Hello everyone, and welcome! It’s time for another 365 Data Science special, and this
time we’ll talk about one of the best ways to start a career in the field of analytics
and data science if you don't have any prior working experience. That’s right – we’ll
talk about starting off as a data analyst intern. We’ll look at who the data analyst
intern is, what do they do, and what skills and education you need to become one.
But before we get started, we just want to remind you that there are plenty of amazing
career opportunities you can explore within the field of data science and data analytics,
such as: • Machine Learning Engineer;
• Business Analyst; • Marketing Analyst;
• Research Analyst… We’ll do a video just like this for each
of these career opportunities and many more, so be sure to check them out too!
Okay! Now, back to our topic - the data analyst intern.
Who are they exactly? This is an entry-level position, playing an
auxiliary role in the analytics department of a company. That means they support both
data analysts and data scientists in their projects by performing various data mining
or data quality tasks. In other words, the ultimate goal of the data
analyst intern is to take some run-of-the-mill operations off the hands of the more senior
data analysts and data scientists. However, don’t be quick to judge this internship
as a boring service job. it’s a quid-pro-quo game. In turn, full-time data analysts and
data scientists have less workload and are happy to spend some of their time to show
data analyst interns key practical aspects of their work.
That said, data analyst interns are usually assigned to a data analyst or a data scientist
who provides them with mentorship and technical guidance throughout the internship.
Yet sometimes, a data analyst intern is part of a team and has pre-defined duties. At least
that’s the case in team structures where there’s always an intern on a rolling basis.
That’s the flash presentation of the data analyst intern role. But to really understand
what it means to be a data analyst intern, we need to look a bit deeper into some of
their typical duties. A data analyst intern is hired in an organization
to basically audition for the data analyst role. Most often they're given tasks revolving
around working with data and preprocessing it, monitoring data quality and consistency.
Sometimes data analyst interns also work with data stewards to improve the quality, accessibility,
and value of the company's data. In the meantime, Big Brother is watching – throughout
the internship, current data analysts monitor the ability of interns to work with data,
turn it into information, then leverage the information and obtain insights that can be
used to improve business decisions. A data analyst intern needs to show they are perfectly
capable of deriving insights and communicating the results from their findings. Their goal
during the internship should be to demonstrate that they are detailed-oriented professionals
who can answer critical business questions by using available data sources.
Sounds cool, doesn’t it? But let’s address the elephant in the room
and talk about how to become a data analyst intern.
Have you considered a data analyst career? As we’ve mentioned in one of our previous
videos, that’s certainly a great option to explore, both on its own and as a gateway
into a data scientist position. And a data analyst internship can be the first step on
that career path. Many companies across literally all industries offer internship positions
as part of their recruitment strategy, especially large firms who like to select their talent
carefully and can dedicate the necessary management resources to an internship program.
So, what are the key skills you need to apply for a data analyst internship?
We researched many job postings to discover the desired tools and skills data analyst
intern candidates must have. For the record, 25% of the job ads were posted by companies
with 10,000 or more employees. So, here’s what the data says:
• 56% of the job ads mentioned Microsoft Excel skills
• 37% quoted Power BI as a preferred tool • 31% mentioned Tableau as a preferred tool
• 31% required knowledge of SQL • And 19% mentioned Python
But don’t think that being tech-savvy is the only thing that matters. At least 50%
of the job postings make an emphasis on communication, so you’d better work on your soft skills
as well if you want to get your foot in the data analytics door, as one of the key prerequisites
is to be able to share your findings with people from the business.
What about academic background? 50% of data analyst internships require a Bachelor’s
degree… and the rest didn’t… That means formal education is not that important as
long as you’re well-versed in statistics, preprocessing with programming languages,
ability to work with data and navigate databases, ability to extract information from data and
turn it into insights, and willingness to go the extra mile and engage with data mining
and data quality tasks. And we’ve got you covered. We developed
the ‘3-6-5 Data Science Program’ to help people of all backgrounds enter the field
of data science and data analytics. We have trained more than 500,000 people around the
world and are committed to continue doing so. If you are interested to learn more, you
can find a link in the description that will also give you a special offer on all of our
plans. Okay, let’s recap.
Overall, to be successful in this position, you need some programming abilities, to know
how to work with data, and to internalize different statistical and advanced statistical
techniques. Ideally, you should be able to see how these
methods can be applied in practice in a business environment. In fact, it will benefit you
greatly if you have already learned these skills prior to your internship. This way,
you'll make the best possible impression, which is super important because - as we said
earlier - this is your audition to a full-time data analyst role and a data scientist job.
Alright! Now you’re aware of the most important aspects of the data analyst intern position
and what skills to focus on in order to become one.
Nevertheless, if you feel like you still need additional career advice and a more detailed
analysis of the career opportunities in data science – we wrote a very long article about
this, and the link is in the description, if you want to learn more.
In the meantime, thanks for watching, and good luck on your data science journey!