I don't know how much you learned through certification but can you elaborate on what you can do if I give you a data set with 200 variables, over 10 years and 10,000 companies.  You are asked to: 1)  analyze their profits, impact of various variables on profits, (there are hundreds of variables, you got to find your own set of variables you think are important) 2)  the time from starting a company to attaining profits, the differences in the time to profits for select companies from different industries, 3) how many companies exit the market within those 10 years and potential reasons for that using multivariate regression. Can you tell me how you would go about solving those problems? Something that is visible, clear and potentially free of academic jargon would be the most useful even though you are expected to use some of the advanced statistical analysis required. How proficient are you in writing macros to do all the analysis? PS: I will give you some idea once you give your input.

Confounded_new · Apr 16, 2009 10:56 PM

Look man, this is all a little heavyweight for me right here. But this is what I might do. Input the raw file into SAS Libname <saslibrary 'address'; data saslibrary.filename1; infile 'raw file address'; input var1 var2 var3.......varn; run; data saslibrary.filename2; set saslibrary.filename1; where industry in ('industry1, industry2,.....industry n); run; data saslibrary.filename2; <perform your calculation, need to refer to an accounting book; run; proc tscsreg data=saslibrary.filename2; #(Use tscsreg since its panel data data is over 10 years for ) model y= var1 var2 .....varn;                    each month I believe) run; as far as writing macros in concerned im still in the process of learning it, so don't wanna make a fool of myself just yet. Can you please help me out!

hakim_saab · Apr 17, 2009 3:34 PM

Agni Parikshya ugh!!

Poon-Hill · Apr 17, 2009 4:19 PM

I was not expecting you to write codes or anything out here. Just learning how to program is not enough. Important thing is how you think about solving problems. What models do you use? How do you go about interpreting them? And, you would have to be pretty familiar with macros to handle multiple data sets. Else, you would spend hours doing something that could be done in 20 minutes. Some of the things I was expecting you to mention were survival analysis, hazard models etc. since I was also talking about time to profits, time to exit etc. And, in most cases, you do a market study as well as company specific study to see if there are differences in the way they perform. BTW, most firms don't even care if you know how to program in SAS because you can easily learn it. The important thing is your ability to think creatively. If you can have a combo of the two, you should be in....Good luck!!!

Confounded_new · Apr 18, 2009 5:13 PM

I have base and advanced SAS certification as well.  I am too looking for SAS programmer job.  The problem right now is SAS job market is too tight. Either they are looking for Clinical SAS programmer, or SAS admin. It is very hard to get short listed and crack the interview in this job market for SAS programmer. If it was 2 years ago it was lot easy to get interviews and job. Anyways good luck hob hunting.

vaadgaule · Apr 18, 2009 8:54 PM