How I Would Become a Data Analyst if I had to Start Over in 2024 | 6 Month Plan

what's going on everybody welcome back to another video today we're going to talk about how I would become a data analyst again if I had to start over from [Music] scratch been thinking about this a lot recently because things have changed since I became a data analyst six or seven years ago right uh the job Market's different the TCH Stacks are different and a lot of people ask me every single day hey how do I become a data analyst and so I want to give a good perspective of from today if I had to completely

start over exactly how I would do that again now in this scenario it's almost like I had Amnesia I completely forgot everything I know the only thing that was left in my memory is that I really want to be a data analyst that's all I have left so my sole purpose right now is just to land a job in data analytics and I'm starting from scratch nobody knows who I am nobody knows who Alex freeberg is or Alex the analyst I'm just some person right who wants to be a data analyst and I'm going to

tell you how I would do that as quickly as possible so let's start from the very very very very beginning remember Amnesia Alex doesn't remember anything except that he wants to become a data analyst he doesn't even know what a data analyst does so the first thing that I would do the very first step is just research what a data analyst does and this part just takes like a couple days right you're just figuring out what they do figuring out what kind of things you might be interested in and then I would determine what kind

of data analyst do I want to be do I want to focus on healthcare because Healthcare uses different tools than something like financial analyst or a marketing analyst or just a broad enal data analyst which would learn kind of the tools that I usually talk about on the channel so I would try to figure that out and then I would try to research what skills to learn exactly for that position but for this example for this scenario I'm just trying to become a general data analyst where I can get hired at any company so that's

the first thing that I would do the second thing that I would do is then start learning the skills because you cannot become a data analyst with none of the data analyst skills it's just not possible now I've talked on my channel a lot about what skills you need to learn SQL Excel Tableau powerbi python then there's a ton of others you could do R AWS Azure looker and a ton of others but Amnesia Alex wants to get a job as quickly as possible so I'm not going to recommend he learns all of those skills

I'm going to recommend that he only learns three that's going to be SQL Excel and Tableau now why do I recommend those three skills in particular that's because those ones are the ones that have the highest probability of being in a job description so SQL for sure is going to be in like 75% of job descriptions for data analyst Excel should be in probably like 100 % and then Tableau is just a bi tool so if you know Tableau you know powerbi or you know looker for the most part like you know like 80% of

the other ones and so if you learn a tool you usually know the other ones and so just learning a tool you can switch Tableau for powerbi or a lot of other tools but I recommend Tableau just because it is a popular tool that a lot of companies use and those three skills are going to open up probably 40% of the jobs for a data analyst out there now of course the more skills that you know the more jobs that you can apply for right if you keep adding skills to your skill sets then of

course you're going to be able to apply for 50 60 75% of the jobs that are out there but if I was starting over I would just want to give myself the best chance to land a job really quickly and so I would just focus on those three skills at the beginning now where would I learn these skills I'm pretending Amnesia Alex doesn't remember he's married doesn't remember that he has any money in his bank he is completely broke so if he has absolutely no money I would recommend that he goes on YouTube and learns

all the free things that you can find on YouTube is basically a university a YouTube University out there where you can find anything and I myself have an entire Channel dedicated to date analytics and you can probably learn 90% of what you need to learn just on my channel but there's tons of other great channels out there if you want to dive into different things now if you're not Amnesia Alex and you do have some money and you remember who you are and you do want to dive into some of these skills a little bit

more in depth than what YouTube has to offer there are some platforms that I do recommend I've been using udem for a long time I've also been using or Sarah for a long time I've even created my own learning platform for data analytics called analyst Builder on analyst Builder I have all of my own full courses that go a lot more in depth than what I have on YouTube we also have a questions page where you can practice for technical interviews and we'll get into technical interviews in just a little bit when we talk about

getting interviews so I'll leave links in the description if you want to check it out but learning the skills is super important so that is the next step that I would do and honestly I think that I can learn SQL Excel and Tableau within two months so that's kind of of assuming that I don't have a job Amnesia Alex doesn't have any work to do he's only dedicating just to those skills I think two months is plenty of time to really know those skills well enough to land an entry-level job now if I as Amnesia

Alex would start applying for jobs right now all my resume would have is Excel Tableau and SQL that's one of the worst resumés I've ever seen so what amnesia Alex is going to do or I am going to do is I'm going to build projects and build a portfolio when you're learning the skills you should be building project projects with them so you really solidify those skills so the projects are just kind of complimentary to learning the skills and then you can put those projects on your resume at least that's what I would do so

now instead of just those three skills at the top we have three skills and we have multiple projects underneath it I probably do two in SQL one in Excel and maybe one or two in Tableau all these would go into a website and I have a link in the actual resume but then I'd have my actual projects on my resume that will really fill out my resume and make it a lot better that can take a week or two weeks depending on how quickly you can get those projects done or how well you know those

skills but in two weeks you can have five projects or an entire portfolio created so up till now it's 2 and a half months of work invest in really learning and building projects the next thing that I would do is start creating a resume and this is going to be a really simple resume doesn't have to be anything crazy I've done lots of videos on creating the best resumé for data analytics and really I would just highlight the things that are really relevant and not include things that aren't Amnesia Alex has no work experience he

has no education experience so for him he's really just going to be putting the skills and the projects and maybe a summary section as well but it's not going to be super super impressive but it is going to have a lot of what they are looking for in a lot of job descriptions so I'm going make a really really really good resume because that is going to get past a lot of these automated systems that kind of check the resume first and when a hiring manager sees it they're going to see the skills that they're

looking for they're going to see projects that are interesting and relevant to that position and so hopefully I'd be able to land an interview the next thing that I would do is work with a recruiter and this is one of those things where most people when they're first starting out don't do this they just start applying to jobs and doing the LinkedIn you know single click applies they don't work and you get really frustrated and that's because you're applying to hundreds of jobs that thousands of other people are applying for but recruiters are really great

because they have a connection with the company so I would work with a recruiter or as many recruiters as I possibly could believe it or not there was a time where I had no experience and this was just you know six or seven years ago and I was working with six or seven recruiters at a time just juggling them kept messaging them and asking them and emailing them hey do you guys have anything messaging them on LinkedIn reaching out to them cold calling you just you kind of have to put yourself out there so if

I was starting over I would do that tactic instead of applying for a thousand jobs and then working with a recruiter I would start out working with a recruiter I also have an entire video on how to reach out to Recruiters on LinkedIn both by directly messaging them and then also by finding and cold calling and cold emailing them so if you're interested in finding out how to do that I would check out that video now after I work with the recruiter the very last thing that I have to do in order to land a

job is to really nail the interview and get a job offer that's it an interview is usually comprised of two parts it's the general interview and that's the technical interview now the general interview is one that you'll get on almost any position so they're going to ask you tell us about yourself tell us about your work experience tell us uh why you want this position and what you know about the company these types of things so you can just get ready for those by researching theany company researching what they do and getting ready for that

interview the next part is a technical interview and you're going to get this in probably 75% plus of the interviews that you have if it is a more technical role typically it's either in SQL or python just in general it's usually sequel like 95% of the technical interviews that I had over my entire career have been in SQL so you really want to nail that technical interview to show that you know the skill well and that's why we created analyst Builder like I was talking about a little bit ago we have that whole section where

it's just practicing for technical interviews in either python MySQL postrace SQL Microsoft SQL Server it is super awesome just for that so i' really want to prepare for my interview I just practice you know telling about myself practice for the technical interviews I would nail the interview and I would accept the job position now that's usually the longest process working with a recruiter and Landing a job because all the learning up till then is all self-paced you can do that all yourself for free or for very little money and then working with a recruiter and

then then actually Landing a job that can take anywhere from 3 months all the way up to a year and so in the shortest amount of time possible if I really streamlined this and I really worked hard at learning those skills working with a recruiter non-stop I like made it my job I think it'd be very possible to do that within 6 months it's a really optimistic time frame because 6 months to completely change your career is pretty quick but I definitely think it's possible if you know I was starting over today I definitely think

I could do it of course there are outside factors like the job market if hiring is is like really slow or where I live or things like that but in general I definitely think I could do it within 6 months now to some of you that may seem like a really long time but to put it in perspective you're going to have this job for the next 20 30 40 50 years and you're going to learn new skills and you'll get promotions and maybe you can transition into data science or data engineering or any other

number of jobs that are related to data analytics so that is the exact path that Amnesia Alex would take in order to become a data analyst as quickly as possible now if I had a little bit more time I didn't need a job I had more time to spend I would definitely be learning something like a cloud platform and then I would be learning some AI as well to work with those tools now I didn't mention AI as a must know because even now even today in the end of 2023 or early 2024 depending on

when I post this um even today those tools are not crazy integrated you don't have to know them now in the future in 2 3 4 5 years they may become more integrated into all of our software into all the tools that we use then it would become more of a requirement to know those things so that is exactly what I would do if you haven't already be sure to check out analyst Builder I am incredibly proud of it it is one of the best platforms out there for learning data analytics if you like this

video be sure to like And subscribe below I will see you in the next [Music] video