How to get your 1st DATA ANALYST Job

I recently posted a video on my YouTube channel techTFQ where I explained the step by step process you need to follow to get your first Data Analyst job. In this blog, I will mention all the details that were given in that video just to make it more clear and easy to understand.

There are 4 parts to making yourself ready to become a Data Analyst:

• Skills

• Portfolio Projects

• Data Analyst Courses

• Profile Visibility

Let’s look at each of them in detail. But if you missed the video then here it is:

• Skills

  There are 4 skills you may need to have to get your first job as Data Analyst:

  • BI Tool (Data Visualization tool) like Tableau or Power BI

    This is probably the most important skill for a Data Analyst. If you had the time to just learn any one skill then this is the skill I recommend you learn because most of the Data Analyst job description would have marked either Tableau or Power BI as a required skill.

    The best way to learn Tableau is by doing the Tableau certification. The certification I recommend for beginners is the Tableau Desktop Specialist. It will teach you everything you need to get started with tableau and to be able to use tableau confidently in any project. Additionally this certificate has lifetime validity so it will be valid for life.

    There is also another certification offered by Tableau which is Tableau Certified Data Analyst which is also good for Data Analyst but this certification has a validity of only 2 years so after 2 years you may need to retake the exam which is why I do not recommend it.

    As for learning Power BI, I recommend the Microsoft Certified: Data Analyst Associate certificate which is designed specifically for Data Analyst. This certificate will not only teach you Power BI but also many other skills required for a data analyst.

  • Spreadsheet tools like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets

    Every company uses spreadsheets to analyse and store small amounts of data. This is an essential skill every data analyst must master. Excel and Google sheets are the most popular spreadsheet tools but there are several other spreadsheet tools as well.

    When it comes to I would say spend a couple of days to a week to learn it since this is easy and should not take much time. I would recommend learning the following excel features to give yourself the best chance to get your first DA job.

    • Filtering of data

    • Identify and remove duplicate records

    • Using formula’s and functions

    • Vlookup

    • pivot table and transpose

    If you have the time and are interested in learning more advance concepts then look at VBA macros and also check how to build charts and plot to visualise data.

  • SQL

    SQL is a very essential skill that can differentiate you from other candidates. It’s not mandatory for a data analyst since there are several jobs which list SQL as a good to have skill. But knowing SQL will just boost your profile and open more doors to help you get your first DA job.

    To become a Data Analyst, you don’t need to be an expert in SQL, you don’t need to know to write complex SQL Query or do performance tuning. However, I would recommend knowing the following concepts in SQL to give your self the best chance to get DA job requiring SQL:

    • All fundamental SQL concepts

    • Basic to intermediate level of SQL Query writing.

    • Aggregate functions

    • Group by and Having clause

    • Window functions

    • CTE table (WITH clause)

    • Stored procedure

    • Inbuilt functions like date format functions and substring functions etc.

    If you prefer to do an SQL course to learn SQL then I would highly recommend the LearnSQL platform. This is one of the best platforms I came across which teaches SQL the right way. They have several different SQL courses which are focussed mainly on teaching you all the SQL concepts by asking you to write SQL Queries. I made a video about the reasons why I like this platform. You can watch that video here.

  • Python or R

    Finally, the last skills that I recommend learning to get your first data analyst job is either Python or R. Both of these are fantastic programming languages for performing data analysis. You can choose either of these languages but Python is more widely used so you would find more jobs requiring Python over R.

    When it comes to learning Python, I would recommend learning the following concepts:

    • Fundamental Python concepts

    • Data structures like Lists, Dictionaries, Tuples etc.

    • Object Oriented Programming concepts like Classes, objects, methods, inheritance etc.

    • Popular data analysis and visualisation libraries like Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib and Seaborn.

    I had recently posted a video on my YouTube channel providing the step by step guide on how to learn python where I mentioned all the concepts you need to cover depending on whether you want to learn Python for Data Science or web development or automation etc. You can watch that video here.

    In my opinion, the best way to learn Python is by reading books. There are several awesome books to learn Python but the book that I highly recommend is “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python“. This is a fantastic book for absolute beginners. I learnt python using this book and I just loved how everything was explained so easily. Especially the amount exercises this book provides to learn Python is just amazing.

    You can download the pdf version of the first edition of this book here:

• Portfolio Projects

  Just knowing all the required skills and having the certifications and then mentioning them on your resume is not going to be good enough to convince recruiter that you are a good fit for a data analyst role.

  Because, having the skills and then using these skills to build projects and solve problems are two different things. You may need to do something extra to convince the recruiter that you are capable of using these skills to solve problems in a project and that is why is it very very important to build projects and then showcase these projects to your potential employers.

  When it comes to building projects, you need to consider what a Data Analyst does. In general a Data Analyst is expected to perform the following activities:

  • Data Extraction

  • Data Cleaning & Analysis

  • Visualise Data

  So the projects you build must showcase that you can perform the above 3 activities. Based on these, I recommend that you build following 3 types of projects:

  • Web Scraping projects

    Web scraping the process of scraping (extracting) data from the web. I have posted couple of videos on my YouTube channel building some web scraping projects.

    The first one is web scraping IMDb website using Python. You can watch the video here.

    The second video is when I built a data analytics project by scraping the YouTube data using the YouTube Data API. You can watch it here.

    Other than these you can also build projects where you scrape job portal websites like LinkedIn, Monster etc or you can scrape e-commerce website like Amazon.

  • Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) projects

    EDA is the process of cleaning and analysing data to understand the characteristics and patterns in your data. EDA helps you to understand what problems you can solve using your data.

    I found a very good blog which provides some useful EDA project ideas for beginners. You can read the blog here.

  • Data Visualization projects

    Finally, build a project where you use Tableau or Power BI to connect to some data source and then build some beautiful data visualisation to answer some questions regarding your data or solve some problems using this data.

    Again, I recommend reading the blog I found online which lists some good projects ideas for Data Visualization too. You can read the blog here.

    Also, recommend reading an article mentioned by Coursera where they have listed 5 project ideas for beginners for their Data Analytics portfolio. Read it here.

  Once you build your project, make sure to upload these projects to GitHub. GitHub is basically a website where anyone can post their projects and then share it with the world. If you want to understand GitHub better then watch my YouTube video where I have explained in simple terms what GitHub is and how to use it. Watch is here.

  It is also highly recommended that you build a portfolio website where you can showcase all your projects and also your resume and cover letter and any other professional information you may want to share with your potential employers. Posting your projects on GitHub is essential and good but to go one steps further make sure to have a portfolio website too. Watch my Youtube video to get a glimpse of some sample portfolio websites.

• Data Analyst Courses

  If you have the resources to do a Data Analyst course then I recommend either of the below 2 courses. These are both offered in coursera and teach you the skills required to become a data analyst and also help you build a capstone project which can be a good addition in your portfolio website. The courses I recommend are:

  • Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate

    This course is offered by Google in Coursera and is taught by the google employees. The quality is really good. The skills you will learn in this course are SQL, Google Sheets, Tableau and R.

  • IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate

    This course is offered by IBM in Coursera. This course covers most of the concepts using Python. The skills you will learn in this course are SQL, Microsoft Excel, IBM Cognos and Python. Cognos is an in house BI tool from IBM so they don’t use either Tableau or Power BI but they do teach Python.

• Profile Visibility

  Finally, once you have gained all the skills required and done the certifications and also build data analytics projects and built a portfolio website, you cannot just expect the recruiter to reach out to you to give you tour dream job.

  You need to make yourself more visible to the recruiters. And the simplest way of doing this is by being active on the job portals. Especially LinkedIn. Linkedin is a very import platform for your to build connections and showcase your projects and skills to the potential employers. Make sure to be active on LinkedIn by adding like minded connections, reaching out to recruiters who are hiring for data analysts and also following your dream companies. You never know when any of the projects or articles you posted catch the eye of an employer. Be active on LinkedIn to give yourself the best chance to become more visible to recruiters.

  Also, make sure to frequently update your profile on the most popular job portals in your country. If you are in India then Nauru and monster are probably the most popular job portals. If in Malaysia then it must be jobstreet and monster. if in US then it must be glassdoor and indeed.

  To conclude, when finding your first job, you need to reach out to recruiters and employers to showcase your potential and make your self visible to the world.

  All the best. I Truly wish you get your very first Data Analyst job.