In a world where digital innovation is transforming how organizations access and manage the tons of data at their disposal, data analytics is one of the most in-demand professions in the technological industry.
Such a sensitive position, quite naturally, has equally specific demands. Although a corresponding degree is a valuable advantage, there are other pressing requirements without which it will be impossible to have a long, successful career in the niche.
Problem-Solving Skills
Problem-solving is one of the most essential requirements to succeed in data analytics. A huge chunk of the work is about critical thinking and knowing the right questions to ask.
Data analytics involves a lot of logical thinking to draw conclusions quickly to understand data better. Much of the profession involves answering the "whys" of various complex phenomena and figuring out the most logical investigative techniques to find applicable solutions.
Curiosity and Effective Communication
As a data analyst, you must have effective communication skills to explain the problems in any dataset, how you solved them, and how you tackled the issues that arose. This means that you must be able to communicate complex ideas to even non-technical team members effectively.
Additionally, you must possess the right attitude and curiosity to learn and adapt to evolving technologies.
A Head for Numbers
Successfully pursuing a career in data analytics goes beyond having a degree in mathematics or statistics. You must genuinely have a head for numbers and understand how to communicate these numbers and statistics for real-world implementation.
A data analyst's job isn't just to analyze big data and clean up unstructured data. It is also crucial that you can piece together relevant inferences from the information gleaned from the data, and communicate it in clear terms, similar to telling a story.
Communicating the meaning of results in clear terms is essential, as is the ability to be descriptive. Therefore, before choosing a career in data analytics, you should ask yourself the following questions:
Are you comfortable working with various structured and unstructured datasets?
Can you glean insights using different statistical techniques and models?
How are your data visualization and presentation skills?
Coding Skills
While data analytics requires less coding than other careers like cloud and software engineering, some programming languages are essential for data analysts to have successful careers.
Structured Query Language (SQL) is the most important language to be proficient in. It's reliable, easy to learn, and applies to most data queries. While not as essential as SQL, languages like R and Python are also useful.
Another reason learning to code is essential for data analysts is to facilitate easy collaborations with other technical members of your team.
Broad Business Knowledge
Data analytics has strong links to various industries, which is why it is essential to have a broad knowledge of the workings of business.
Data analysts work for organizations, and their targets aren't just to glean data but also to infer workable solutions from the insights and solve business-related problems. All of these cannot be possible without an understanding of staff experience, customer relationships, change management, business strategy, and business leadership.
A data analyst with not only basic technical skills but also a comprehensive knowledge of business is equipped to go far in the industry.
Join Our Talented Team of Data Experts
Data analytics has several essential applications in various organizations, businesses, and niches. To have a successful career, you need a combination of the right mental and technical skills.
If you're cut out for it, why not reach out to us to take your career to the next level? We're a growing team of tech and data experts providing customers across various industries with tailored solutions.