Surprised? Blame it on keywords! Here’s why.
Many looking to transition to the hot field of analytics search job boards with keywords such as “business analyst” or “analyst” instead of “analytics”. The problem is, the terms are not synonymous.
To make matters worse, some new companies and startups actually use the title of “business analyst” for an analytics job, and I can understand why. “Business analyst” as a function predates “analytics” as a hot field by several decades. Older, more mature organizations continue to use “business analyst” as originally intended.
Typically, a business analyst is someone who coordinates between the Product Development (PD) team and the client. The client could be external with product requirements or an internal product team that needs to work with the product development team. The business analyst is responsible for ensuring solutions created by PD meet the client's current needs, and for evolving solutions over time as the client's needs change. The business analyst may provide technical project management and collaborate with other internal and external stakeholders in the design and implementation of systems. As you can see, a business analyst doesn’t have much to do with data!
On the other hand, the analytics professional—be it data analyst, business analytics professional, marketing analyst, product analyst, predictive analytics professional, or data scientist (yes, they go by more names than I can cover in an entire blog)—deals with deriving insights from data and driving recommendations using those insights. They, too, work with internal or external clients, but their focus is to improve the product, marketing or customer experience by using insights from data. Data is written all over this job role!
Bottom line, if you are looking to transition your career to analytics and thus searching job boards, use “Analytics” as the keyword instead of “Analyst”. The latter will pull jobs such as business analyst that have nothing to do with analytics, as well as finance analyst, revenue analyst and other roles which fall more under finance than analytics. And remember, before you go too far down the road on this transition, make sure you have the aptitude for analytics by assessing your analytics aptitude here.
More insights on the analytics landscape can be found in my book, “Behind Every Good Decision”, or if you have specific questions, please book 15 minutes FREE on my calendar here.
My Book on Amazon | Follow @AnalyticsQueen | Sign up for our Newsletter | http://www.aryng.com | Book 15 minutes FREE on my calendar here
