From the course: Introduction to Career Skills in Data Analytics

Data analysts

From the course: Introduction to Career Skills in Data Analytics

Data analysts

“

- I have spent years trying to define data analysts to people. I've come up with several ways to try to define this role and the skills. It's important to know that mos, do not have a job title that contain the words data analyst, but if you have a data department, then they are likely to be called data analyst. Not all organizations have a dedicated data department. So you might be called an operations analyst or a marketing analyst. Your title likely has analyst in the title. There are also varying levels of data analyst, and you can be a data analyst, and not know it. Or be performing the skills of an analyst, and have no idea that you are. A data analyst will have a deeper understanding of data systems and have more knowledge about database designs than a data worker. A data analyst will find they have a little more access to see tables, and views of the databases. They probably have some basic SQL querying skills and may write SQL statements to gain access to data all the time. This varies by organization, and access levels. A data analyst will have a better than average understanding of the data governance plan because if you're a data analyst, you are going to be working under the policies, and procedures that are established. Data analysts that are a few years in are likely to understand more about what questions to ask, and research in general. Data analysts understand how to clean data, and transform it to meet the requirements of the project. Data analysts also know how to create functions of varying types like conditional statements, logical statements. Data analysts work with statistics, and most certainly at the beginning of their career, basic stats and aggregate functions, and certainly have learned how to connect data in a way that they can just refresh their data, and update their visuals and reports. If you're looking for areas of growth, then you can go a little bit deeper into statistics. It's a must. Note that I said a little deeper, not a full statistician, which is another role entirely. You'll find the data sets you are developing might be used for different statistical tests. So it is important to have a basic knowledge. You can never have enough experience writing functions, and you definitely want to be able to write if functions, aggregate functions and simple lookups. You must understand joins, and how they impact data sets. And for the soft skills, active listening, data storytelling, and critical thinking. If you're realizing that you're a data analyst, then you might relate to being called a wizard at work.

Contents