How I Would Learn to be a Data Analyst

what up done nerds i'm luke a data analyst and my channel is all about tech and skills for data science and in this video today i wanted to cover my pathway for becoming a data analyst if i had to start over again and for this i'm not going to be only sharing the skills that i recommend learning but also my process for learning different skills which i've applied and refined over my time in school learning engineering to my time in the navy learning how to drive a nuclear-powered submarine and then more recently to learning all

the different skills of a data analyst in order to continue to gress further in my job this process has also been refined by my interactions from others that have not only gotten jobs as data analysts but also hired others for these roles as well my journey was filled with a lot of wasted time and effort and so i'm hoping that this video helps save you effort and also time and learning the skills you need to know for your job so let's break into my recipe for learning anything and it's an iterative two-step approach that i

recommend taking that can be applied to anything that you really want to learn the process consists of learning it and then using it so let's expand further into what you should be learning as a data analyst and i feel that there are four general areas that you should be focusing on that consist of technical skills soft skills analytical skills and domain knowledge don't worry we'll go into all these general topic areas in a bit but we need to move to that next step of actually applying it immediately after learning it and using it is it

true that if you don't use it you lose it is that a serious question which in this case is quite literally true because the tools that i've learned in the past and haven't applied i haven't been able to retain them so i feel like this is a really key important aspect in order to retain that skill and you can use these skills in a variety of different ways such as coursework projects on coursera portfolio projects for your resume work projects for your job and then also through teaching others now there's an added benefit of this

second step and that's that because you've created something with your new skills you now have something to showcase to an employer as experience so when you're searching for a job you can now display this item that you created for employers to see i've rambled about this before but i think that online courses and certificates are great for this first step in the process of learning things but if you don't have experience to showcase on a resume on how you use these skills that you learned an employer is not going to risk hiring you and all

of this relates directly to the sponsor of this video coursera coursera does a great job of hosting courses so that way you can learn the skills in that first step of the process but also in that second step of using something it then goes and has projects available for its specializations and certificates and this is great because you can not only display your certificate or specialization on a resume you can also showcase those projects as experience for employers to see so getting back to my learning process so once you have learned a skill and then

used it it's then time to iterate back and learn a new skill so where do you actually start and what skill should you focus on first for learning a skill my preference is to start with those technical skills and then also incorporate those other skills such as analytical or domain knowledge while you're learning a technical skill so why do i say start on a technical skill first so one i feel like they're more tangible and they're easier to set goals that you can actually accomplish such as you can write out what functions you want to

learn for excel and then learn it i also find that technical skills are funner to learn and i have higher motivation levels when actually setting out to accomplish that and two they allow you to apply other skills while actually focusing on that technical skill for example say you're learning a technical skill such as like r you could also write a blog post about it and this would showcase and build on your soft skill of writing so technically you're not only focusing on technical skills but you're also trying to incorporate those other skills as well alright

so let's jump into my technical skill roadmap so i recently did a data analytics project where i went through and scraped job posting data from linkedin i was able to find the most important skills for entry-level data analysts based on how many times a skilled appeared in a job posting so my insights from this project were this that excel and sql are the most important skills to learn of a data analyst as they comprise almost half of all job postings following in popularity are the bi tools of tableau and power bi and then also the

programming tools such as python or r so from this my recommended roadmap is this first i recommend getting a brief overview of all the different tools i think this is going to help with later on identifying tools that you want to focus on based on what your passion and interest is in i like the google data analytics certificate because it teaches you a lot about the popular tools of sql spreadsheets are in tableau and then going back to my recommendation on how to learn it not only teaches you about these skills but then you also

implement these skills in a capstone project for the certificate now this first step in the process is all about breadth not depths and the google certificate is perfect for this because you're not going to be a master of any of these skills once you complete it but you will have a general overview of these tools and you also have an introduction to other skills as well such as soft skills and domain knowledge next it's time to get into a mastering skill and for this we need to focus on either excel or sql i recommend these

two most popular tool of data analysts because from a probabilistic standpoint if you have these two skills on your resume i feel like you're more likely to get hired for an entry level data analyst job now regarding whether to use excel or sql first i really leave that up to you if you're looking for recommendations for resources to learn these type of skills check out this recent video i did where i went over some top courses to learn the skills of a data analyst next after mastering both excel and sql it's time to get into

mastering other tools such as bi tools and programming languages once again when selecting one of these tools i'd go off what your passion is select one that you have an interest for and you really want to dive into and learn and apply other skills with i think it's important to understand that you don't have to master every single one of these skills here in order to land your first job as a data analyst my first job i landed with only the skills of excel but i continued to progress my skills and because of that i

began and because of that i continued to advance in my career as a data analyst being able to level up and get different opportunities based on the skills i was learning so that's my roadmap for technical skills but what about those other areas of analytical skills domain knowledge and soft skills and what do i mean by these skills and how do i incorporate them while learning those technical skills let's break it down first up is analytical skills and by this i mean things like problem solving critical thinking research and then math skills so i get

a lot of questions around this math skill whether more in-depth training or studies is needed prior to taking any courses or prior to diving into the field of data analytics part of my life as a data analyst i was fortunate enough to be exposed to a lot of different math subjects so everything from algebra to more advanced mathematics like calculus and differential equations because of this and now being my role of data analyst i can say that the most of the math that i've applied to my job has been pretty basic math and has focused

on algebra probability and statistics i don't think subjects like calculus and discrete math are necessary especially for entry-level data analyst roles and the good news is that for most secondary schools like high schools in the united states you're exposed to subjects such as algebra and also other subjects like probability and statistics so based on this i wouldn't necessarily worry that you don't have the math skills to get started instead if you don't know something in math you can then learn it or apply it in a project as you're going along so getting back to how

to apply analytical skills in a project when i was learning excel one of my portfolio projects that i was working on in school was building a food nutrition calculator this was a spreadsheet that could tell you what to eat in order to be healthy this project not only required learning excel it also applied probability and statistics in determining what foods to recommend along with basic algebra in calculating macronutrient values of food this project was not only great for teaching me the technical skill of excel but also testing my analytical skills in solving this problem of

building this calculator interesting enough this project got brought up multiple times in different job interviews i were in specifically by interviewees that were interested in physical fitness and well-being and it was really great because it allowed me to connect on a similar interest with the interviewee next up is domain knowledge and this is knowledge of a specific discipline or field so for example i recently asked you all what fields you were transitioning from to become a data analyst and the results range from students and business and engineering to those working in an industry such as

education and health care from what i found you don't have to actually switch industries or domains in order to become a data analyst in fact what i found is those that have the most success in becoming data analysts apply those newly learned data analytical skills in the current domain or industry that they're in as an example of this in my first role i was working in the procurement industry working only with the skill of excel at the time i was looking to improve my bi tools and an opportunity came up to build a solution using

power bi as i had a general understanding of this field of procurement i was able to apply these newly learned skills of power bi in my role to build this dashboard but also i was able to actually go more in depth and learn even more about this field of procurement so for those that are working in an industry or maybe going to school to learn a certain subject i highly encourage you to take a similar approach and dive into a tool while also diving deeper into that domain so you can apply those skills in a

relevant project last up is soft skills and this relates to how you work and also interact with other people with the current pandemic this shifted the way that we're interacting with each other and instead of doing the normal face-to-face interactions we've actually shifted this quite differently to using alternate forms of communication i actually think this is a positive in that you can actually showcase these alternate forms of communication in your portfolio and in the projects that you do so what do i mean by this well when i was learning tableau i decided to make a

youtube series documenting my learnings these videos were not only improving my tableau skills but also a way for me to improve my soft skills of communication where i was getting first hand feedback on my presentation skills now i'm not saying that you have to make youtube videos per se instead what i'm saying is that you can use social media in order to showcase those soft skills that you have such as writing posts or tutorials on medium sharing your code or processes on github or making short form content on instagram or tick tock all these not

only have the benefit of working on those technical and soft skills they also are able to be used and showcase your experience for employers to see how you interact with others all right so that's my roadmap on how i've learned to become a data analyst remember this is not a comprehensive plan so you don't need to learn every single skill that i showed here today instead i'd start small right so start with that one technical still and add in another skill maybe analytical or soft skill that you want to work on and build a project

from there iterate remember for me one skill of excel was good enough to get my first job as an analyst and i feel the same can apply to you as well as always if you got value out of this video smash that like button and with that [Music] [Music] new video from ken on how to start in data science yes every year i like to refresh my advice about how i feel about learning data science the data domain is changing [Music] learn more about data science in the upcoming year thank you so much for watching

and good luck on your data science journey wait a second we need a video like this but for data analysts what i've done nerds i'm luke a dad analyst and my channel