These lessons are part of Aryng’s Analytics career transition path series for individuals.
So far in my blog series, we have covered how to identify your ideal analytics job, assess your own analytics aptitude and narrow down your specific skill gaps for the jobs you want. Now, let’s discuss how to remedy those gaps by getting trained for your future career in analytics. And if after reading the blog, you have specific questions on analytics training you need, feel free to book 15 minutes FREE on my calendar here.
Tools are easy to learn. Mindset is not!
As you look to acquire new skills, my strong advice is this: you can learn tools from any number of online resources for little or no money (we will talk about those shortly). But learn analytics (and the mindset) from experts who have done it before. Eschew the theoretical academics for those who have worked with and used data to drive real impact in real organizations. To find real stories of real business impact from analytics, you might want to check out my book 'Behind Every Good Decision'.
Then, get hands-on experience with a real-time analytics project, where you get to practice how to work with the stakeholders, how to lay out your analytics plan, get buy-in, execute the analysis, and influence stakeholders with your insights. Here again, be wary. Analyzing publicly available data sets is not a substitute for a real-time analytics project. Analyzing a dataset is just a subset of the analytics skills you need on the job. Analytics, when done correctly, never starts with datasets because data doesn’t speak, it responds. It responds to intelligent questions posed by stakeholders.
With those guidelines, I’ve expanded the sample needs/gap matrix from Step 2 to include my recommendations on how and where to find the right analytics skills and tools training.
Job Requirements |
Your Background |
Gaps/Need |
How to find the right training/course |
|
Business Analytics Skills
Data to Decisions |
Passion for data analysis supported by personal and professional experiences |
Interest in data and analysis. No training or experience to demonstrate |
Hands-on business analytics training |
Look for hands-on training with a strong focus on analytics/testing as applied to business. Academic-focused courses do not bridge the gap from statistics to business. Additionally, I recommend getting hands-on experience with a real-time analytics project. Also, look for training where you have the ability to interact 1-on-1 with the analytics expert to clarify questions; guide you through sample analytics exercises and cases; and act as mentor for a real-time project. If you are looking for an external job opportunity (vs. internal transfer), seek an expert to guide you through the career transition process with resume coaching. Interview coaching might also be helpful. The devil is in the details and being able to spend time with the expert would help enrich your understanding of the analytics realm.
If you are not familiar with Excel, or any such spreadsheet tool, you can learn Excel for FREE from online portals like Excel Exposure.
Aryng offers three analytics career transition packages depending on your need, which cover analytics aptitude assessment, training, mentoring, real-time projects and career coaching. |
A/B Testing SkillsTesting framework and other skills like BA above |
Demonstrated experience in A/B Testing |
No background |
Hands-on A/B testing training |
|
Advanced Stat Skills |
5 years’ experience building predictive models |
No background |
Hands-on predictive analytics training |
|
Statistical Tools R, SAS etc. |
Technical skills such as R/SAS/Stata a plus |
Optional requirement |
Look into training in any of these tools |
If you have done any kind of programming, it is fairly easy and inexpensive to learn tools online. You can learn R at TryR or Coursera and other online portals. You can learn SAS free of cost using SaS online tutorials. If you don’t have any programming background, consider enrolling in a local hands-on course. |
Data Access via programming (SQL, Hive) |
Working knowledge of SQL |
Know programming, never used SQL |
Hands-on SQL training |
Just like statistical |
Data Access via BI tools |
Experience with Tableau a plus |
Have never used Tableau, but you have used Business Object |
No training needed. If you have used one BI GUI based tool, you can easily pick another on the job. |
If you are familiar with one BI tool (such as MicroStrategy, Business Object, Tableau, etc.), it is easy to pick up any other on the job. As long as you have experience with one, you can confidently talk about that in the interview and tell your interviewers you can learn new tools in a few days on the job. If you don’t have experience with any GUI based BI tool, I recommend downloading a free trial version of Tableau, importing a public dataset and playing. I don’t recommend spending money to learn any BI tool as part of the transition because there are too many tools out there and you never know what tool you would be using in your future role. |
In Step 4, we will talk about how to prepare an awesome resume and how to apply for jobs in a way that gets you in front of the hiring manager. Meanwhile, get busy and give yourself 4-6 weeks to acquire the analytics skills you need for your future job. In parallel, you might enjoy reading my book, “Behind Every Good Decision, which covers one such recipe of data to decisions, called BADIR, in great detail. You can also download Chapter 7 of the book FREE here.
And remember—you won’t become an analytics expert overnight, but the more you practice, the more confidence you will have using your newly acquired skills. So post the training and real time project, talk to your friends who might have access to data and are trying to use it for making good decisions (they may be part of product, marketing, ops, analytics or sales). Keep your skills sharp and current by offering your time FREE to do analysis for them till you land your dream analytics job. And all this will further strengthen your resume. Next step, we look into making an awesome analytics resume.
My Book on Amazon| Follow @AnalyticsQueen | Sign up for our Newsletter | http://www.aryng.com | Contact Aryng | Call Piyanka @408.412.7279
