Are you wondering what a data analyst does? Do you want to know what the job description and responsibilities are? Or what skills do you need to be a data analyst? We’ve got you covered. Read on for everything you need to know about data analyst job descriptions, responsibilities, skills, and top companies hiring.
Business has never been as data-driven as it is today. This is why, for the last few years, a lot of companies have started investing into hiring data analyst who can help them make the right decisions.
But, who are the data analysts? And why do you need one? This blog will tell you all about the data analyst’s role and what you can expect from them.
Table of Content
- What Is Data Analysis?
- What Does a Data Analyst Do?
- Types of Data Analysts
- Data Analyst Job Description: Roles and Responsibilities
- Data Analyst Skills Required
- Key Skills for a Data Analyst
- Data Analyst Qualifications: What Does it Take
- Data Analyst Salary: How Much Does a Data Analyst Make?
- Top Companies Hiring Data Analysts
What Is Data Analysis?
The process of cleaning, analyzing, and displaying data using different approaches is known as data analysis. Data analysis tools help uncover key insights that lead to decision-making.
Data analysis is concerned with the transformation of raw data into meaningful statistics, information, and explanations.
What Does a Data Analyst Do?
A data analyst’s job is to take data sets and find ways to solve problems that a business’s customers might have. They also communicate this information to management and other stakeholders. Data analysts can be employed in a variety of industries, including business, finance, criminal justice, science, medicine, and government.
The role of a data analyst is to take raw data and turn it into information that can be used to make business decisions. This requires knowledge and skill in order to effectively use data to improve business operations.
Types of Data Analysts
- Medical and Health Care Analyst:
Medical and healthcare data analysts utilize data from numerous sources to help improve healthcare outcomes, with a focus on the business side of medicine to either increase patient care or simplify operations. - Market Research Analyst
Market research analysts play an important role in businesses by collecting and evaluating data on consumers and competitors. By investigating market conditions, they are able to provide insights on future sales of a product or service.
This includes understanding what items customers want, who will buy them and at what price. Their role is crucial in assisting businesses make informed decisions about their marketing and product strategy. - Business Analyst
Business analysts use data to help them understand what’s going on behind the scenes of a corporation or organization. By detecting problems and areas of improvement, they can make suggestions on how to make the company run more efficiently.
With an ever-growing demand for ways to save money and time, business analytics is playing a bigger role in how companies are run. Because of this, business analysts are in high demand! - Business Intelligence Analyst
The primary role of a business intelligence analyst is to help companies make better business decisions by analyzing data and other information. This includes collecting, cleaning, and analyzing data such as a company’s revenue, sales, market intelligence, or consumer engagement indicators.
In some cases, BI analysts may also be required to create tools and data models to aid in the visualisation or monitoring of data. - Operations Research Analyst
Operations research analysts are experts at solving complex problems. They use sophisticated methods such as optimization, data mining, statistical analysis, and mathematical modelling to find efficient and cost-effective solutions for businesses and organizations.
By helping firms and organizations run more efficiently, operations research analysts can make a significant impact on their bottom line. - Intelligence Analyst
Intelligence analysts are responsible for studying information and data to help identify and reduce security risks. They use internal and external sources, such as statistics, databases, and field reports, to gather information.
To create action plans based on this information, analysts must be skilled in research, comprehension, and data analysis.
Data Analyst Job Description: Roles and Responsibilities
A data analyst is responsible for organizing, cleansing and analyzing data that is related to sales numbers, market research, logistics, linguistics or other behaviors. They use their technical expertise to ensure that data is accurate and of high quality.
Data is then analyzed, designed and presented in a way that assists individuals, businesses and organizations make better decisions.
- Using automated tools to extract data from primary and secondary sources
- Removing corrupted data and fixing coding errors and related problems
- Developing and maintaining databases, data systems – reorganizing data in a readable format
- Performing analysis to assess quality and meaning of data
- Filter Data by reviewing reports and performance indicators to identify and correct code problems
- Using statistical tools to identify, analyze, and interpret patterns and trends in complex data sets that could be helpful for the diagnosis and prediction
- Assigning numerical value to essential business functions so that business performance can be assessed and compared over periods of time.
- Analyzing local, national, and global trends that impact both the organization and the industry
- Preparing reports for the management stating trends, patterns, and predictions using relevant data
- Working with programmers, engineers, and management heads to identify process improvement opportunities, propose system modifications, and devise data governance strategies.
- Preparing final analysis reports for the stakeholders to understand the data-analysis steps, enabling them to take important decisions based on various facts and trends.
Data Analyst Skills Required
As a data analyst, you should possess the following eight skills:
- Cleansing and preparing data
- Analyzing and exploring data
- Expertise in statistics
- Analyzing and visualizing data
- Reports and dashboards
- Communication and writing
- Expertise in the domain
- Solution-oriented
Now that you know the data analyst job description, let us look at the skills required to become one. A successful data analyst needs to have a combination of technical and leadership skills. A background in mathematics, statistics, computer science, information management, or economics can serve as a solid foundation to build your career as a data analyst.
Furthermore, analysts need to be able to effectively communicate their findings to people who may not have the same level of expertise. And finally, because data can be complex and ever-changing, analysts need to be comfortable with ambiguity and have the ability to adapt as new challenges arise.
Key Skills for a Data Analyst
In order to become a successful data analyst, you need the following skills:
- Strong mathematical skills to help collect, measure, organize and analyze data
- Knowledge of programming languages like SQL, Oracle, R, MATLAB, and Python
- Technical proficiency regarding database design development, data models, techniques for data mining, and segmentation.
- Experience in handling reporting packages like Business Objects, programming (Javascript, XML, or ETL frameworks), databases
- Proficiency in statistics and statistical packages like Excel, SPSS, SAS to be used for data set analyzing
- Adept at using data processing platforms like Hadoop and Apache Spark
- Knowledge of data visualization software like Tableau, Qlik
- Knowledge of how to create and apply the most accurate algorithms to datasets in order to find solutions
- Problem-solving skills
- Accuracy and attention to detail
- Adept at queries, writing reports, and making presentations
- Team-working skills
- Verbal and Written communication skills
- Proven working experience in data analysis
Data Analyst Qualifications: What Does it Take
In addition to data analyst job description and skills, let’s learn about the qualifications of a data analyst. To excel in a career in data analytics, you need more than technical expertise. A bachelor’s degree in a field that emphasizes statistical and analytical skills is desired.
Students from mathematics, statistics, computer science, or economics backgrounds usually have an advantage in the data analyst career path. However, a postgraduate course in data analytics can make you an industry-ready professional.
You would also need soft data analyst skills like:
- excellent communication and presentation skills
- ability for critical thinking
- Creativity
- having a systematic and logical approach to problem-solving
- team working skills
Data Analyst Salary: How Much Does a Data Analyst Make?
Does the data analyst job description excite you enough? If not let us look at some salary figures of this in-demand job role. However, note that, the data analyst salary depends on a number of factors like educational qualification, location, relevant experience, and skills set.
The average annual salary of an experienced data analyst can range from approximately $60,000 to $140,000. Financial and technology firms tend to offer higher pay-package than average.
Data analysts often move on to positions with more responsibility, like senior data analysts, data scientists, data analytics managers, business analysts, etc. Higher responsibilities usually come with a substantial pay rise as well.
It is estimated that the average annual salary of data scientists starts at around $95,000, while that of analytical managers begins at approximately $106,000.
Top Companies Hiring Data Analysts
There are currently over 80,000+ data analyst jobs available worldwide, with the majority of these being in finance, healthcare, business, marketing, and e-commerce. This high demand is due to the fact that nearly all industries can benefit from data analysis in some way.
As such, the data analyst job description is branching off into various specializations to meet this demand. So if you’re looking for a data analyst job, you’ve got plenty of options to choose from.
At the moment, data analysts have the most job openings in business intelligence companies in the US and Europe. This is followed by finance, sharing economy services, healthcare, and entertainment companies.
Get Started to Become a Data Analyst Today!
If you’re wondering how to get a job as a data analyst, don’t worry – it’s not as difficult as you might think. There are plenty of entry-level data analyst positions available, and if you have a certification from a top-rated data analysis program like the ones offered here at TopD Learning, you’ll be in an even better position to snag one of those jobs.
Even if you don’t have a background in data analysis, there are still ways to have a successful career as a data analyst.
TopD Learning offers Job Guaranteed Program so you can get a Job Guarantee after doing the course.
In relevance to Data Science, TopD Learning has a Data Science Job Guarantee Program through which you’ll be able to lean and master Data Science concepts, you’ll also be getting a Job Guarantee. So it’s a win-win.
You can contact us to learn more about the program or about any other latest technology you’d like to learn and we would be happy to help.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this blog and we’ll continue delivering valuable content regularly.
