How Nitin Madaan Found Financial Freedom and Earned His Dream Role in Analytics

Nitin Madaan was born and educated in India. When he got a job offer in the U.S. to work in business analytics, he made the move without hesitation. Four years later, he decided to go back to school for music production. After receiving his music degree, Nitin wanted to pivot back to analytics, but the industry had changed a lot in the two years he’d been out of it. There were new technologies and new qualifications, and he was skeptical of his ability to jump right back in. When he heard that his family was planning to move to Canada, he decided to move with them. 

“Analytics in the U.S. had advanced so much, I figured it couldn’t hurt to explore the market in Toronto and see if there were more opportunities for me there,” said Nitin. “I soon realized what I really needed was to brush up and expand my skill set to reenter the industry.” Nitin enrolled in UofT SCS Data Analytics Boot Camp, and within 3 weeks of starting the program, he amassed enough current knowledge to land a new analytics role at BDO Canada. Here’s his journey. 

Finding focus and forging connections

Prior to beginning the boot camp, Nitin got a temporary retail job to pay his rent. He spent the first few days of the course acclimating to the rapid pace. While it was certainly a challenge, he quickly learned that being exposed to such a wide variety of material would be what set him apart in the job market. “My objective was not to become an expert in everything,” said Nitin. “I wanted to learn the key principles of every topic, and then decide what I wanted to focus on in the future.”

Despite the rigor, Nitin was pleasantly surprised by how much he enjoyed the day-to-day of the class. It was a fun, close-knit group of learners, and a dynamic, interactive learning environment. He received guidance from his instructors, assistant instructors, and even his fellow learners. He was impressed with the diversity of the boot camp participants — there were learners from all over the world who held a wide variety of professional experiences and backgrounds, both in technology and across other industries. 

“I wouldn’t have built up my portfolio this much or landed my job so quickly without the help of the industry experts I was introduced to through the boot camp,” said Nitin. “We’re a close-knit family. Next week, we’re all meeting up over zoom to catch up and discuss our career paths.”

Generating a shared sense of achievement

For their final project, Nitin’s group built a machine learning algorithm for homeowners looking to rent a home on the popular site Airbnb: The user inputs all of the information about their space, and the algorithm outputs the appropriate renting price given the description and current market trends. 

“We were really proud of it,” said Nitin. “It had a homepage dashboard displaying all the trends and listings in a given area, with different filters to look at dynamic pricing models based on the number of bedrooms, the number of days you’re renting, and more. Since Airbnb doesn’t have open-source data, we built an API to scrape it — that was the biggest part of the project.”

Coming into the boot camp, Nitin still had a lot to learn, despite having previously worked in the field. But he and his peers were all in the same boat. “The group projects helped us all to collaborate and connect,” said Nitin. “By working together we really generated a shared sense of achievement.”

Embracing the next job opportunity

In his new role, Nitin is working on developing an AI product. He was the first hire on the new team for the project, standing out as a candidate who had strong technical skills and could communicate with analysts and leaders across different technology departments.

“I finally have a sense of clarity about what I want to do,” said Nitin. “I’m really enjoying the experience so far. I use all of the skills I learned at the boot camp, and my ability to apply them and get work done quickly really helped me to shine at BDO, especially in the first few months on the job.” 

With greater financial independence, greater stability, and more freedom than he’s ever had in his career, Nitin is enjoying the added flexibility to spend his time and money doing things that bring him joy. He’s looking forward to whatever comes next.