The harsh reality of being a GIS analyst

GIS analyst it's one of the most widely known career choices for those entering the gis field and many different GIS and geospatial practitioners have this title on their resume it's a great entry point into the gis and geospatial field and allows you to put your practical skills into practice this video is actually going to look at the other side of being the gis analyst the things you might not know about and you want to know before you get into this career path now this isn't a video to bash the gis career path but just to take a look at some of the other aspects of being a GIS analyst that might not be more widely talked about or discussed in other places and as you can see here these things are definitely being talked about some of the downsides of these career paths and things like that so I think it's a time to make a video and talk about some of these different aspects that I've heard and learned through my years in the industry and let's be honest every single job you're going to go to has its downsides so let's jump in the first thing I want to talk about is that a GIS analyst isn't really a technical role despite what the name might say the core function of a GIS analyst is to take and use geospatial data to present some sort of output or analysis from that information this may require some level of manipulating or using data or doing some data prep but for the most part you're using data that's already been produced and pulling that into some sort of map or geospatial application to then present to a user that needs to use it for whatever task they're going to do now given that you can obviously see that you won't be managing as much of your data as you might think a lot of that data might be prepared for you in some sort of database or geospatial system that allows you to extract that data and you may combine it with other data sources that you find or things like that but for the most part the infrastructure in the data side is something you won't be managing much that's sort of already set up for you and you'll just be using the outputs of that this is very similar to the data analyst role where they take pre-prepared data sets and maybe do some basic manipulation with them but the raw data might be extrapolated somewhere else the other important piece is are at the whim of the tool you're using whether that be an online system some sort of desktop GIS you're basically constrained to use what is provided for you now you may have the opportunity to use some other tools or things like that but for the most part you're going to be working with the environment that's set up for you at your specific job so when you're taking a look at the job description make sure there's tools that either you know or you want to use going into it now most GIS or geospatial programs at the Collegiate level will have a lot of these skills built into them so you should be well prepared for this and you may be coming out of those programs with some programming skills but it really depends on the program that you're going through the level of programming expertise you might have in things like python or SQL and I do think that these are becoming more important and more relevant in the space as well but the fact of the matter is most of the job is going to be working in that GIS toolkit that you're given and maybe on occasion you're getting to go outside of that to do some other projects for things that might fall outside the bounds of the everyday work certainly schools and education programs are getting better at providing more of this technical background but I see this a lot as people talking about the skills that they wish they had learned or been able to do and practice in their job and as you can see this that a lot of people talking about this in different online forums now like I said in the first point you're generally going to be constrained to the toolkit that's provided to you and that brings up my second point which I'll call Button clicker syndrome now in most cases if you look at the gis analyst role a lot of the focus is going to be put on the arcgis or ezri Suite of products that includes arjs desktop online and maybe some other tools as well so for the most part you're going to be working within that system now on occasion you might use programming languages and tools to interact with those tools or other databases and things like that but for the most part A GIS analyst is focused on a desktop GIS system maybe an online GIS system as well now this isn't a bad thing there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with these products I think they are valuable addition to whatever is happening in the geospatial space but this is just something to be aware of if you are interested in using more programming or technical skills like python SQL or other languages this is just something to keep in mind make sure to look at the job listing and understand how much of that is required is that a core focus of the job is it not is it not nice to have something like that now I looked at a lot of different job postings before making this video and I created a video that talks about the skills and how they correlate to salary in this video up here but one thing I did notice is that while the majority of the job postings were f focus on that desktop or traditional GIS toolkit a lot of them are starting to ask for those programming languages and skills but it's not always clear how much of that is required or used on a day-to-day basis that brings me to point number three now GS analyst is a really great way to get into the industry there's a lot of entry-level positions available it's not to say that it's an exclusively entry-level position but it's a great way to get your foot into the door and actually working on some geospatial products now that being said the GS endless role does have a little bit of a salary deficit compared to other specialized roles or technical roles I actually found that was I went through some of the data looking at these different job skills and levels and these skills and how they correlate to salary and you can see some of that here how different salaries tied to different titles as well as different skill sets between the traditional GIS or SQL or Python and things like that it's hard to tell if this is a geographic thing in different markets or if this is just broadly the level of salary that's different between the titles but now we can see this in other industries that the data analyst role has a lower salary than maybe a data scientist or a data engineer but what I think is most most interesting is that there's a salary difference between those roles and the geospatial comparable roles on the other side why this is I don't really know but I think it's interesting to note that just be aware of that before you get into it that the salary might be different than your counterpart in another broader dayed field now Point number four is that the barrier to entry for some GIS analyst roles can still be quite High they're asked for some level of certifications maybe a Collegiate degree proved out skills time in the workforce and things like that so just take a look at what that requires sometimes they even ask you for a gisp certification or some like a master's degree so it's just be aware of what they're asking for for these certain cases sometimes it might be warranted maybe it's a specialized focus in a different industry or with a specific type of data but there still can be this High stepping stone to get into some of these positions and roles that said a lot of GIS analyst positions have great entry level positions for you to get started and try things out so just take a look at what's out there and figure out what makes the best fit for you now the final point I want to make is the demands of the job this isn't necessarily you're working around the clock or anything like that but ultimately you're going to be pressed for deliverables for specific projects and things like that so a lot of the time you're going to be working on these things that have been predetermined for you you will be focused on getting the product out and kind of working on these projects step by step now this completely varies by organization and by your manager and everything like that but a lot of the focus is to get a product from A to B get it out and have someone use it and then come to the next request and things like that now of course how you do that will be determined with the people that you work with your organization your manager all those different factors but for the most part you're focused on delivering you are something you need to get done and deliver this means that there may or may not be time for experimentation trying new techniques something like that you're kind of focused on getting something from A to B as fast as possible now you can work in your different skills as you have time to try something new build out a new technique maybe productionize some sort of process and make it a little bit faster but keep in mind that this is the core Focus what you're going to be focusing on is getting those products out and into the public now if you're looking for a job that does offer some more of that flexibility experimentation things like that I definitely check out maybe the geospatial data science path or maybe data engineer path that allows you to focus on bigger sort of projects to maybe work with larger data sets or you know kind of answer complex questions and things like that and there are some ways to work that work into your role as a GS analyst so just be aware and that you can kind of mix and match these things but that ultimately you can kind of use this as a place to get somewhere else where you want to go as well and that brings up my final Point GIS analyst can be a really great stepping stone to just like I said get your foot in the door and then start to catapult you into different roles as much as you can I would definitely try to use and focus on your career path and try to set up some ways that you can work on those skills within your current role as a GS analyst to build that up be that through projects or outside work maybe courses boot camps things like that ultimately having that first career or a a track record of producing different results on your rese and being able to speak to some of those other skills that you use in that job can really help you push into those different areas you want to grow in one thing I always recommend is that if you want to focus on different career paths or skills use those and definitely try to work those into your current job if you can't do that work on them outside build some outside projects and start to Showcase what you can do there so that's it I hope you learned a little bit about the inside baseball of being a GIS analyst I think it's a great career path it's definitely a great way to get started and start to work on your geospatial skills and even continue that over time if that's the work you love doing then you know more power to you so I hope this video was helpful if you like this or found it helpful uh definitely if you could like And subscribe that always helps with the algorithm to get these videos out to more people so I'll see you next time there'll be another video here soon that talks about what you can actually do to use these different skills and outside learning to build a career path that you really want to get into even if you're in a current job that maybe isn't doing the exact same things that you want to do so stay tuned for that and I'll see you next time

Channel: Matt Forrest

Views: 14,543

Keywords: gis, data science, spatial data science, spatial data analysis, geospatial, modern gis, matt forrest, spatial analysis, gis analyst, python, python gis, sql tutorial, open source, arcgis, esri, qgis, cloud native, aws, google cloud, snowflake, geo news, geo, geo headlines, what is gis, google earth engine, learn python, earth observation, gis analyst day in the life, gis career, gis degree, learn gis, gis jobs

Id: OE33_W1H5jA

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2024