And so I guess my first question is, how has your major in econ at BU essentially intersected with your interest in technology, specifically with like, Python for data science? And how have you been using that to essentially grow as a student and a professional?

So, economics, finance and, uh, coding have been, uh, going into a place where they are all intertwined now, right? Uh, if you look at a lot of finance roles, uh, out there right now, you have to know some degree of Python or R or SQL in order to even be considered for the job because a lot of the number crunching that is done for these jobs now is done in these coding languages, right? So you can't really do finance nowadays without the data analysis portion.

Right. Um, see, but the thing is though, I feel like a lot of the, the kids that I will talk to, especially at uf, like not necessarily taking an interest on the side of school, of, of learning these coding languages or taking an interest in the tech side. So you've taken that initiative and it's yielded obviously opportunities.

How did you go about learning Python and was this something that you found difficult to learn or is it easier than might meet the eye? Um, if so, Python I would say has the easiest to learn syntax out of any of the coding languages I've worked with. Um, I would say that it was actually fairly easy for me to learn once I got the HA of it.

Uh, the place that I learned from is called W three Schools. Um, uh, you can go online and, uh, learn Python there for free, right? So, um, a really easy course load.

Uh, I found it extremely rewarding when I used it, and that helped get me my interview at nasa. Interesting. Um, and we're definitely gonna loop back and talk about NASA at all before.

I'd like to build up into that a little bit and kind of focus on your time with AutoNation. And you mentioned that you built an AI basically named Bubble Bee. Um, what was the inspiration behind this and how did, could you just walk me through that entire process and how you did that?

So, one of, one of the things that I noticed while I was doing there is they had me doing a lot of, uh, repetitive, repetitive tasks and a lot of, you know, uh, da data analysis work that could be done a lot easier if I had access to ai. So I, I was using, uh, GPT when I was, when I was working there to help me with my job, and I wondered like, what if I could make one of these for the office that could run off of our own system and be secure, right? Because when you're dealing in the finance position, uh, finance division in a public company, a lot of the stuff that you work on is, um, like confidential.

Um, so I wanted to make an AI that could run locally there that would not be reporting data back to, uh, open AI servers. So that's what inspired me to do it. So that's when I initially started learning Python, I started learning, um, basically how to run local LLMs, how to train them.

Uh, the one that I built, I built, uh, bumblebee on top of one called Wizard lm, which was a, uh, a 7 billion parameter, uh, AI model. And it was actually, you know, a lot easier than it sounds, but what things I was able to get it to do were, like, it could read documents, right? You could give it a PDF and it would be able to read it, um, and then give you insights based on that.

It could do the same as spreadsheet, uh, spreadsheets. And basically it, it just sped up a lot of the work I was doing at the office, and I basically, I offered it to them, uh, basically as a pitch for keeping me at the company when the internship program, but, uh, was going to end. And, um, it worked.

I was the only intern that was kept on out of like 40. Um, it basically extended my time there for like six months while I was finishing up school down in Florida. Um, they didn't end up using it for customer service, but that was fine.

It did for me what I wanted it to do. And I think that learning to code like that definitely gave me a good experience and being able to show that off to recruiters in the future, even in fields where that necessarily wouldn't seem relevant, like, uh, investment banking, which is eventually what I wanna get into. Uh, that's something that a lot of recruiters talk to me about when they're interviewing me.

Right. So this is sort of a learn as you go sort of thing. You, you didn't come in with a mastery level of, you know, designing this thing, but you saw a problem and decided to take it into your own hands and make it make something easier.

Oh yeah, For sure. Um, it's a lot easier to learn something like that when you're just kind of thrown into the fire instead of, you know, I'm gonna learn this perfectly and then execute upon it. If you learn through trial and error, that's the way that you're going to be able to keep a mastery of it.

Right. And so you were able to swirl, sorry, what was the name of the program that you said you had learned on before? Uh, W three schools.

Yeah. So did you swirl the skills you were learning with that and then just apply them to the exact context of the company that you were currently working for at that time? Exactly, yes.

Um, and then I learned a lot of coding from GitHub and from YouTube. There's a lot of free resources out there to learn coding if you want to do it. Um, and, you know, it's not something that you have to pay for nowadays.

Right. And how long did it take you to get to a point where you're comfortable with like, I mean, obviously right now you seem to have somewhat of a mastery of it, but how long did it take you to get comfortable enough where you think you can, you you were like, I could apply this to many different things in my life? I'd say, especially if you're working on a project where you're actually implementing it, you know, I learned in, I I would basically say like 12 weeks.

Uh, it took me about to, to learn it to a point where, you know, if there was a problem, maybe I wouldn't know the exact code to do it at that second, but I would be able to figure it out very quickly and learn how to implement it. Right. And that's, that's the kind of level of mastery you need to actually use it, right?

You don't need to know ev how everything inside of it works. You just need to know enough to where you can find the solution to the problems you're having, Right? And I mean, these are skills that make you far more employable that we're in such a competitive job market.

And something that I think about every day is that the world is becoming increasingly more digital. Like having these skills is not necessarily just an edge. It's, it's non-negotiable.

You, you really need it. So to be able to learn that skill in 12 weeks to the point where you have that edge, it, it seems like a no brainer for, I mean, business finance and econ makes up, I'd say a majority of college students at this point. A lot of people will go into college, maybe not know exactly what they're wanting to do, but say, whatever I want to do will probably involve money.

So they go ahead into those ma, you know what I mean? So they go into those majors. And WI feel like the idea of learning python or just understanding machine learning, large language models, it's, it, it's intimidating, I would say to somebody who might not be a tech expert or somebody who's interested in that upfront.

But as we've seen, I mean, you're working your way up and now, I mean, a lot of people would say NASA is a dream job, so for you to be able to interview them is, is impressive. But with your recent interview with nasa, what I'm interested in knowing is how do you envision combining your econ background, the tech skills you've learned in that space exploration context? Um, how is everything gonna swirl together?

If you could just dive into that. Yeah. The position that I interviewed for is at a jo onsite at the, in the CFO's office at Johnson Space Center over in Texas.

Right. And what I would be doing is I would be helping the chief of business operations run the business operations of nasa, because a lot of people don't understand that e you know, they, they have a lot of logistics and such that go on. Um, of course they understand there's a lot of logistics that are going on, but, uh, there's a whole business aspect to NASA that they have to keep together.

They have contracts with private companies. They have, uh, they have to keep their payroll going. There's a lot of, uh, finance aspects at the company, and especially with, uh, data science, they have a lot of, uh, things at the company where they have to break down the, uh, you know, compensation.

They have to break down, uh, employee benefits into, uh, ways that they can manage budget for budgets for future quarters, especially because they're audited a lot more as a part of the federal government. Um, so data analytics was one of the, you know, even though this was a finance job, being able to code and data analytics were, was one of the requirements for actually getting into it. Interesting.

And as far as the interview itself, um, was there some sort of studying that went along with that? How were you preparing yourself and what did, not to go into the details of the interview itself, but in terms of the structure of how that went, I'm sure people would be interested in knowing what, you know, to me at least, NASA's one of the biggest work people wanna work. They want to go to space or at least be involved in that process.

So what is that like interviewing for such an organization? So the, the interview game, especially if you are, uh, new to it, uh, or just starting out in college, it's gotten a lot different, right? They don't do like one round interviews for jobs anymore.

They will put you through three or four rounds of interviews, uh, just to weed out the people that they think are the best because it's so competitive now, right? So I was studying up on, uh, tech on technicals for Python, um, for, uh, Excel, all of those kinds of things. Like a lot of the time they'll ask you about specific, uh, technical skills inside of it, and you have to be ready to come up with that.

Like, uh, what does an X lookup function do in Excel? That's something they'll ask. Or, um, how, how do Python arrays work?

What, uh, you know, what, um, you know, what, what kind of functions do they have inside of the program? You know, and what, what do you need to import? So you need to keep yourself brushed up with technicals if you want to work, especially in like the software or finance side of the job.

Um, I just did my first round interview. I'm waiting to hear back about the second round. Um, I think it went pretty well, and it's definitely not the, the first interview I've had where there were, uh, technical questions.

So, you know, don't expect just behaviorals anymore in interviews, is what I'll say. Right. They're not just interviewing you to see if you're a good fit at the company.

They wanted to know that you actually know the skills for the job now. Right. And for, I would say getting that interview, what sort of a networking process did you have to go through?

Because I'm sure it didn't, it wasn't just you sign up for the interview and you go do it. I'm sure you had to have some sort of a connect. And in general, I think networking is important, um, in whatever career you might be pursuing.

Um, how did you go about like, forming those connections and what, what role does being up in Boston play in that, if any, do people need to be in a big city to make those connections or, you know, can, can you make them anyways? No, it's interesting. Um, basically I don't apply for a job nowadays if I'm not actively talking to someone who is respon like, uh, part of the management of that team, right?

Because it's, it's just not worth it, right? 0 from Brown and I just supplied for 400 jobs. Not one of them reached back to me.

It's like, that's ridiculous, but it happens. So the reason I was able to get, uh, this interview at NASA is through, um, LinkedIn cold emailing. I eventually got in touch with, um, with one of the directors in the business operations, uh, unit there.

And you know, what you do is you ask them to have a short chat to interview them kind of about what, what their job is like to learn about, uh, what they need for that kind of job. And you build this connection with someone so that, you know, at the end maybe you can ask for a reference, you can ask for a referral. 'cause if you don't get these, it's almost impossible to get a job now.

Um, that's how I got my job at, uh, at AutoNation. I was, um, talking to the head of the corporate real estate division well before I even applied for the job. And the best way to find these people is actually through LinkedIn.

Um, you know, if, if you get LinkedIn premium, you can send them messages, you can send connection requests. And so that's definitely how I keep getting interviews for these jobs and how I, how I keep getting them because they get a thousand resumes, especially NASA or one of the banks you're trying to intern at. I just had an interview at Wells Fargo for, um, investment banking.

Um, the, the talent pool is so tough that if you don't know someone on the inside, there's basically no point to even clicking apply. Right? It's that competitive, it's that competitive where, yeah, I mean, and this is the stuff that they're not teaching us in school.

There's no class of how to get a job. There's just people telling you to get a job. So I feel like that's what people really wanna know is you're going through college, you probably are gaining skills that are useful, but at the same time, nobody's really telling you how do I showcase them?

How do I get my foot in the door? Um, other than LinkedIn, are there some sort of like networking tools that you find to be useful that can put people in touch? Yes.

Um, some like the, there's three that I have found the most useful. And, um, number one being, uh, career spring, right? Which is a platform for first generation or low income college students, right?

Um, you know, the qualifications for getting on there, they're not too harsh. And basically what they, it can do is it can connect you with people at these companies directly, right? They partner with career springing in order to help mentor people, and they have career spring exclusive job opportunities, right?

So they have partners with huge companies like Wells Fargo, um, JP Morgan Sumitomo, which is the largest bank in Japan. So, and then this also extends to tech jobs, right? I was seeing, um, tech consulting jobs at Accenture, at Deloitte p wc, and you know, there are like actual senior people from these companies who are on this platform looking to help students, right?

So I was just talking to a managing director at, uh, Blackstone, which is one of the largest private equity firms out there. And um, so that's a good way to make connections and also, uh, apply for jobs. Now, something that's not very exclusive, but what has been super helpful for me was, um, way Up, which is a, uh, a platform where you can apply for jobs.

There's a lot of way up exclusive, uh, job opportunities, especially for internships and tech and finance. And what's great about it is that you set up a profile on it with your resume, and it's actually like given out to recruiters. So you have recruiters messaging you to your inbox talking about job opportunities.

So, you know, it's not something where you're going on Indeed and you're clicking, like submit application to a thousand different companies. You know, these are jobs where recruiters are actually talking to you where the candidate pool is a lot lower. It's just not a lot of people know about this.

Right? Right. Um, and then finally the last one that I would like to talk about is, uh, intern Excel, which is a platform exclusively for helping, uh, college students get internships, right?

And all three of these have the same important aspect is that they have exclusive job opportunities just for members of that program, right? And that cuts down on your competition by literal thousands of people, right? You know, instead of competing with 5,000 for this job, you're now competing with only 500.

And the odds are shifted way into your favor. These companies that are partnering with Intern Excel, with Career Spring, they wanna give those jobs to, uh, to the students from those programs. And so you have to know about these, right?

'cause nobody tells you about these kinds of things. And then you have to take advantage of them once you have them because, you know, your first job coming out of, uh, college or even while you're in college, like an internship can have a huge effect on the rest of your career. Right?

And my question is, do you think that this is applicable to underclassmen as well, people that might not be employable yet? What are the steps you can take? Let's say you walk onto CAP campus freshman year and you're like, what can I do to set myself up so that, um, my myself a year from today is thanking me for the steps I took?

What can they do right when they're trying to set themselves up? Can they use these platforms or is there another way? Yeah, so, so the platforms are great, and I'd say for someone who doesn't have job experience yet, um, networking and starting early building relationships with people at the firms you wanna work at, uh, down the line is especially important.

Um, I know the thing is, is if, uh, you are looking to work into finance, a lot of, uh, schools have something called feeder clubs. Like, uh, at bu, nearly every single student who works in finance after, uh, you know, college ends was part of the investment club, right? Because the inve, the investment club has the partnerships with these companies.

And so basically it, it feeds into them. Um, like I know that the investment club here has partnerships with JP Morgan and mli and company, big investment banks, and every single alumni who I've talked to who works in finance came from that club. So look into the, the actual clubs at your school because they can be super important for getting jobs in the future.

Awesome. And maybe for, I mean, and you said you came from, you didn't start at, but you, you didn't start at a big school, so obviously it's not entirely mandatory to, to get on that, to launch yourself into that career path. What would you say to the people who might not be at the biggest schools or schools that have those insane connections be used, an incredible school, um, what would you say to those that might not be at those big schools?

Do they just get on LinkedIn and start networking and finding people? Or is there certain steps that you would take or tell those people to take? I'd say the, the biggest step to take, and this was the step that I was taking when I were, when I was, you know, um, at Broward College, and this helped me actually get into school up here, is you have to have like a story for yourself, right?

Um, mine was that I came from being homeless in 2021 to having, uh, working so hard. 9, and then transferred into one of the, you know, best private schools in the country on a full ride. They, it doesn't have to be something quite as intense as that, but have a story that sets you apart from people and makes people remember you after you talk to them, right?

Because, you know, a lot of these people want to help you, the ones that you're networking with, and it's especially important that they have something that makes you human in their eyes, right? Not just another person bugging them for a referral. So yeah, if, if you are at a smaller university or, uh, you don't have the experience yet, um, it's not impossible.

I, uh, got my internship at, uh, AutoNation from my community college and I did it basically straight through networking. So I was working finance at a Fortune two 50 company, uh, before I even had my career here at, or before I had my acceptance letter from bu. So yeah, it definitely isn't dependent on the school that you go to.

It's more so dependent on the connections that you are trying to make, Right? And the whole story is incredible. And looking at it from an overview, it might seem like a big journey, but I feel like something I'm taking from what you're saying is that there are small steps that you can take to get yourself up that ladder and get yourself where you want to be.

And you know, we started talking about having that python and that tech experience, even though you're maybe in a sector where you didn't perceive it as necessary when you chose that major. But you know, if you're interested in that major, it's important, important to learn those skills, but then separately, while you're learning those skills, networking so that you're gonna have someone to showcase those skills too. And, um, put yourself in the position that you wanna be.

And I feel like a lot of people are trying to catapult themselves into the roles that they want to be in without focusing on the smaller, maybe more simple steps like using these programs like, you know, career spring and way up. Um, so if you add one word of advice to give to people that are trying to make it, what would you say? I would say, um, especially when you're networking, be genuine, right?

Try not to just keep asking about the jobs. Try to be, um, try to be personable. Try to have an actual interest in the person you're learning about because you can spot some, obviously you can spot someone being fake from a million miles away, right?

So don't be, you know, thinking that, uh, that that's something that you can get away with. So definitely be personable when you're doing your connection and for the love of God, have a good resume template. Um, I've seen some, some trash resumes from people even here, right?

Prestigious private institution. The resumes no hedge jot, right? If I was to suggest a template, wall Street Oasis has a free temp template for resumes.

You'll never need another one for the rest of your life. Awesome. Alright, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on.

Um, really appreciate you joining the show. It was a pleasure. All right.

Yeah, you have a wonderful night. You too. Thank you.

Welcome back everyone. Thank you for joining us on the first step of this journey. On episode one, Brandon gave us some insight in how to make your way into the professional and digital world.

He presented us with some must have networking tools, the must know aspects of our digital world, and how to become more informed in tech. Learning how to code or even understanding the intricacies of AI or machine learning or large language models isn't easy. But he did break down the best way to get started and the benefits of doing so in a professional sense.

We'll have all the links to all the resources we talked about in the description, so be sure to check that out. In the next episode, we'll dive into artificial intelligence and break down the must know information and how you can use it to your advantage. Be sure to tune in and thank you for joining Techstrong Unplugged.