Advice for New Data Analysts
Always check your work
The worst thing a data analyst can do is give the wrong number to a stakeholder. This casts doubt on your ability to provide accurate information and diminishes your credibility as an analyst. To avoid errors, always double-check your figures against other sources. If it is a critical project, have a senior analyst or your manager review your numbers before presenting to the stakeholder. Don't be concerned about sounding professional. That sounds like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what will set this one apart. If you read the words back and don't hear your own voice in your head, it's a good indication that you still have work to do.
Learn the business and key performance indicators ( KPIs )
To become a great data analyst, you must first understand the company's business, how it makes money, and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are used to measure success. Once you understand the business and KPIs, you will be able to connect your stakeholders' requests to the business and the impact they wish to achieve.
Assume you work in the marketing department of an online retail company. The marketing manager wants to make changes to the website and wants to know what KPIs should be used to track success. Because you took the time to learn about the company, you can ask the right questions and recommend appropriate KPIs for measuring success, such as conversion rate and average order value.
Get context for the request
I was once asked to pull user level data that wouldn’t fit into an Excel worksheet because it was more than one million rows. I knew it was going to be a nightmare for my stakeholder to load into Excel because of memory constraints. I asked why this data was needed and based on the context I was able to provide the view my stakeholder really wanted with a few thousand rows of data.
It’s common for a stakeholder to ask for one thing but mean something else because they can’t articulate what they want. A great data analyst will dig deeper to understand what’s driving the request and deliver what is actually needed.
Learn how to present data results in a clear manner
Simply showing a table of numbers without explaining the context and business impact is not useful. Explain to your stakeholder how the numbers relate together using charts to show trends and point out relevant information.
Identify a problem and provide a solution
For example, the company’s website recently had a drop in visitors. The marketing department asked you to help identify a possible cause.
A great analyst would ask questions to the team responsible for the website to confirm if any changes had been made recently. You’re told there were changes on the same day when visitors from organic search started to drop. Now you can go back to your stakeholder and say “traffic dropped to the website from organic search visitors due to changes made on the website that caused a drop in Google search rankings”. Going this extra mile shows you not only found the source of the problem but took initiative to provide a solution.
Learn to work smarter, not harder
In my first full-time job, I worked long hours to complete my tasks because I was inefficient. It was difficult to apply what I learned in school to a real-life setting. A majority of my work was in Excel so I learned all the keyboard shortcuts and how to develop VBA macros to reduce my time on repetitive tasks. I trained myself to work faster and over time I was able to complete everything within business hours.
When I became a data analyst, I saved SQL and Python code snippets for reference to avoid writing similar code for different requests. I kept track of key dates that impacted company KPIs and links to documentation for reference. I appeared to complete tasks in record time and always had an answer on hand to stakeholder questions but this was all due to learning how work smarter, not harder.
Conclusion
Whether your starting your career as a data analyst or changing careers to become one, don’t feel overwhelmed that you aren’t successful at first. Focus on one skill at a time and move on to the next one when you’ve reached a level you deem as successful. The path to success requires time and practice but now that you know the way, I hope it comes to you sooner rather than later.
