SQL coaching for HR practitioners and I/O psychology graduates. Live sessions, homework on a synthetic HR dataset, and your work read line by line — not marked right or wrong.
A SQLite database that runs in your browser, preloaded with a synthetic HR schema. Write a query, run it, see the rows. Nothing to install, no account, no email.
It comes up in a leadership meeting. Is there a pay gap by level? Which managers are losing people fastest? Where does the hiring funnel actually break? You know exactly what would answer it.
What you don't have is a way to get to the numbers without filing a request and waiting. So you wait — and the answer arrives shaped by whoever pulled it. A spreadsheet you didn't design, cut the way someone else thought was useful, two weeks after the meeting that needed it.
SQL is the shortest way out of that. Not because writing queries is impressive, but because it removes the dependency. You ask the question, you pull the answer, you check it yourself.
Answering leadership questions without a two-week wait on a data request.
Expected to produce the numbers now, not just interpret someone else's.
Strong on method and statistics. This is the part the programme skipped.
At a startup or NGO where nobody else is going to pull it for you.
The problems are the kind leadership actually asks. The dataset is synthetic — built to mirror the structure of an HRIS, with nothing from a real organisation in it.
Aggregate salary and bonus across level, tenure and department. Find where the gaps sit, how wide they are, and which ones survive once you control for level.
Join employees to their managers and their review history. Rank attrition by team, and separate the managers with a problem from the ones with a big team.
Trace candidates through applications and interview stages. Find the stage that drops the most people, and whether it drops them evenly across sources.
Most people start at stage one, and that's the normal place to start.
SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, then GROUP BY and HAVING. Counting, averaging and filtering groups — and getting comfortable with being wrong in a way you can see and fix.
INNER and LEFT JOIN, self-joins, UNION. Employees to reviews, candidates to applications, and the three- and four-table chains that answer a real question.
Rankings, running totals, and comparing a row to the group it sits in — without collapsing the rows. Includes the decision rule for when a window function beats a GROUP BY, and how ROWS and RANGE frames differ.
One real analysis end to end: summarise, join across four tables, and use a subquery or CTE to hold the middle steps. The point is producing an answer you'd be willing to put in front of leadership — and a query someone else can read, including you in six months.
This is not a course. There are no pre-recorded videos to work through at your own pace, and no checker that tells you "correct" without telling you why.
You write queries against real HR problems. We read them, line by line, and tell you what's working, what's fragile, and what would break the first time the data changed. That's how analysts actually learn.
A short call to place you. What you've done before, what you need to be able to answer, which stage to start at.
Live, working the concept through on the synthetic HR dataset. Up to two a month, booked at your cadence.
A question set on the same data, built around problems HR roles actually get handed. No answer key to peek at.
We read your queries line by line. Not marked right or wrong — read, so you know why the working one works. Up to two a month.
Message us when you're stuck. You don't sit on a broken query for a fortnight waiting for the next session.
Quotes from DataSkillUp learners.
"What I initially expected to be a challenging learning curve turned out to be a surprisingly smooth experience. Aaron and Abhinav made learning SQL feel almost like a cakewalk."
"Their sessions are very practical and grounded in real-life examples. They're straight to the point — definitely not just another lecture with slides."
"From the beginning, I could tell they were not only knowledgeable but also genuinely passionate about teaching. They created an environment where no question was too small."
Sessions booked at whatever cadence your calendar allows.