Aiming to change careers? Think about this trending IT profession

You probably have heard something about data analytics. Let me guess — it’s well-paid, demanded, and difficult so you can never think about this career. Well, yes, yes, and no.

Indeed, data analysis is a well-paid occupation: junior specialists earn 30,000-50,000 Pesos, while senior ones can easily get up to 120,000.

That happens because working with data is a very in-demand sphere. More and more data is produced every day and companies need specialists to analyze them and make business decisions.

Just imagine how much you and people you know post every day — and these numbers won’t be surprising for you.

A data analyst collects, cleans, and interprets data sets in order to discover useful information and support decision-making to achieve business goals. Specialists like this are needed in many industries, including IT, finance, science, medicine, and government.

Imagine you are running a clothing store. There are a lot of things happening behind the scenes that you can’t interpret on your own. It is the analysts who determine how full shelves, bad weather, and even background music affect purchases.

All these and other data can be collected and analyzed. This will help you arrange the goods so that customers stay in the sales area as long as possible and notice important offers. You can also redo the cashiers’ work schedule to reduce queues

at the checkout. By learning more about the interests of your customers through

data, you will be able to optimize purchases and logistics.

Playing lego with data

The most vital thing when starting a new career is to understand what skills you would need. Otherwise, you are at risk of studying irrelevant knowledge that will not help you get occupied.

So, working with data consists of 5 main steps: first data is collected, then organized in a comfortable way to be analyzed, then the analysis is conducted, and finally, they are able to tell you the whole story of what business decision to make.

To do it, a junior data analyst has to acquire work are working with Excel and basics in SQL and Python. And if the former is familiar to almost everyone and tends to be a basic skill for any office job, the latter might look more difficult.

S-Q-L stands for Structured Query Language. It’s a programming language designed for querying and managing data held in a big table called a database system.

To put it simply, you code like this: “Dear database, please show me only a certain type of information”. This language is vital in the first steps of working with data:

Select records
Group and order records
Join multiple tables
Perform calculations

Moreover, you can create simple visualization using imported tools: Excel Smart Charts for Dashboards such as PowerBI, and Tableau.

Python is a more difficult language that is usually learned after SQL. With it, you can do more automation and efficient replications and make shorter implementations on some data manipulations.

There are special libraries and packages to perform data analysis, for instance, pandas.

The good thing about using Python and pandas is that you can immediately generate simple/common plots. Pandas allow you to create line graphs to analyze trends or bar plots to analyze data distributions

It might look difficult, but actually, one can use them easily after several months of study and getting some basic understanding of Python.

What is the best way to start in Data Analytics?

Apart from the hard skills mentioned above, you should also pay attention to soft skills:

Data Analysts should have great communication skills, including written, verbal, and specialty visualization software. You should be able to report your conclusions to a team in a group setting, so public speaking and presentation are essential skills as well.
You should be prepared to do some digging. If you’re trying to tell a story or interpret raw data, you’ll need to be experienced in researching and asking the right questions.
Data Analysts co-work with people in the company to get the job done, so teamwork is essential. They should collaborate even with company leaders to determine how the data insights can guide the company in moving forward.
You have to be very attentive. Data Analysts need to be able to notice small clues that point to a bigger message hiding in a data group.

Moreover, you need to learn how to present your skill in the best way: how to write a CV, what should be in your portfolio and on your LinkedIn, and how to be confident during your first interviews.

There are two general approaches to how to start better.

1.Study on your own.

The internet has a lot of resources that you can access for free. If you have enough discipline and motivation, you can learn data analysis skills yourself with free tutorials and articles.

The main advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to pay anything. Yes, it’s not the quickest and easiest way to educate yourself but now you know what skills you need so you’re halfway there!

2.Find an Online Course

If you want to get structured comprehensive knowledge and apply your new skills to practice, find an online course. Do another research and compare courses according to the job requirements you wrote down from the vacancies. Pay attention not only to the price but also to other features of the course: the duration of studying, feedback, homework, whether there is support from mentors or not, etc.

If the course doesn’t offer feedback and help from mentors, you risk wasting money and returning to the first variant: you have to pay but you literally study alone just as if you watched videos on YouTube.

Refocus offers a Data Analytics Course. During the Course Journey, students get

exactly the experience they are asked about in interviews.

Interactive platform with lessons
Homework and detailed feedback from experts and practicing analysts with many years of experience as your teachers
24 live sessions with experts during the course
9 projects in your portfolio
Lifetime access to materials
Certificate of Completion
After the Course, our students will be able to find a job within 6 months or we will return the course fee!

To conclude

Indeed, starting a new occupation from scratch is challenging. And starting it in the sphere of IT might be even more challenging.

But if you have enough motivation to work and develop, nothing will stop you, regardless of the way of study you’ve chosen!