OMS Analytics Career Services Delivers Real-World Results
The Career Services Advantage: How one graduate turned opportunity into career growth.
Ethan Maluhia Roberts wanted more than a new credential — he was looking for a complete career transformation.
While balancing a full-time job, Roberts enrolled in Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Science in Analytics (OMS Analytics) program to bridge the gap between where his career was and where the data industry was heading.
At the time, Roberts worked in sales and marketing analytics, focusing primarily on historical reporting. While the role provided a strong business foundation, he wanted to move beyond measuring past performance and into predictive analytics to help shape corporate strategy.
To make that leap without pausing his career, Roberts needed a graduate program tailored to the realities of a working professional: true asynchronous flexibility, affordable tuition, and a world-class reputation. Georgia Tech checked every box.
The program’s corporate prestige ultimately became his deciding factor.
"When my CFO told me he would choose a Georgia Tech graduate over candidates from other universities, that settled it for me." — Ethan Maluhia Roberts, OMS Analytics 2024
What Roberts did not anticipate was how vital strategic career support would become alongside his rigorous technical training. Like many professionals pivoting into data science, he quickly realized that building machine learning models and mastering programming languages was only half the battle.
Successfully entering a competitive technical field required learning how to translate prior business experience, optimize a digital portfolio, and navigate sophisticated hiring processes.
That is where the OMS Analytics Career Services team stepped in.
Roberts immersed himself in the program’s career resources, working closely with Career Services Program Manager Megan Elrath on mock interviews, resume writing, and job search strategies. Rather than treating career support as a one-time transactional service, he approached it as continuous professional development.
Through career services, Roberts learned how recruiters evaluate technical candidates and how to tailor his preparation for behavioral versus technical case interviews. He also fundamentally reframed his view of professional networking.
"It’s similar to talking to someone on the street who is asking for directions. You're happy to point them in the right direction," Roberts said. "Reaching out to someone on LinkedIn or going to events can feel transactional, but really you’re just asking people for directions."
The Pivot: Practicing for the Real World
That shift in mindset fueled a disciplined job search that Roberts managed alongside his demanding coursework. He treated interview preparation like another class: practicing extensive mock interviews, refining his technical portfolio, recording his answers to improve verbal delivery, and tracking application metrics.
The preparation paid off. Roberts graduated from the OMS Analytics program in July 2024 with three competing job offers.
The opportunity he ultimately accepted came through a direct referral from a fellow OMS Analytics classmate — challenging the idea that online programs isolate peers from meaningful, career-accelerating professional networks.
The ROI: Stepping Into a Full-Stack Career
Today, Roberts is a founding solutions engineer at Paramark, a marketing data science startup based in San Francisco. Thanks to the the multidisciplinary structure of the OMS Analytics curriculum that incorporates business, engineering, and computing concepts, he works confidently as a "full-stack" data professional. On any given day, he handles data engineering pipelines, designs geo-based experiments, analyzes marketing attribution data, and delivers strategic recommendations to enterprise executives.
The role represents the exact career trajectory Roberts envisioned when he began researching graduate programs.
"Georgia Tech’s OMS Analytics program totally changed the course of my career," Roberts said. "I get to code. I get to work in machine learning, designing and executing experiments. It’s a whole new world and I love it."
Roberts now pays it forward by sharing interview insights and career guidance with current OMS Analytics students.
For professionals considering a return to school, Roberts’ trajectory underscores a clear industry reality: technical expertise alone is no longer enough to stand out. Long-term success requires the ability to communicate technical value and build authentic relationships.
By pairing a top-tier academic program with strategic professional preparation, Georgia Tech OMS Analytics helps working professionals achieve far more than a new degree — it launches entirely new careers.
Learn how the OMS Analytics program can help you build the technical depth and professional strategy needed to thrive in today's data landscape. Visit pe.gatech.edu/degrees/analytics
Author: Teresa Daniel
Digital Editor: Kat Bell
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