Since the advent of big data, the need to process large sets of data is increasing day by day. A data analyst is a person who processes unstructured data and converts it into understandable English. Here, we use the term “understandable” because of the very nature of data point’s discovery.
He helps in joining the dots in the data and helps the company take an informed decision whether it is on the sale, marketing, or manufacturing. Data analysts fall into the categories of a financial analyst, structural analyst, and operational analyst depending on the type of data they are handling.
How Does One Become a Data Analyst?
Entry level jobs for a data analyst require a bachelor’s degree with good analytical skills. A senior-level job would require a master’s degree in the field of computer science, maths, and statistics. But this scenario has changed now.
A potential candidate should also pursue a data analytics certification course and be a subject matter expert in the field of big data. Big data analytics is still not introduced as a subject in most of the engineering courses. Even though big data has become more of a buzzword, it is still looked as a technical course rather than a full-time course.
Most of the data science courses and data analytics courses are available online. But the industry requires a proper certification for you to get the job. The cost of the data analytics courses is nominal. In India, a certified online course provider will charge you nearly 30K. The duration of the course will be 6 months including the project duration.
Some of the Job Skills Required for a Data Analyst
Attention to details: Determines whether the candidate is able to notice the minute changes in the data.
Communication Skills: People question why a communication skill is important to a data analyst. A data analyst has to work with multiple teams in data collection and present the processed data to the management to take business decisions.
Critical thinking: Critical thinking or out-of-the-box thinking is very important as most of the decisions change the fate of the company. Uber came up with Uber eats because somewhere its data analytics showed them most of the customer order food online while during their travel to the office.
Maths: This is a basic skill which is needed for a data analyst. Without numbers, there is no way ahead.
So, all of the above skills are important for a person to excel in the role of a data analyst. The nature of the job is tedious as it involves high levels of concentration from start to end. But this is compensated by high paychecks which knock your bank account every month.
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