Working in Statistics

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Please discuss your experience seeking or working in any jobs involving data analysis or statistics - interviews, job duties, typical workday, interpersonal interaction, job titles, work load, where you found jobs, whatever. I'm most interested in job duties and the level of interpersonal interaction. My degree is getting me nowhere, so I'm probably going to try apply to a postgraduate statistics certification program.

my job reqireslots of statistics.
how was I hired? word of mouth for my interview hen I breathe employers away.
job duties include....management. data entry. payroll. hr. data analysis. constantly leasing with ceos. making graphs and charts...monitoring productivity. setting out time sheets.
my typical work day is 8am to 5pm and too busy for lunch breaks. constant interpersonal interaction even just analysing employee data feels like dealing with them.
my title is "hr data input unit manager"

I love my job though

I was interviewing for a job in this field last year. It really seemed to fit my personality. Collecting, standardizing, organizing and analyzing data (I would classify the work I do for an engineering department currently as having similar trends).
I did well in the interview, drawing neat parallels between what I do now and the tasks they described.
BUT, it all fell to pieces when they asked me to take a SQL test. Nothing in the job description mentioned it specifically, so, I figured I would be okay in starting from my knowledge of Access. I didn't make any noise, but, I do have rosacea, so I am sure they were startled by my face and chest flaming bright red at my agitation.

I have gotten pretty good over the years at dealing with new stuff, meetings, phone calls, emails, etc, I'm generally considered a very good speaker when presenting and can deflect questions deftly to deal with later after I can research.
But, I felt like I went to pieces and really blew that one.

I was still under consideration for awhile because it was an odd job they were having trouble recruiting for, but, I did not get it in the end.

Statistics is kind of broad. Most professional statisticians act as consultants, working on a per project basis. This requires a fair amount of interpersonal and communication skills since you have to not only sell yourself to get the job but also your methodology and ultimately the analysis. That said once you get the job and understand the problem, there is a lot of time spent 'holing up' to collect data, model, write reports, etc. If you're lucky you might get 80% alone time and 20% social time.

These days you can look for roles seeking a Data Scientist. Usually these roles require less rigorous understanding of statistical theory but you do need to have programming skills.

HTH, uc