I would say, I have a little bit of an unorthodox path to getting where I am today and it's actually a really good lesson for students. I started out my career with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, I was working on asbestos litigation reform, doing econometric modeling there. I had always envisioned myself, at some point going to law school. I was getting ready to leave the committee because I was engaged and needed to join my fiancee in Utah for a year before moving on and going to law school or whatever the next phase of my career would be and landed at Overstock who happened to be lobbying the committee at the time to tread water for a few months until we were ready to move on to a new location. I got involved in the early days of something called Web Analytics, which was tracking and analyzing what goes on on a website, finding ways to improve the business accordingly. And as I did so, I discovered I really loved that segment of the industry because we just had much better data than anybody else has and much more to work with and so I continued chasing that and ended up finding a great career for myself in the analytics and e-commerce strategy space and I would never have envisioned that but I followed the opportunities that were available. I think the key in all of it was and it's part of Overstock hiring philosophy, "Don't think of yourself as having a specific rule or a position in your career path. Don't think of yourself as an analyst. Don't think of yourself as a supply chain guy. Don't think of yourself as Human Resources. Think of yourself as a skill set". In my case, I was good at solving problems with data that's what I was doing at the Judiciary Committee with asbestos litigation reform but that was also the same thing I was doing with Web analytics in e-commerce and so think about what your skill set is, what package of abilities you bring to bear for an employer and think about, how did I maximize a career using that skill set not a career and a position, and that gives you the flexibility to follow and chase opportunity without siloing yourself into a fixed career vertical in a given company.

So my responsibilities, I manage a strategy group, formerly I also managed all of the analytics resources. The responsibilities that revolve around that are really any time there's any problem in the business, we're a data-driven company, and so we're looking for analytics and data to solve the problem and so I have to be prepared to jump in wherever the fire is the hottest to try and find data-driven solutions and make sure we're adequately resourced, prepared to handle the challenges that are emerging. The working hours accordingly are kind of volatile. There are some days where I can get away with a six-hour workday. There are some days where I need a 12-hour workday and I just have to be prepared for that volatility and prepared to respond when things were needed. But also, when I'm not needed, have the discipline to step away from work and go and spend time with family and do the other things that need to be done in life. So I have to be prepared. The work is very volatile and so I have to be prepared to jump in and when there's a fire, work extended days, 10 or 12 hours, but also have the discipline not to do that when there isn't a fire and take the time out for family and all the other things in life and so in that regard, it's somewhat volatile how that workday plays out, and I think that's true for most executives.

So in my position, we have both sort of objective criteria for hiring candidates as well as more subjective criteria on the objective side a good analyst and somebody who is going to excel in the analytics field typically needs three attributes. One is mathematical proficiency and that could be tested objectively. Another is your technical proficiency, databases and you need to be prepared to work in spreadsheets or in R or in SQL or whatever the proper coding language or systems are for the kind of role you are in and we can test each of those things objectively and finally, logical reasoning, there is an element, there are those who are great at math who, when given sort of a logic problem, can really struggle and so we also need to make sure you have the logical reasoning to apply the math to the business problems accurately and to translate business objectives into mathematical equations. So those three things we test for objectively when we're doing the hiring. You don't need to be great at all of those things. Some roles require one more than another. In some cases, if you have great logical reasoning and great math, we can teach you the technical skills or vice versa but we test for all three of those to find where you're strong. In terms of interviewing candidates we are really interviewing to find out one cultural compatibility, are you assertive enough to really push the data and make sure that the business is acting on what you learn and understand as well as can you take good direction and extract needs out of the business to turn around and solve through data. And then finally, from an interviewing standpoint, we're also testing to make sure that you have the right social skills to be able to take the insights you find and convince people to follow them and adopt the practices that you uncover.