How I'd become a Data Analyst | If I had to start all over again

I think we can all agree that most jobs nowadays involve working with data to some extent we produce and consume so much data and the ability to understand our data and make decisions based on the correct data is extremely valuable hey it's mochan here and I am a data and analytics analyst within the financial services industry in today's video I'm gonna put myself in your shoes and I'm going to show you how I become a data analyst if I had to do it all over again I've been working with data for years at my fair share of successes and failures and learned probably way too many things that I don't actually need so to make it simple for you I'm gonna break this video down into three major parts that I think you need to land the job as a data analyst first I'll focus on the general tips I wish someone had given me before I started my journey in the world of data then I'll focus on the skills you'll need and then I'll focus on how you can apply and showcase these skills to get a job as a data analyst for those of you who are interested in my background let me just touch on that briefly my education background is a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in finance and economics I worked within the financial services industry ever since I graduated I worked mainly within the credit risk space and the investment banking before landing my job as a data analyst beginning your journey as a data analyst can be overwhelming there's so much information out there so many courses you can take both at universities and by yourself online so many certifications you can acquire so many projects and challenges you can complete so my number one tip would be to define a learning roadmap for yourself think of where you want to be in the future what kind of tasks jobs you'd enjoy doing and tailor what you learn according to that if you learn to code make sure you code with purpose rather than just starting to code anything and everything coding is a never-ending journey and if you don't narrow down the specific areas you want to tackle you're going to end up being a jack of all trades and a master of none tip number two would be to always set aside time in your weekly schedule for Learning and Development the world of technology and data changes so quick if you don't put in the effort to stay up to date you will get left behind when I first started my career I didn't know much about cloud computing for example but now that all the big corporations are trying to migrate to the cloud for the various benefits such as scalability availability or on-demand Computing I've been actively learning about cloud computing I got an AWS certification and also completed an online data engineering degree that's focused on cloud data engineering on that note let me know in the comments below what you're currently learning about or are planning to learn about and the final tip would be to enjoy the learning process the journey I made the mistake way too many times of focusing on the final product too much stressing myself out putting myself under extra pressure whilst losing sight of all the cool things I've learned along the way if you're truly passionate about working with data you will certainly enjoy the endless things you can learn just make sure that you do take the time to reflect on what you've accomplished now moving on to the skills you'll need as a data analyst and let me just break this section down into four parts so you'll need technical skills you'll need soft skills you'll need analytical skills and last but not least you'll need industry knowledge let me start with technical skills because it is probably the easiest to learn in the sense that it's tangible something you can easily measure I recommend starting with Excel and SQL they're the most popular tools out there and mastering these will give you an extremely strong starting point on which you can build your career to use a little Home Building analogy here think of Excel and SQL as the foundations of your house which are designed to distribute the weight of the building evenly and provide a firm footing start with Excel first as you don't have to write all the code yourself you can point and click using the UI you can even record macros and then view them in VBA editor saving you the effort of writing something from scratch but still having the code available to further enhance I'd like to highlight here that advanced Excel skills are the bare minimum a data analyst should know it is completely possible to get an entry-level data analyst job with just Excel once you've gotten to a good point and feel comfortable with Excel move on to learning SQL which in my opinion is the perfect gateway drug to coding after you've mastered both Excel and SQL The Next Step would be to pick a programming language I'd recommend python just because of its popularity and ease to learn now with python make sure you focus on learning things that are applicable to data and analytics rather than say General programming now I'm not saying that end-to-end Python Programming courses are bad but if you want to save yourself some time please just take the ones that are specifically designed for data and analytics or data science or something along those lines it won't hurt you of course if you take full programming courses but unless you have so much extra time on your hands I'd recommend you don't do that make sure you understand the basics such as arrays lists dictionaries mutable and immutable objects make sure you're familiar with the pandas and numpy libraries for data wrangling and say matplotlib or Seaborn for data visualization once you feel comfortable with the programming language of your choice you can move on to data visualization using bi tools there are lots of tools out there but I'd recommend you either learn power bi or Tableau given they're the most common and popular I myself use Tableau at my organization and being able to create meaningful and impactful visualizations helps me deliver my message every single time you can extract all the data in the world clean it manipulate it Wrangle it as much as you can if you cannot turn your data into actionable insights that your audience can easily digest comprehend and drive actions off of then what's the point storytelling with data sounds like a cliche but translating complex messages with vast data sets behind them into simple charts tables and dashboards in a visually appealing way is a crucial skill itself I mean ask yourself the question would you rather read dry PDFs and flick through PowerPoint presentations or would you rather use Dynamic interactive dashboards next up soft skills this to me really is about common sense treat people the way you'd want to be treated one book that really helped me with seeing things from other people's perspective is the famous one from Dale Carnegie or Dil Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People make sure you give it a read it's short easy to read and super entertaining learn to communicate in a clear and concise manner whether it's verbal or written communication don't write long emails as one paragraph for example actually don't write long emails period no one likes to read short stories at work line spacing was invented for a reason use it structure your message one simple thing I like to do for example when emailing people is to section my email into context and ask paragraphs this way my stakeholders can clearly see where to get information from and what they have to do or say when I present to a less technical audience I use Simple language that even my grandparents can easily understand presenting isn't about showcasing how smart you are but about efficiently delivering the content in a way that your audience can easily understand of course when I present to a more technical audience I go into the details such as the underlying code the formulas the functions so on and so forth moving on to the analytical skills and by analytical skills I mean problem solving skills Innovative and creative skills but what you're probably most interested in is math skills to be frank the level of math needed really just depends on your roles and responsibilities and tasks but knowing some basic descriptive statistics such as mean medium or whether your data is skewed or not is always a good starting point I've learned about probability optimization Advanced econometrics and statistics during my bachelor's and master's degree and while it does come in handy that I've studied them and know them it doesn't make that much of a difference on a daily basis A good rule of thumb would be the more data sciencey Your Role gets the more math you'll need but don't worry the math is definitely something you can pick up along the way and you can always just Google it and learn it straight away and just to go through some of the other analytical skills I mentioned problem solving is obviously really important as you can have all the technical skills in the world if you can't actually solve the business problem your technical skills are useless being creative Innovative and thinking outside the box again might sound like a cliche but the ability to come up with good ideas combined with the ability to actually execute them can really differentiate you from the others that's why constantly learning and evolving is really important so you can come up with new better more cost efficient and less time consuming Solutions and the last but not least of the skills industry knowledge it's all good and wonderful that you're an expert in Excel can code well in SQL and Python and can create beautiful visualizations in Tableau or power bi without understanding the industry working all of this means very little make sure to take the time and effort to understand the industry landscape your company is in of course you can easily read and understand all the data points and metrics as they're written in plain English but to really be able to ask the right questions and look for deeper analysis you need to be able to understand the bigger picture what's the problem you're trying to solve what's the benefit of solving this problem do you understand how your company's systems products processes work my master's degree in finance and economics combined with my retail and Investment Banking background helps me big time when it comes to working with banking data say for example I don't have to look up terms such as credit default swaps term loans blood loans or unsecured credit it's also a lot easier to spot if some of the metrics or figures are a bit off if you know what they should be approximately normally and finally I just want to touch on how you can apply and showcase what you already know to be frank here nothing beats work experience in my opinion if you have real life Hands-On experiences of working on projects or you have to use your technical soft skills and analytical skills those for sure are the best examples to help you land your next job no matter what certifications you have courses you've taken badges you've earned work experience comes out as the winner every single time but also don't worry if you've got no data analyst experience and are just trying to get into the industry right now there are lots of other ways out there you can apply and showcase your skills say for example you can do coding challenges online or you can work on your own projects and upload them to a site like GitHub you can download data from places such as kaggle Google datasetsearch or us.gov to find your own scope and the problem you're trying to solve and get Hands-On pick interesting data sets that are fun rather than some dry employment and tax figures you can find all sorts of data related to sports movies Google Play Store and much much more I'd say anywhere between 5 to 10 projects would be an ideal amount any less is just a little too few and any more is definitely just Overkill and that's it we've come to the end of the video starting your journey in the world of data can be overwhelming but if you're truly determined to become a data analyst I'm sure you will enjoy the challenges ahead of you I learned how to use Excel code and visualize data by myself through self-learning it wasn't even something I knew even after I finished my Master's in finance and economics if I was able to do it I'm sure you can do it too if you like this video then make sure you check out these videos as well thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Mo Chen

Views: 690,231

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Id: d_2fGS6QVDo

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023