Data Analyst Certifications | Are They Worth It? | Alex The Analyst Show | Episode 7

hello i'm your host alex freeberg and this is the alex the analyst show thank you so much for joining me today we are discussing certifications something that i get asked about literally every single day they're asking you know do i need a certification you know will it help me land a job faster will it make me stand out in the market if so you know what certifications should i be getting these are all things that we'll talk about within the show i also have a little bit of insider information on the google data analyst program that they're going to be hosting on coursera i have a contact over at coursera that i've been talking with and they gave me some very valuable information that may be valuable to you as well it is going to be a good show i assume um i have a lot of things prepared i have a lot of things a lot of thoughts in my head about certifications that i've kind of been shooting out here and there in the comments you know people ask i give them an answer um and every answer i give is fairly consistent um but you know everybody asks it a different way and so i just want to get this out there get it to the people who need to know about certifications so let's start at the very beginning right what is a certification a certification is basically you take a course you take an exam potentially and it is something to validate that you know what you're doing in a specific area right you go and you take a certification for let's say azure it is certifying that you know what you're talking about and you get the certificate and you can put it on your resume you can put on your linkedin and show people that you uh know about that topic and so in theory is a very good thing in theory i'm saying in theory because um you know that's kind of uh it's open-ended at this moment we haven't thoroughly talked it through so that's the theory at the beginning we have our theory that it's supposed to be helpful it's supposed to uh you know be beneficial and we'll discuss this more of course so you know that is what a certification is and so why are why are people concerned about getting certifications why are people wanting to get certifications why are people asking me about it all the time here's why is because anybody can put sql python tableau power bi on their resume and if you don't have any experience one of the other really good things that you could do is potentially get a certification to prove that you have at least the knowledge you can prove in some way that you have the knowledge to be a data analyst that someone should hire you um excuse me and so that is kind of the thought process behind people getting certifications it's to validate that somebody should hire them over someone else or or somebody should hire them because they have a certification um there are a lot and and i want to repeat this there are a lot of certifications out there and not all of them are great and and not all of them are even worth getting or investing your time and your money into i cannot possibly name all of those certifications but i'll give some examples i'm also going to talk about some examples of ones that i do like um but before i do that real quick i know i'm i'm all over the place right now it's because i got a lot on my mind my first thing is certifications you know are they necessary do you need them no i hold this many certifications zero uh well that's not true i do not advertise that i have any certifications um i don't have any that i would personally put on my resume i have done so many courses through coursera through udemy um and you know i've i've taken a lot of these things and i thought about putting them on my resume and in the end i just decided not to i did not think that i was going to give me a leg up um you know one one that we'll talk about later is ibm's data science certification i took that i have that i don't put it on my resume it's not something that i've ever found value in in the market for me personally and and i'm in a different position than a lot of you guys a lot of you are at the very beginning of your career you have no experience you know potentially you're changing careers and so you know you have experience in a different field and you want to show them that you're invested in this and you and you have um the skills that you need and so you know that certification may be useful to you it is not for me anymore um and even when i was i guess i had my very first job it just not seemed like something that i needed to put on my resume to validate that i knew what i was talking about i had a portfolio i used my portfolio i was able to talk very well in interviews to showcase my abilities that to me was what made me stand out the most um things have changed right covet has changed things the job market has changed and so it's definitely worth looking into right now what certifications are good i'm going to start with the certification that i think is worth getting that is one that i'm like yes if anyone asks me what certification i should get here's the one that you should get um and i may or may not pull this up on your screen i'll anything i talk about i have a bunch of things pulled up links will be in the description so you can go and check them out yourselves the very first one is microsoft certified data analyst associate this one is you can become microsoft certified which holds a lot of weight for a lot of tech jobs just because microsoft is so name-brand and so in this course you know you learn a lot of power bi how to use it how to structure your data all these things on the link that i'll post below you can go through a free learning path and i have gone through every single one of these i've taken every single one um because i really just want to learn power bi even better and i'm thinking about taking this certification as well just just to have it i may not even put it on my resume i just want to say i have it if somebody asks because it's kind of cool this one to me is a new new it's a new one that they're putting out because they're discontinuing all their old certifications if you know anything about that they're discontinuing a lot of their old certifications and they're revamping them and kind of changing them into these which are job specific certifications so you can get certified as a data analyst by microsoft which to me knowing microsoft background and certifications is a very legitimate and very recognizable certification to get it is to me probably one of the best ones you can get so um i'll put that link in the description the second one that i would consider getting is a tableau certification from tableau.com they have certifications ranging from a few different options but in general it just proves that you know how to use tableau and tableau is such a good skill to learn if you didn't notice the first two that i chose were certifications in azure power bi microsoft power bi and tableau data visualization you know where's the sequel ones alex where where are them uh they aren't anywhere and i don't really trust any any i haven't seen any certification that i'm like wow this guy's certified in sql they used to have that um through microsoft they do not have that anymore so i do not currently have any recommendation for sql but that's because sql is a little bit different than power bi or a data visualization tool just a little bit different in how you can who i would trust to certify that tableau has tableau itself that they certify trustworthy a lot of people get it a lot of people ask me if this is one that they should get i say it's up to you again i am much more of a portfolio project kind of guy make a great portfolio show that you have the skills instead of getting a certification some people are the opposite they're like if i get all these certifications i don't need a portfolio um you know just a different mindset so uh the tableaux certification again link in the description is a good one to get um not super cheap let me see let me see real quick how much these cost i will say for the microsoft one i believe and i'm looking at it real quick i want to say that's 165 so 165 dollars isn't a you know it's not a drop in the bucket but it's not super expensive let me see the tableau one is a hundred dollars so that one is cheaper um the third one that i would recommend getting and i have two more that i'm going to recommend and then i'm gonna get into the ones that i do not recommend the next one that i recommend getting is aws certified data analytics specialty aws azure are very good things to be certified in because they are not not they're not upcoming anymore they are here and people kind of are starting to expect you to know these cloud platforms um and if you know them you're going to make more money so getting certified in it to me is a is it makes sense because a lot of these jobs that use these tools you're going to make more money at so a small investment of 100 or 165 is going to be a huge payoff if you're able to land a job with those skills so this one is aws certified data analytics specialty link in the description none of these none of this is sponsored they're just links so rest assured i'm giving my very honest opinion on these um i have looked into this i've taken a course on you know passing this exam because i wanted to learn all the skills i never took the exam but i feel like i could take this exam and probably pass it um if i just maybe brushed up on it and so let me see if i can find how much this cost 300 dollars costs 300 to be certified a lot of people take these certifications aws and azure certifications um hold a lot of weight again it's microsoft and amazon so two extremely huge companies with certifications they're well-known documented success in the past certifications are validated um and used in the field these are why these ones specifically i have chosen as ones that i would recommend that i would get if i were getting we're going to get certifications that i'm going to put on a resume right um then real quick let's go over to this google data analyst certification program if you have not heard google is coming out with i think three they have data analyst project manager ux designer an it support specialist so data analysts getting a their own program super cool i'm extremely looking forward to it google has said and i'm not i'm not reading this off the thing so it's off top my head google has said that to them if you take this course if you take this program it is like getting a four-year degree to google maybe not to everyone else but to google specifically they will accept it as a four-year degree um and when google does stuff like this it changes things so it's going to be on coursera i believe it's going to be 39 a month for this program specifically it takes six months to complete and so about 300 or no five months to complete i believe gosh i'm doing some terrible math right now 40 bucks i think it's 300 total so maybe it's 50 per or you know 49 per month but i think i believe it's a six month five or six months course 300 total if you heard nothing else than my complete nonsense just a second ago it's 300 total so 300 to get this but it's over like a six-month span you can't just take an exam and have it done with but they take you through the training and to me this is going to be one that people look for it's going to be up there with the amazon it's going to be up there with the microsoft certifications you know haven't seen any of the course material at all that's just my guess my guesstimation i have been talking with somebody over at coursera um who i have been trying to get deals for you guys like i'm like hey you guys have any free courses that i could offer my my subscribers do you have any um discounts that you can offer my subscribers i'm like what can you give me so that i can give it to them well in that course i kind of built up a relationship with this uh lady and i was like hey you know i would love to do a video on this google um certification program you know are you guys able to give discounts can you give me any information on it um i like to give something to my subscribers they can start learning about it i just posted about it um on my channel here's what i know so far is that they are actually still they announced it in july of 2020 they are still designing and building out the courses as we speak so it is not completed um and a lot of people are thinking it's gonna be done like soon like they announced it in july end of the year this lady says that it should be done by the end of the year um and you know that's just what she told me so if we can expect it by the end of this year that could be very very exciting um especially people going into the new year really focusing on self-studying and and upskilling and all those things could be very very exciting in my mind and so uh you know look out for this one this is one that i will be keeping my eye on i think i'm going to be taking it and doing reviews on it for you guys because i think this is a genuinely um potential game changer could be i don't know we're gonna find out something that a lot of people ask me um and right now i just pulled up on my screen maybe i showed you maybe i'm showing you on your screen i don't know the ibm data science professional certificate should you take it is it worth it here's my take on it i remember taking it i remember going through the entire course i will say that it did not go in depth enough for me that if i was hiring someone and they had this on their resume i would not say wow i gotta hire this guy i'd say oh wow he invested time like any other certification that i would see he invested time he invested um maybe some money and he learned some skills this certification specifically to me does not scream i i know everything to be a data analyst um and none of these certifications do but it doesn't give a ton of validity in my mind to being a data analyst i think the course itself was super good um and i do recommend taking it but um and you know they just didn't go it wasn't crazy in depth it's not like you're doing hands-on tons of hands-on things it's a lot of learning it's a lot of um you know what is this how do you use this what's the methodology behind this and then the very last thing i think and i'm looking at it course four is python and data science and ai that was really the only hands-on really hands-on experience learning-wise with technical skills so do i recommend taking it yes absolutely um i think it is a fantastic course i personally learned a ton from it but do i recognize this as a credible source for a certification no not not really i personally don't um i've seen people put this on the resume i since i've taken it myself and i know what it means and what's in the course i wasn't super impressed i wasn't like man these ibm ibm certification i was just like oh it's just you know of course a lot of people take to learn a lot more about this very cool um maybe that's the the pessimist or whatever in me um i don't know if it's the realist it's for you guys to decide um those are really the ones that those first four are the ones that i would look out for i would consider doing and i'll put those in the description if you want to check them out check out their courses check out their exams all that stuff um ones that i want to be wary of ones that um you know you hear it should you put it on your resume first off if you were taking one off udemy anything off you to me i would not put that certificate or certification on your resume udemy is an amazing amazing amazing platform i have learned i i probably owe a lot of my career to you to me probably honestly um just because the teachers at least on youtube because honestly i've learned so much so many skills i would never put that on my resume that is a learning platform it's not a certification platform or you know you can show you completed a course but i can complete a course by clicking next a hundred times it doesn't mean i know the material it just shows that i took a course um and sort of the same thing on some level with the coursera courses some of them do have quizzes tests that you need to take um i have not personally found one on coursera that i'm like yes i would put that on my resume including the ibm data science so that is just my opinion for those specifically because so many people so many people take courses on there and i did myself i still do myself so no i i personally would not be adding those to my resume um i wouldn't put the words udemy or coursera on my resume it just it's a they're learning platforms they're not certification platforms um that's how i view it at least so that's my opinion on those other ones to look out for and i'm going to give you example before i actually get into it let's say alex the analyst decides to put out a course a a a six-week course to learn everything you need to know about data analytics and i title it alex the analyst certification program or i make it it's probably something more fancy to where it sounds more credible like um you know i can't even think of anything something uh let's say what sounds ibm no i can't use that that's copyright look let's keep it simple alice analyst certification you're certified by me by my program go put that on your resume to me uh if i saw that some random guy on youtube making a program you took his course uh let's say i marked it up i was like 800 bucks take my course you'll be able to get it be it be a data analyst no problem you put that on your resume nobody's going to know what it is nobody knows it's not industry standard it's not recognizable nobody knows who alex the analyst is this rinkadink show it's just it's not going to be it's not going to give you any boost in your job hunt so in that same vein if you find things like um springboard not springboards it's not a good example because that's like a boot camp although they do have courses i believe um data camp certification um what's the other one cam something academy data academy something like that then there's ones that are like calabra bumbleberry i don't even know just some of these random names you may have learned a ton through that program and that may have been the program that got you into data analytics that is going to make your career that may be true it does not mean that you should be putting it on your resume right if it's one of those programs where you learned a ton but it has no name value no worth whatsoever i do not recommend putting it on your resume um for the pure fact that nobody's gonna recognize that nobody's gonna have most people will not have taken that course nobody's taken alex the animals course they don't know how hard you worked or how amazing of a course it was or how much you paid for it um but what they do know is that they've never heard of it and it's not that impressive that's my take on it um kind of the the knock-out kind of punch nobody's heard of it it's not worth putting on your resume that's my two cents um other people may disagree other people may be like put as many certifications as you can any udemy courses that you're taking any coursera courses that you're taking anything where you got to even a certificate put it on your resume well you have 100 of them be my guest i personally value the skills portfolio and experience a hundred times more than any certification you can have a certification but if you don't have any hands-on experience or cannot prove through a portfolio project that you know how to use these skills to me it's not that valuable so in the end you know i think that certifications can be useful i think that there's specific there's there are a specific population where it is useful for me it is no longer useful i'm in my career i know all the things that i need to know well that's not true that is not let me rephrase that i know all the things that i need to know to get a job i can go and i can get another job i am sure somewhere else um so i'm marketable i have skills i have a name brand um you know a company that i work for i can go and get another job because i do that a certification is not going to boost my chances of getting a job anymore at the very beginning of my career before i even have my first job or maybe after my very first entry-level job it may have been useful it is not anymore and so um you know look at yourself where are you in this in this path are you currently learning the skills are you already do are you already a data analyst are you in college i think the people who should be getting certifications who should actually be investing their time and their money into getting a certification is somebody who won has no experience has never had a job once you get a job and you have hands-on experience for anything over a year you certifications are not going to data analyst specific certifications are not going to be super useful but if you are entry level or below you have not had a job you don't have any experience um you're kind of building a portfolio right now you want to try to prove some in some way validate that you know what you're talking about a certification may be the way to go and i think i would recommend that and the ones that i recommend today are the only ones that i currently recommend um i've had people send me tons of other ones and i'm like i've never heard of that i've looked at the course looked at the certification it looks like you're learning a lot of good material never heard of it when i google it one thing comes up it does not seem to be anything that anyone would recognize so i don't recommend it on that kind of line of which ones to get which not to get something that is i think important is getting somewhat specific or name brand certifications you know tableau certification sql certification if there was a good one aws certification azure certification instead of just data analyst certification which is what a lot of these those ones i was talking about like uh colabera and all these things it's just a data analyst certification it doesn't you know it's not specific to a skill i personally like um and microsoft is the only exception to this to this rule i personally like certifications that are skill specific that show that you know a specific skill because if you just do a data analyst certification it doesn't prove that you know specific skills so again just just my thoughts right i know i'm doing a lot of rambling a lot of these things but that's just my thoughts on um on certifications in general and you know if you should get them if you shouldn't get them it definitely is up to you there are places there are people who should get them there are people who should not get them so you know look at yourself wherever you're at think about it if you want to invest your time and money into it go for it all right i am not against certifications as some people have said all right i'm saying it on the record i'm not against certifications just because i don't have any i'm not gonna be that guy who's like i don't have any i made it therefore you don't need it you know i'm not people have called me stupid i'm not that stupid though i won't deny that in some areas of my life i have been stupid but not in this one i'm willing to admit when i'm wrong and when i'm not wrong uh one second i'll be right back one of my kids is crying see in a second i am back all is well okay we are getting into the time of the show two things three things maybe four things the first thing is this show is sponsored by all of you beautiful people gorgeous people the most attractive people in my entire subscriber base you guys are supporting the channel thank you if you want to support the channel if you watching this said wow alex you were talking to me this certification thing is genius you're a genius support my channel go over to patreon i have a link in the description it would mean a ton thank you so much second thing is we have our comments of the week or question of the week however you want to say let's go over to our question of the week it is from carlos carlos says alex how much coding do you use on a daily basis is it just python really good question and about a year ago maybe even six months ago i would say yes it's only just python um so to answer the first question though how much coding do you use on a daily basis it used to be very little um i used to not do a ton i recently have moved over much more heavily onto the technical side i used to be kind of customer facing um and you know half customer facing half technical in my current role we were able to hire on a business analyst and another data analyst who i have trained and offloaded a lot of my client-facing work where now i am highly technical focused and so i'm not only using python anymore i was i was using a ton of python um now i'm using python i'm using scala i'm using um spark so those are the main three that i'm using coding wise you know they're kind of all meshed in there but i use it all in azure so azure data bricks i'm using almost all of it there and i'm doing a lot of it now a lot of file processing reading and files automation so a lot of automation um you know web scraping even these days because you know i need to pull certain things from certain websites like cms um you know i work in healthcare so cms i don't want to have to go to this every week and download this file so i'm automating that um and scraping that from there lots of things and i'm learning a ton i've only started using scala and um spark like in the past six months but i already feel like i'm really getting the hang of it it feels super good to me i like it i like it a lot glad i can put that on my resume that's a really really good skills to have um so yeah that's what i'm using um i you know i use sql a ton i use python a ton um even more so now than i ever did before so that's kind of where i'm that's where i'm at right now so carlos thank you for that question it's a very good question um and i hope that you know if you are out there wondering if you need to learn python you don't need to learn python right away but i highly recommend it if you want to make more money that's what i found is is the python is becoming a lot more valuable a lot more companies are using it and python is is something you can do so many things with i've only scratched the surface for my job i don't need a ton like i don't need crazy knowledge for it but i need enough um so worth worth investing your time we've come to the end of the show sadly we've come to the end of the show and if you haven't ever watched the end of my show before which i recommend you go back to my previous shows and watch the end because it's fun it's just fun to do um if you have not if you've not been part of the vegetable crew if you haven't been part of it you're missing out join me join us collectively together as one in commenting down below one of probably and i say this every time but this one is very true one of the most terrible uh vegetables of all time the radish there are radish farmers out there who grow this for a living and i and i hope that they're asking themselves why every single day radishes are terrible and i hate them and i want you to comment if you have a story about why you hate radishes comment that down below i would like to hear it it would make me happy i have a few stories terrifying stories ruined a lot of my childhood to be honest um so for all the radishes out there for all the people who like radishes out there no no that's all i got thank you guys for joining me thank you so much for watching to the end i love i don't know why i don't know why i do this i'm starting to do this subconsciously i think i'm just genuinely starting to ramble at the end just to see how long you guys are willing to stick with me and it it i don't know if it's conscious or subconscious at this point but it honestly it just cracks me up um because i know like there's like two guys out there or girls who are just listening right now on in the background have no idea what's going on in the show anymore it's the end of the show you don't need to be listening anymore but i keep going uh but i know i'm really gonna stop now it's getting it's too much um thank you goodbye i'll see you next week uh next week i will be bringing on my wife my wife will be joining the show hopefully we'll see that's the goal the goal is to bring her on a lot of stuff with kids and she needs to wear makeup and look pretty and all that stuff so if that stuff doesn't happen she's not coming on the goal is next week to have her on though to get some more insight into me who i am as a person as an analyst as a husband and answer some questions that i probably don't know myself so that is one to look forward to for sure thank you for sticking around thank you for listening to me just ramble at the end i don't know if anybody enjoys that i enjoy it that's all i got to say all right i'm actually i'm actually leaving now i think you should too enjoy your day enjoy your weekend i'm filming this on the weekend uh may not be the weekend where you are right now when you're listening to this in six months a year two years ten years um but you know it's definitely the weekend right now i can verify that i'm actually going now thank you for joining me you are the best you are if you are still listening to this you are way more committed than i've been to almost anything in my entire life and i respect that a lot and let me you know what i'm doing a double a double one today if you have listened to now if you have somehow gotten to write this second you are my hero and i would like you to oh my kids my kids actually crying so i actually do have to go if you have gotten to this point comment below uh your favorite ice cream i really do have to go your favorite ice cream and i will i will give you a story or some type of comment specifically responding to you in some unique way because i value you i actually have to go now my kid is actually crying goodbye i'll see you next week thanks for joining me goodbye

Channel: Alex The Analyst

Views: 80,279

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords: Data Analyst, How to become a data analyst, Data Analyst job, Data Analyst Career, Data Analytics, Certifications, Data Analyst Certification, Alex The Analyst, Certifications for data analysts, Data Science Certifications, Certifications for Data Scientists, Microsoft Certification, Tableau Certification, AWS Certification, Azure Certification, Coursera Certification, Data Scientist Certification, Udemy Certification, Tableau Certifications, Data Analyst Certifications

Id: aJ9Q10v8Nrc

Length: 33min 16sec (1996 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020