It is always good to understand any concept with an example, isn’t it? Now that we are here to discuss the data analyst job description, let us start with a very common use case of Data Analysis.
Data Analysis Use Case
From late 2019, we are facing a global pandemic. Initially, there was no idea what this virus is, its type, its spread, symptoms, prevention, and cure. When the Covid-19 virus started spreading, the people concerned started noticing the symptoms and the treatment given to different patients at different locations of the world.
Those were reports generated by data analysts, which helped them to know the preventive measures (social distancing, masking on, sanitizing, and avoiding crowded places). Those reports helped countries handle and control the situation to save maximum people from getting infected. You can notice the graphs being published every day in the newspapers regarding the current status of infected people area-wise, countrywide, and even locality-wise. All thanks to data analysts for generating such user-readable reports that greatly helped us to prevent ourselves.
An exemplary image showing how analytics is working behind the scenes of taking preventive measures against covid-19.
How are these reports generated? We will understand this by reading further what data analysis is all about and the roles and responsibilities of a data analyst.
What is Data Analysis?
As defined everywhere, data analysis refers to a process of examining, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data with the intent of identifying meaningful information, informing conclusions, and assisting in smart decision-making.
Data is gold today, as we are living in a data-centric world. With every usage of technology or devices, we generate data each passing second. With the massive amounts of data generated, organizations can generate business value in billions of dollars. This is why there is a huge demand for data analysts across the world, and that with lucrative salary offers.
Who is a Data Analyst?
Clearly, a professional involved in data analysis generates user-readable reports to help in informed decision-making, thereby cutting costs and improving productivity and ROIs.
So to perform all the processes involved in data analysis, you need to possess the knowledge and skills to transform raw data into insights and information to support decision-making.
Data Analyst: Job Description
Though the responsibilities of a data analyst vary from company to company, location, and the type of organization, the most common responsibilities of a data analyst are:
- Leverage automated tools to draw data from different sources (primary or secondary).
- Eliminating corrupted data and troubleshooting code errors and other related problems
- Building and maintaining data systems, databases and reorganizing data to present it in a user-readable format
- Carrying out analysis to assess the quality and context of data
- Filter Data by making report reviews and performance indicators to identify and remove code problems.
- Making use of statistical tools to recognize, analyze, and present trends and patterns in complex data sets can help in prediction and diagnosis.
- Making analysis of local, national, and global trends that affect both the industry and the organization.
- Changing business functions to numerical values such that business performance can be easily assessed and compared over fixed durations of time.
- Prepare reports to be sent to the management and other related departments stating all the patterns, trends, and predictions by using appropriate data.
- Working with engineers, programmers, and management heads to identify opportunities for process improvement, propose system modifications, and conceive data governance strategies.
- Prepare final reports of analysis for stakeholders to understand the steps of data analysis so that they can make informed decisions on the basis of several trends and facts.
Apart from the responsibilities mentioned above, Exploratory Data Analysis or EDA Project is another integral part of the data analyst job description. In such a project, you are required to scrutinize data to recognize and point out patterns. The next step is to utilize data modeling techniques to encapsulate the overall features of data analysis.
Skills Required for a Data Analyst
According to the job description, you can notice what should be the skills required to become a successful data analyst. Typically, Data Analysts are versatile in all the processes required for doing anything with data, such as collecting, cleansing, mining, filtering, organizing, and interpreting it.
You are expected to have a strong background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Information Management, etc.
The key skills required are:
- Strong mathematical skills such that you can easily gather, measure, organize and analyze data.
- Foundational knowledge of programming languages such as SQL, MATLAB, Python, R, or Oracle
- Proficiency in techniques related to database design development, data models, segmentation, and data mining
- Expertise in using Hadoop, Apache Spark, and other data processing platforms
- To interpret data in a user-readable format, you require a sound knowledge of data visualization software such as Tableau, Qlik, etc.
- You should know the ways of creating and applying the most appropriate algorithms to datasets such that solutions can be found.
- Accuracy as well as attention to detail
- Adaptability and team-working skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Excellent communications skills (both written and verbal)
- Adept at making queries, presenting reports, and making ppts.
- Proven hands-on experience in data analysis
- Creativity
Salary of a Data Analyst
The salary of a data analyst varies with changes in the company, geographic location, sector, qualifications, as well as experience.
The average annual salary of a Data Analyst may range between USD60,000 to USD140,000. Usually, technology and finance firms offer huge salaries to data analysts.
Moving ahead from a data analyst, you can upgrade your career to become a senior data analyst, data scientist, analytics manager, business analyst, and more.
The Wrap Up
Did you know that you can choose from over 86000 jobs available worldwide to become a Data Analyst?
Also, data analysts are required in almost every sector, such as finance, healthcare, retail, management, advertisement agencies, technology, and many more. So you can choose the industry of your choice as well.
When you get such a diversified field, you would surely wish to become one. You can go with an online training course and get hands-on with some real-life projects on data analysis so that making a career in this field goes smoothly, in a hassle-free manner.
Enroll now!