If I were starting now, these are the 3 reasons I would build a Tableau Public profile. 

I started using Tableau in 2007. I've learned a lot since then. In this video, I go back to the beginning and tell you how I got started. My journey won't be dissimilar to many of you. Plus, I provide some simple steps to learn faster.

If you attended the Facebook session at the Tableau Customer Conference in San Diego, you heard that we’re looking for great people to join our BI team.  The job description is listed below or you can view it on Facebook.

This role is on the same team that I work on within IT and I cannot emphasize enough how happy I am that I decided to leave Coke to go to work at Facebook.  I’m privileged to work with the smartest, most creative and most productive people in the world.  I’m pushed every day to be better than I’ve ever been.

We expect every candidate to be #1 or #2 in what they do. We only hire the sharpest and brightest, but you also must fit in culturally. If you think you’d make a great fit, then apply via the link at the bottom and enter my name when asked if you know anyone that works at Facebook.  This alerts me that someone I know applied. 

BI Engineer, Visualization & Reporting

Do you like working with big data? Do you want to use data to influence product decisions for products being used by over one billion people every day? If yes, we want to talk to you. We’re looking for analytics engineering leaders to work on our Business Intelligence Team with a passion for social media to help drive informed business decisions for Facebook.

In this role, you will work with some of the brightest minds in the industry, and you'll get an opportunity to solve some of the most challenging business problems on the web and mobile Internet, at a scale that few companies can match.  You will enjoy working with one of the richest data sets in the world, cutting edge technology, and the ability to see your insights turned into real products on a regular basis.

The perfect candidate will have a background in computer science or a related technical field, will have experience with business intelligence tools (Tableau experience is preferred), will have experience working with large data stores, and will have some experience writing SQL. You must be scrappy, focused on results, a self-starter, and have demonstrated success in using analytics to drive the understanding, progression, and user engagement of a product.

This is a full time position based in our office in Menlo Park.

Responsibilities

• Manage reporting/dashboard plans for a product or a group of products
• Interface with engineers, product managers and product analysts to understand data, reporting and analytical needs
• Drive sessions with business users to translate requirements and needs of various businesses
• Design, develop, test, launch new reports and dashboards into production
• Help analyze, visualize, and provide analytics on massive amounts of data captured daily to build reporting solutions to support various company initiatives
• Work closely with BI and business colleagues to improve operations through the appropriate use of BI platforms and information collected through dashboards and reports
• Explore and recommend emerging technologies and techniques to support/enhance BI landscape components
• Integrate external reporting solutions with internal applications
• Build rich and dynamic dashboards using out-of-box features, customizations, and visualizations
• Automate solutions where appropriate
• Participate in peer design and certification reviews
• Participate in the creation and support of BI development standards and best practices
• Provide support to reports and dashboards running in production
• Conduct training sessions

Requirements

• Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Mathematics, Business, Business Administration, or closely-related, or foreign equivalent
• 4+ years experience in the reporting and data visualization space
• Expert level skills in building custom reports and dashboards with BI tools, with preference given to candidates with Tableau experience
• Expert level ability to analyze data to identify deliverables, gaps and inconsistencies
• Excellent communication skills including the ability to identify and communicate data driven insights
• Ability to write efficient SQL statements
• Skill in Oracle RDBMS (SQL/PLSQL), MySQL, and OLAP a plus

Apply here

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend the book "48 Days to the Work You Love" by Dan Miller. Dan and his book have made a huge impression on me as I pursue my passion in visual analysis. I also highly recommend that you follow Dan's blog. He always has incredible advice.

His recent post, Go ahead - Astonish me, has three critical questions to ask yourself if you want to achieve extraordinary success. Ask yourself these questions. Separate yourself from the crowd.