Data analytics is the process of examining different sets of data to draw conclusions from them about the information they contain. In the past decade, jobs in the field of data analytics and big data analytics have multiplied. For career in data analytics, you need to have strong analytical skills as well as critical thinking.
Luckily, the demand for proficient data analytics professionals currently outweighs the supply in the market. As a result, companies are willing to pay whatever it takes to have such professionals on board.
And the number of professionals who actually have the skills required by a data analysts are very less. The demand is much more than the actual number of employees who are worth hiring. It is not an easy task to study and analyse great amounts of data as well as learn data after acquiring it. The extraction of information requires a lot of skills so that proper and accurate business decisions can be made.
Let’s go step by step and find out how to start on the career path of Data Analytics:
Step 1: Foundation of Jobs in Data Analytics
To build the foundation of your career in Data Analytics, you will need a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field. For example, degrees in maths or computer sciences are relevant. This is because these courses are centered around statistical as well as analytical skills.
Apart from this, to grab jobs in data analytics, merely having a bachelor’s degree is not enough. Strong skill sets are required the most.
Here is a list of the required skills for an analytics career.
- Programming languages like R & SAS for data gathering and analysis. The professional should be proficient in at least one of these languages. And he/she should also have at least a basic knowledge about other languages as well.
- Creative and Analytical thinking is one of the most important skills required. To look towards problems in a creative and unique way is a must for a data analyst.
- Data Analysts should have strong communication skills. They need to convey the findings and result of the analysis to the audience or the executives of the company.
- Data Warehousing is another skill that not much employees have. A lot of data analysts work towards acquiring data from various sources in order to create a data warehouse.
- Database Query languages like SQL
- Machine Learning
- Data Mining is required in a lot of cases when unstructured data is gathered from various places. Data mining, cleaning and munging is done through programming.
- Advanced Microsoft Excel
- Data visualization skills are a must because a data analyst needs to be aware of what types of graphs to use.
Focusing on your skill set will give an excellent kick start to your career in data analytics. Moreover, these skills are useful in almost every field, which again is an added advantage.
Step 2: Certifications
Even though certifications are not a compulsion, it definitely makes your profile superior. Furthermore, it can open up more job opportunities as well as bring a hike to your median salary. There has been an increase in demand for Data Analytics and business intelligence in every industry.
Therefore the options to become a certified Data Analyst or Data Scientist are immense. Here is a list of certification courses for data analytics in India:
- Post Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics, IIM Calcutta
- Post Graduate Diploma in Data Analytics, IIT Kharagpur
- MSc in Business and Data Analytics, International School of Engineering
- Post Graduate Programme Business Analytics, International Institute of Digital Technologies
- MBA in Data Science and Data Analytics, Symbiosis Center for Information Technology
Apart from these, there are numerous other options all over India. Moreover, there are also options for online certification courses.
Certifications add to the resume and the skills. But there are also some significant tools that data analysts can use and be exceptional in their profession.
- Tableau: Data analysts aggregate and analyze the collected data through Tableau.
- Google Analytics: With the help of Google Analytics, analysts gain a thorough understanding of the customer data. They analyze the trends which need changes. This is done in order to improve the experience of customers on landing pages as well as Calls To Action.
- Github: A lot of professional data analysts use object-orient programming. For this, Github can be used to share as well as build various technical projects.
- Jupyter Notebook System: Data analysts test the acquired codes. And Jupiter Notebook System makes it very easy to test codes. The system is easy to use and does not require any extra technical knowledge.
- AWS S3: AWS S3 is a cloud storage system for all the collected data. It allows data analysts to not just store but also retrieve large data sets.
Step 3: Gain experience
You need to have a strong profile with the necessary courses, skills, and certifications. The next step is to get an entry-level job at an organization and gain work experience. No number of certificates and degrees will be relevant when you lack practical knowledge and experience.
To sum up, the most common and beneficial profile at entry-level is of a Data Analyst. So let’s take a look at the job role and responsibilities:
- Managing data from different sources and analyzing the results
- Support data warehousing
- Maintain data integrity
- Generate reports for multiple data systems
- Provide technical expertise for data mining
- Work with the IT team to determine organization goals
This list is not applicable for every organization. But this is overall the same standard of duties in terms of entry-level job profiles.
Jobs In Data Analytics
Data Analytics is in demand more than ever these days from countries like United States to all over. So being a data analyst is not your only option if you choose to go in this field. Furthermore, there are plenty of jobs that give you the opportunity of utilizing your data analytics skills. Here is a concise list of jobs that require data analytics:
- Systems Analyst
- Operations Analyst
- Data Engineer
- Quantitative Analyst
- Corporate Strategy Analyst
- Data Scientist
- Sales Analytics
- Data Analytics Consultant
- Business Analysts
- Management Reporting
- Compensation and Benefit Analyst
- Budget Analyst
- Web Analytics
- Fraud Analytics
- Machine Learning Analyst
Apart from this list, there are plenty of other options out there for data analytics. Mainly because it is one of the most popular careers that has emerged fruitfully over the past decade. It does not matter if your goal is to get a job in a new field, progress in your current career. Or even if you decide to work for your own self as an entrepreneur.
The addition of data analysis to your skill set will open many opportunities for you in the analytics industry.
