How to Become a Business Analyst in 2020

business analyst jobs are exploding in popularity thanks to the unique skills that analysts bring to the business environment with their focus on using facts and data to drive decision making business analysts affect every aspect of the business today we're going to look at how to become a business analyst hi I'm Jen I help people build analyst skills and careers with new videos here on this channel every single week check out the description below for my favorite analytics resources it's estimated by the end of 2020 there will be 40 times the number of bytes of data as the number of stars in the known universe that's a lot of data most of this data is in some way related to a product a service a company or an organization companies know they need to adapt quickly to keep up with changing technology and changing customer demands and needs one of the key ways they do this is bringing in experts at managing the processes and data to help them be more effective that's where business analysts come in business analysts leverage expertise in analyzing data to standardize processes to get insight into what's working and what's not working and to make the entire operation more efficient and more effective the need for business analysts is clear but the path to get into one of these jobs isn't always so clear there's a good reason for this there's not just one single path you can take to get into a business analyst job people enter business analytics careers a variety of different ways we'll look at the key steps to becoming a business analytics professional so anyone regardless of background can find a path that's right for them to get into a rewarding business analyst career business analysts is a broad field that actually encompasses a number of different roles the first step to get into business analytics is to consider what type of business analyst role that you want to get into business analyst jobs exist across every industry from the tech industry to trance a Shinto healthcare and banking business analysts are found in pretty much every single field that's out there with this role variety comes a difference in background and skills that are needed to be a good fit and enter into one of these jobs since the skills and experience that are required for each of these jobs is a little bit different roll by roll start out by considering which type of role that you might want to be in then the next step is to look at the base set of skills for a business analyst and I'll link to a video where I talked more about those the next step is to look at a few job descriptions related to that specific role what skills are they asking for what tools are they asking for put these on your list of items to learn so that you're prepared for that specific role and not just a generic business analyst role this doesn't lock you into one specific type of business analyst role but having a specialty can often make it a little easier to get hired than if you're generically good at most of the business analyst skills but don't have any area that you specialize in or have more developed skills you'll still be able to move laterally later on but for your first job it's helpful to target something that you can bring a little something extra beyond a generic business analyst background or title - as you're being interviewed and potentially hired for the role once you know the general direction of the type of business analyst job that you want to pursue the next step is to outline the details of the skills that you'll need to build each employer or job may differ slightly but there are five key areas that every person that's getting into business analytics should have a good foundation in the first is problem-solving skills this is at the heart of really every single analytics role you're trying to use information to help solve business problems predict the future and make the company overall more effective than they were before visualization is also a key skill for business analysts whether you're creating wireframes for an IT project or whether you're documenting the requirements you gathered or mapping out process or workflows you're going to be expected to be able to visualize data and information in a coherent way that is easy to communicate to others also at the heart of every business analyst role is the ability to distill explain and extract information whether you're listening requirements for a project or whether you're communicating to management what's working or what's not working there's a lot of centers around the gathering of information interpreting it and making it usable for others in the organization with this also comes an expectation of information management skills you've gathered all this information you've interpreted it you've visualized it have you also collected and organized it in a way that's helpful not just for you but for you in the future other people in the future that might want to learn from the work that you've done being able to manage all this information and keep it organized for times when you also need to share it is going to be a key aspect that you'll want to work on as a business analyst and tied into all of these things we've talked about is communication business analysts aren't people that work solo a lot of the time you're often going to be interacting with others niche skills can often serve as an x-factor in one candidate getting hired over another this is a great place where you can also set yourself apart from everyone else or at least most of the other candidates a good way to identify niche skills that might give you an advantage is to look at several job descriptions for either the position types of positions or the company that you're interested in working for are there any special tools that they mentioned that aren't quite as common as others or is there knowledge of a specific industry or business where knowing it could give you an advantage sometimes the specialized knowledge can even lead to a drastic increase in salary compared to a baseline generic business analyst position for instance business analyst that incorporate Salesforce as a requirement tend to pay almost 20% higher than positions that don't require it this may also mean that there are additional skills that you need as a business analyst certainly heavy data analytics knowledge to use sales force and sales forces Einstein analytics as a part of your job the demand for business analysts is expected to increase three times faster than the average job in the u.s. in the next 10 years want to fill one of these positions get the detailed guide to building your own business analyst career once you know which skills you're going to build it's a matter of figuring out how to build your business analyst skills there are multiple different ways to do this you could go for a certification or go back to school to get a degree in Business Analytics there are very few business analyst jobs that hire without having some sort of at least bachelor's degree requirement this doesn't mean that you have to have a bachelor's in business analytics or in business but it does mean that if you don't have a bachelor's degree in at least some area then you're going to face an uphill struggle getting a job in as a business analyst or in a business analytics field there are many different options for online business analyst degrees so you have a lot of flexibility there if you decide that you want to go get a masters or grad certification in business analytics the other option that you have is to put together a plan and build these skills on your own this gives you a higher degree of flexibility and lets you really tailor what you're doing to your specific interests needs and development areas the downside of this is people tend to not follow through with these custom plans quite as much there's no one really holding you accountable except for yourself the other area that tends to be a problem is because you don't know business analytics and you're trying to learn it you may struggle to put together a really comprehensive plan that addresses every area of business analytics that you need to work on in order to land that first job if you're building a self-directed analytics development plan on your own I recommend looking into working with a coach to develop that plan this can be ongoing but it can also be a one-time information session to sketch out your goals your background and identify exactly what steps you need to take and how you're going to get into that first Business Analytics job I offer one-on-one coaching in this area and I'm sure that there are other coaches out there as well well this does involve spending some money upfront it's a lot cheaper than a degree option and it makes sure that you don't waste your time going through this entire process only to struggle to find a job at the end having a more tailored approach from the start is going to give you a much higher chance of success the last step before applying for jobs is getting some experience depending on what your background is and where you currently are in your career this might be hands-on experience in your current job it might be employing all of the different things that you're learning through your training and putting them into practice in your day to day work there's a lot of tactics from business analytics that really benefit every single job improve communication improve transparency and documentation and visualization are all skills that are going to come in handy and really any professional job that you're looking at the other alternative if you're in school is certainly internships these are a great way to get your foot in the door start building your network and also to get some hands-on experience working in these types of roles if those aren't an option you could also work on building a portfolio that demonstrates your experience something that really shows employers not just that you've had the training but you actually know how to implement it so that it's going to help out their business if you want even more in-depth information on how to become a business analyst check out my new book how to become a business analyst I've linked it in the description below it goes through all of the key things that you need to build and resources for building those skills as well as identifying what type of job might be the best fit for you and then how to have a comprehensive development plan that gets you to where you want to go if you want one-on-one help reach out to me at the link below for coaching I'd be happy to set a time where we can work together on building a solid plan that fits your specific needs and your specific focus thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video you

Channel: The Career Force

Views: 33,553

Rating: 4.9100113 out of 5

Keywords: how to become a business analyst in 2020, how to become a business analyst, business analyst skills, business analyst training, business analytics, business analyst, the career force, business analysis, business intelligence, business intelligence analyst

Id: nohmqXKd--k

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020