The job of a data analyst is to transform data into information and information into meaningful insights.
These insights are evaluated by the end-user to create policies and processes in an organisation. Different departments can make use of these policies; marketing policies can be created with these insights and operations departments can also use them to ensure fast production.
Data analysts are in high demand, but low supply, so now is the ideal time to take advantage of this. There are almost 50,000+ data science positions vacant, and this is due to a lack of properly qualified personnel – one reason why a job in this field is highly paid.
The difference between data scientists and data analysts
Data analysts procure raw data, convert this into information and use this for actionable insights. In order to do this, statistical analysis, data mining, R, SQL, data analysis, etc. are all needed.
Data scientists prepare predictive models based on the insights they find in order to perform customised data analysis. For this, they use extra tools like machine learning, Hadoop, OOPS, etc. which are not required by data analysts.
How to enter this profession
To enter this profession, some basic criteria are necessary, such as the need to have at least a bachelor’s degree in data analysis, where you will be taught the process of data collection, data analysis and how to handle a large amount of data. You will also learn how to handle statistics, programming languages, and other analytical techniques that will help you become a successful data analyst.
You will also acquire other analytic skills from a data analyst course such as:
R or Python: To be an expert data analyst, you need to understand programming languages. Python is the most commonly-used readable programming language that can interpret data.
R is another one which represents the data more statistically to users.
Microsoft Excel (Advanced): Excel has great significance within the field of data analysis. The more familiar you are with excel, the more successful you’ll be as a data analyst.
As well as all this, it’s important to have good communications skills in order to help people understand your insights, you need to be familiar with SQL and above all, you must be aware of the importance of data analysis and its representation.
