Hi, I'm Jen. I've worked in data analytics for well over a decade. As this field
continues to grow, there are more and more jobs opening up and that need
skilled people - probably just like you - to fill them. How do you actually go
about getting into this field? What are the steps you need to take to become a
data analyst? In this video, I'll cover the five steps you need to take to
become a data analyst. You might expect my first step to be get a degree, but I
don't think this is the best place to start. The best place to start is to
decide what type of analytics job you want. Analytics is a massive field. It
spans everything from creating reports as the main part of your job to writing
code and programming as the main part of your job and these roles have vastly
different requirements for what you'll need to get into these jobs. The same
goes for specialized fields. If you want to get into healthcare analytics, for
instance, you're going to need some sort of background learning about the
healthcare industry, learning about biology, biostatistics in order to get a
job in this field. If you want to be a financial analyst, there are probably
different requirements you're going to need there. You're going to need more of
the accounting, financial analysis type of skill set as your background to
really have a good chance of getting that first job. As the second step, once
you know generally what field you want to go into, look at some job descriptions
for those roles. If you've got it narrowed down to two or three, but you're
not sure which one, pull up the descriptions and see which ones are
common. Last week I talked a little bit about things that are general to any
data analyst job description. That's another good resource for you to watch.
Specifically, when you're considering this job, look at what are the employers
wanting in their candidates? This is your checklist of how to prepare for
this job. Third, build your skills. Most of this can
be done for free. If you're going to be a data reporting analyst then you should
focus primarily on Excel. For any other analytics role - and that's the
majority of them - you're going to need some sort of coding skills. This helps
show the employer that you know how to do analysis and how to work with data
and work with the systems and databases and understand connections. In a lot of
cases, even if you don't have the specific programming skill an employer's
looking for, they may overlook that if you have strong skills in another
programming language. For instance, if I'm hiring someone that I want to have SAS
skills, but they don't have a background in SAS, but they do have a strong coding
background in Python, that doesn't deter me from hiring them. Those are very
transferable skills. The languages are a little different. The mechanics of it are
a little different. But if you understand technically how to do it, you can build
that skill in a different system. Industries can be very different on what
coding background they want. For instance, if you're in healthcare or you're going
into a private sector job, they're probably going to want you to have SAS,
but you may not have learned that in college or on your own. You may have
learned Python or R which are more readily available in other jobs and for
instance startups because of their really low cost of implementation.
Similar to coding skills, build some visualization skills. This is becoming
such a key part especially of the communication aspect of a data analyst
role. Look at tableau, Power BI, Qlikview. There's a lot of different options.
In the next few weeks, I'm going to be talking more about both programming
tools and visualization tools and how to know which one that you should learn.
If you're looking for a specific job definitely just look at what the job
descriptions are saying that they want. The other thing I would highly recommend
when you're building your skills is at some point take your skillset that
you're building and take a real-world problem and solve it or try to solve it.
This means so much to employers. The biggest gap that most employers see in
analysts that are coming right out of college is they're really good on the
research end of stuff when they're given a lot of the criteria of a problem, but
they tend to have trouble making the leap to actually applying it to the
business where there's a lot of ambiguous things/
There's a lot of really unknown things. If you can take a real-world
problem and solve it, even if it's something that's already been solved but
you can work through the logic independently not using the solution as
part of the way that you solve it, then that can go a long way to showing
one that you're very self-motivated but also to that you really know how to take
an actual problem and address it using analyticss. The fourth step - and this is an
optional step - is get an internship. If you're in college, this is a fantastic
step. This goes back to being able to show that you can apply all the skills
you learn to an actual job scenario, the actual business situations that you'll
be facing. If you're not at that place in your life, if you're not in college, if
you're already in the workforce and transitioning, you don't have to worry
about this one. It can make a lot of difference if you're in college and want
to get your first job to have a really good internship. That just leaves us
with step five which is apply for the job.
If you meet every single criteria that the employer is looking for,
you're probably overqualified for the job.
I think of job descriptions as a list of wants and needs. There's going to be a
mix of things that you need to know how to do. You need to know some amount of
math and statistical skills to be able to analyze things. However, you don't need
to always have a specific programming language or some of the more advanced
skills. If you have them, that's fantastic. That should probably help you have a
better chance at getting the job. But if you don't have them, don't feel like you
need to build every single skill before you start applying. If you're
transitioning into a data analytics career and want some help,
I offer one-on-one coaching to walk you through the whole process. We can talk
about your career goals. I can help you find the right jobs to apply for and
give you guidance through the interview and salary negotiation process up
through getting hired. If you're just looking for an analytics resume, check
out the link below where I link to the resume training
that I offer that's really specific to analytical roles.
Thanks so much for watching!