Hi, I'm Jen. I've been an analyst for over 15 years and today I'm looking at data
analyst reality versus expectations. They can sometimes be quite a bit different.
Let's get right into them. The first expectation that people have
is you'll be solving very complex mathematical or statistical problems all
the time. In some ways, maybe Dr. Sheldon Cooper is your peer in the organization.
The reality though is for most analyst jobs, math is one of the smallest pieces
of the work. You definitely need those skills. They come in handy. Moreso than
the actual statistical skills, the process skills on the way of analyzing a
problem. Think about writing proofs and the skills that are required where you
take things that you know to explain something you don't know. These are
skills you definitely need. Before you can even get to those math skills, you
often have to use a lot of communication skills to understand the problem. You'll
use a lot of time organizing data, putting it together, making it make sense,
and then you'll do a little math. And then you'll use more time visualizing and
explaining it. If you can't explain all of that math that you did, nobody's going to
care even a little bit. The second expectation most people have
about analysts is they're working on these really massive, groundbreaking,
forward-thinking, innovative solutions to problems.
The reality is you will! ...occasionally... maybe...sometimes...but in between there's a
lot of the day to day slog. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to keep
the business running. There's a lot that tends to be more reporting. Regardless of
what type of analytics job you have, there's going to be a lot of it that's
really retroactive looking, that's analyzing past history, that's more...
that's maybe less innovative than what other people might expect it to be.
The third common myth or expectation is that you need to know a lot about IT to be an
analyst or a data scientist. Whether this is
programming skills or a lot of technical computer system skills, a lot of people
expect that that's something that you have to have to get into analytics. The
reality is the majority of jobs that are in analytics don't have that much
programming. They have a little bit of it. You should learn programming. That is
going to make you a much stronger candidate, but the reality is most people
don't have IT degrees when they're getting into data analytics or data
science and some analytics jobs don't require any programming skills
whatsoever. Jobs like data reporting analyst where you are working with data,
but you're not doing programming you're really doing more reporting, organizing,
categorizing data. The last expectation that we'll talk about today is that
you're going to love working in analytics.
The reality is you probably love working in analytics.
I think analytics is a blast! It takes a certain personality, a certain skill set
to really enjoy it and there are people that don't. There are always going to
be jobs that aren't as fun as others or bosses or organizations that just aren't
that pleasant to work for, but analytics can be a ton of fun. I love that
everything is a little bit different each day and I love that you're solving
problems. You're figuring out answers that really are going to help people
help the business and you did that. You're doing something really unique
that takes a special talent and skill set. So even if there's going to be some
tough days and some things that aren't as pleasant, data analytics really is a
fun field to work in that's incredibly rewarding. Did you like hearing about the
expectations versus the reality of being a data analyst or data scientist? Let me
know by giving this video a thumbs up or leaving a comment. If you want me to
break down more assumptions about analytics or data analysts, let me know
those assumptions in the comments. I'd be happy to address them.
Thanks so much for watching!