SQL Insights: In Conversation With Hadrien Eluere

At LearnSQL.com , our SQL Skills Assessment isn’t just another test; it’s a gateway to mastering SQL for tackling real-world data challenges. This assessment covers the key skills for anyone wanting to prove their SQL capabilities.?

Today, we have Hadrien Eluere with us. Hadrien, who’s had experience in both the luxury and tech sectors, recently aced our SQL Assessment and earned a Certificate of Competency in SQL . He’s here to share his thoughts on how SQL has helped him improve processes and manage data in his roles. Plus, he’ll talk about his unique problem-solving approach in the workplace.

Please introduce yourself and explain how you've integrated your skills in data management and process improvement into your roles in luxury and tech SMBs.

As I’m sure many who work with very small businesses will tell you, it’s very important to be able to wear a lot of hats. I started out working for my family’s luxury knives business in a role where I handled the website and e-commerce section, product data management, physical product maintenance, and graphic design but also occasionally assisting our sales representative at trade shows or directly with the clients. It required me to know the product and the stock intimately and that allowed me to improve several areas, for example by implementing a defined SEO framework that made it easier to update the website, or regular and consistent quality checks which resulted in much lower product return rates.

After a few years, I decided I wanted to resume my education, enrolled in a work-study 2-year graduate program in marketing communications, and moved across the country for my new job with a tech startup in the cloud gaming field. My main role was to follow marketing assets production and communicate with clients and vendors to ensure all guidelines regarding brand identity were respected, and to keep the internal catalog data updated; in time it also grew to include reporting tasks which required a lot of manual Excel work. I’ve since managed to consolidate the process to lower the time spent preparing these reports, and I’m working on implementing more solutions to further improve our system, which is where SQL comes in.

How long have you been using SQL in your work, and what are its main applications in your daily tasks?

Using SQL is pretty new for me — as mentioned earlier, I’ve been used to Excel as the main tool for data management and reporting. However, given the ever-increasing amounts of data that come to us, evolving towards database systems seems the obvious evolution and I’ve been experimenting with small-scale SQLite setups to store the data my team needs and querying them over the past six months.?

My goal is to be able to answer ad hoc requests for information regarding our catalog more efficiently, to perform basic ETL into visualization tools, and to isolate the data needed for analyses more cleanly and efficiently than can be done in Excel.

Given your interest in data, communication, and education, what additional skills are you looking to develop to further your professional goals?

In addition to improving my SQL skills, I’m also working on gaining skills with other standard data analysis skills: data visualization with PowerBI, and Python basics. That said, I’m also very interested in broader concepts surrounding data — data architecture, modeling, and governance as well as engineering are all topics that I’m looking to develop my understanding of, to be able to communicate better with all stakeholders in a data ecosystem and have both a top-down and bottom-up understanding of how it functions within a company.

What inspired you to take the SQL Assessment? Was it a professional requirement, or were you driven by personal ambition to enhance your skill set?

I have been working on developing my SQL skills regularly through the LearnSQL courses and wanted to take the Assessment in order to have a benchmark to chart my current level of proficiency and get a feel for the more advanced problems — it was a great confidence boost to find myself scoring so high already, but I’m looking forward to coming back to it again to solve the sections I was weak in.

Could you share the strategies that helped you prepare for and excel in the SQL Assessment, leading to your certification?

There’s no magic, just regular practice! I used the LearnSQL courses of course, but also did practical work on my own database, reading documentation and generally exposing myself to discussions and content about data, which helped develop the right kind of thinking to approach query structure and problem-solving.

During the assessment, which parts did you find particularly challenging?

I still need more practice with CTEs and window functions — I have not had to use them outside of practice problems yet, so they don’t come as naturally and I would have needed a bit more time than was allowed by the timed assessment questions.

What advice would you offer to professionals who aim to enhance their roles through improved data management and process optimization skills?

Regular practice and hands-on experience with problems is the most important for technical skills. But data and what comes with it are tools, you have to know what you want to build; I believe being aware of the practical, everyday problems that the data seeks to answer and the context it’s being collected in allows you to better understand the questions, and that understanding is also the foundation on which you’ll find solutions to make changes and optimize processes.?

Talk to people, understand what they need and how you can make their life easier, and then keep doing it.

In your industries, how do you see the role of SQL and data management evolving in the near future, and what skills should candidates focus on to stay competitive?

Smart data management will always be needed, regardless of its form, and technology moves very fast, so I’d say it’s good to keep an ear to the ground and learn all the time. But the modern economy would grind to a halt if Microsoft Excel vanished overnight and SQL has been around for 50 years now; I think the best strategy is to look at your own environment and goals and adapt to best fit them while developing a strong foundation of technical and communication skills that will let you grow wherever you end up while maintaining the curiosity and the desire to learn that got you here in the first place.

Thank you for this insightful conversation.

Hadrien's story shows how SQL can transform career paths and improve workplace efficiency. If you're motivated to elevate your professional capabilities, consider taking the free SQL Skills Assessment at LearnSQL.com and begin your journey toward achieving a Certificate of Competency in SQL.