Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Charlie completed both his BA (15’ History & Geography) and MISt (17’ Master of Information Studies) from Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř. Now he is a Berlin-based taxonomist at Vinted, Europe’s premier secondhand retail platform. Prior to working at Vinted, he spent four and half years as a taxonomist/ontologist at Amazon focusing on home improvement and industrial category spaces.
You may wonder what a taxonomist is and what their job duties are. Taxonomists are professionals who specialize in classifying and sorting information based on an established system. Taxonomists work in a range of fields to identify and describe various concepts or organisms then sorting them based on similar characteristics and patterns. Given the importance of UX/UI design is growing in all industries, an effective taxonomy for UX is crucial for simplifying access to information, streamlining navigation, and ultimately elevating the end-user experience. As a master student from School of Information Studies myself, I recently spoke with Charlie, and he provided some insight on how various aspects of his Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř Arts background shaped him into the person he is today.
Would you mind telling me a bit about your experience at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř?
CL: I loved my time at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř. I did two degrees: first, I did a BA majoring in history and a minor in geography (2012–2015). I then did a Master of Information Studies (MISt) degree from 2015 through 2017 with a focus in knowledge management (KM). Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř let me turn my intellectual curiosity to intellectual interests, especially during my history degree. I was able to really dive deep in the history of science as well as Canadian history. Heading into my undergrad, I always thought that these topics were fascinating — Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř let me explore them in depth through a rigorous academic process. Going deep in subjects like these was like building a puzzle: you start with an idea. It’s often vague, open-ended, and high level. Essentially, the root was always “I want to learn more about this.” And then it was going through the literature! This was always my favourite part. Reading books and articles, then going into their citations and heading into the sources those authors used. It was jumping through the proverbial rabbit’s hole, just going deeper and deeper into a subject until the paper is written.
My desire to get my MISt was driven by my experiences during my undergrad. Citation jumping was interesting but primary sources were much more difficult to access and find, especially when you’re physically remote from the subject you’re researching. I saw the School of Information Studies (SIS) as a means to an end: I could study archival practice to help make historical information — artifacts, documents, recordings — available to the masses (or to other history students, at least). But after arriving at SIS, I realized that archives simply was not for me. Instead, I found KM. Instead of making archival information accessible to folks, I found that making knowledge accessible was equally important in any industry. This led me to taking courses in KM, taxonomies, intellectual capital, and information architecture. It’s all about allowing people to access information and find the right knowledge they need at the right time. During my MISt, I was also able to work as a TA for three semesters at the Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř Institute for the Study of Canada, for CANS 200, working under Dr. Mary Anne Poutanen. While this is a multidisciplinary course, there is a strong (academic) history component to it. My specialty during my undergrad opened doors for me before even leaving Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř!
How do your passions for each area of study (BA in History & Geography and Master of Information Studies) play out in your career pathway in the software development sector (Amazon and Vinted)?
CL: My work as a taxonomist, both at Amazon and now at Vinted, is about going really deep into a subject and organizing information based on the subject matter material. It’s impossible to taxonomize something that you don’t know about! The skills I developed at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř, researching, evaluating, analyzing, and weighing multiple information sources, have been vital. These skills follow you in any industry, tech included.
Were there certain skills you developed during your study at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř that helped you get to where you are today?
CL: My current work in the tech sector is heavily influenced by my studies at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř. The study of history is extremely analytical: as a historian, you’re always looking at the sources, interpreting them critically, and then drawing your conclusions. Geography played a complimentary role to history here; while history is highly qualitative, geography at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř was much more quantitative. This led to me getting some relevant “hard” skills where I learned how to properly analyze data and got some more technical skills learning things like GIS. Most importantly, these two domains are centred on writing! It’s good to know how to synthesize and analyze data but what’s vital is being able to convey your ideas and analyses to others. The broader tech sector needs these kinds of skills. All organizations strive to be “data-driven”, meaning that they want to make the best decisions using all the information that they have available to them.
I also take advantage of my writing skills; even if my research is well-done and correct, I need to be able to sell my ideas to colleagues, to leadership, and to people outside my organization. At SIS, during my MISt, my focus on knowledge management and information management crystallized my information professional skills. I enjoy organizing things; I joke that my job is really to be a “librarian for stuff.” I was able to learn basic Javascript, which gave me a sense of how our backend systems “tick” even if I don’t know exactly how they work. It gave me the building blocks to become a taxonomist, where I learned the heuristics about conceptual categorization and organization. I was able to develop information architecture (IA) skills, where taxonomy plays a vital role in the broader IA and navigation ecosystems.
What was your favorite part of studying Arts at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř specifically?
CL: During my undergrad, I really liked the progression from massive 200-level courses with hundreds of students to the 12-person, 400-level seminars in my final year. People — both students and professors — self-select into things that interest them. This made relationships a lot easier to build. If you’re taking a course on 19th century Canadian history because you find it interesting, odds are that some other students in that course are there for similar reasons. This also allowed for better connection with professors, too. Teaching 200-level surveys may tell you what they’re broadly interested in — European history at large, basic GIS, etc. — but only at the 300-, 400- and 500-levels can you really see what’s driving their research. While you might not be 100% interested in the exact same things as your professors, you probably have more in common with these professors than others in a given department.
What do you know now that you wish you knew during your time at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř?
CL: With many years of hindsight, the first thing would be better time management and personal information management skills. It took me years of iteration but I have finally found a way to keep myself organized with my work and my note taking. I finally settled on using Kanban-style boards for visualizing my work quickly, but I’ve tried (and failed) with myriad methodologies that may work for someone else.
With regards to note taking, I used to be very linear at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř: pop open a text document, start typing away, and slot in screenshots of relevant charts/images/etc. from the professor’s lecture. This was an okay approach for rote memorization, but it took me a long time to realize that it’s not particularly conducive to deep thinking. My time after Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř had me using these linear note taking skills in the professional sphere. It got confusing and overwhelming quickly. Since then, I’ve adopted “personal knowledge gardens” as my approach, where ideas and concepts are linked to one another. We don’t think about things in a vacuum; there’s always context and nuance. Consequently, our note-taking approaches should follow the way we think. But again, this works for me! Different things will work for different folks. What’s important is finding the methodology that works for you.
What advice do you have for Arts students (both undergraduate and graduate level) as they look for future careers or programs to apply to?
CL: This will sound clichĂ©, but the most important thing is to just apply. If you find a really cool job or internship opportunity, send in an application! The very worst thing that will happen is that the organization will ghost you after you send in your application. (This is not cool, but it happens.) It’s all upside with the only cost being a time investment. I was hired as a taxonomist by Amazon right out of Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř; I graduated in May 2017 and started in their Munich offices on September 1st, 2017. This only happened because I sent in an application. In the back of my mind, I thought that I wouldn’t get this role — I was straight out of university, no relevant work experience except an internship from the summer before, applying to one of the biggest companies in the world, and the role was 6,000 kilometres away. But your degrees carry a lot of weight.
Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř gave me the skills I needed to succeed, from the first phone interview to in-person interviewing. The other thing is building connections. Find your communities! There are organizations for every professional niche. Every organization I have seen is incredibly welcoming, especially for students. They will often take the time to answer your questions, either online or in person at conferences or guest lectures. As a corollary to this, students really should take advantage of their student status to get subsidized memberships to professional organizations, as well as for subsidized tickets to attend conferences. Many conferences also offer bursaries for students to attend — like with jobs, there’s no harm in applying to these either!