How I'd become a data analyst (if i had to start over) in 2025

here's how I'd become a data analyst if I had to start over as a data analyst now with over 10 years experience I have many Lessons Learned and would take a completely different path anyone yes you can be a data analyst all within 6 months of self-study here's how by failing to prepare you are preparing to fail says Benjamin Franklin and without a plan you will get lost in the data analyst Journey so here is a 6mon road map that I personally would use I'd split up the road map into three different parts the skills

the projects and the job applications and put a date on the calendar 6 months from now and work backwards from it so in months one to three I will work on skills in month four I would work on projects and then month five and six is the job application process and 6 months is very reasonable if you have about 3 to 4 hours to study every day and everybody has different schedules and different commitments but if that's something that you can commit to this Roat would work for you I also have a video on how

I was able to self-study for 4 hours every day and if you're looking for tips there I will link the video above months 1 through three is skills knowing what I know today I would really just focus on learning three tools and that is Excel SQL and Tapo I would learn it in that order and just focus on just those three for 3 months I'm not including python Cloud technology other bi tools because most entry-level data analyst roles will only require you to know those three skills that I listed and from my personal experience as

well those were the only three tools I used for years so that is enough to get you started and you can worry about learning the other skills after you Le the job Excel is the first tool that I would learn because Excel is still the most popular bi tool used across Industries and it's highly likely that in your first role as a data analyst you'll be using a lot of excel you need to know how to clean analyze and present data using Excel and what level do you need about an intermediate level where you know

key functions like vup pivot tables how to create visualizations and what I would do in my road map is break it down into smaller pieces so spend a week learning just the formulas and getting used to them and then spend the following week on visualizations and thinking through how you can visualize data using charts and graphs the best way to learn is by doing rather than moving on to SQL as soon as you finish Excel take the time to practice it what I would do is take my bank statement and try to do some analysis

you can try answering questions like what does the trend of my spending look like and this would require taking all your spending and putting it on a line graph where you can see the trend of the increases and decreases of spending over time and then you can try bucketing your spending into categories like entertainment food and chart those categories over time to see how you're spending changes by category over time and this is the type of analysis that a data analyst would do next is seel seel is fundamental to be a data analyst if you

have a technical assessment for your data analyst job it will 100% be in SQL data is stored in databases and SQL is a language that you use to talk to databases to get the information that you need SQL is a more powerful tool than Excel because it allows you to work with really large data set and also be able to combine them to easily create different analysis you only need to be an intermediate level SQL user note I didn't say Advanced and that includes functions like select wear Group by having joins and window functions some

websites I personally use to learn SQL are data Camp Udi LinkedIn learning data Camp was extremely useful because it allowed me to interactively learn SQL handson without having to download anything as well as LinkedIn learning if you are in the US a lot of public libraries actually offer a free subscription so I was able to do a lot of my learning for free through Linkedin learning and lastly don't forget YouTube because there's a lot of really good free tutorials on YouTube that you should use as well next we move on to Tableau now any bi

visualization tool can be used in place of Tableau such as powerbi or looker or quick ey but I personally would learn Tableau because it is the most commonly used tool that you'll see on job listings also from my experience when you start learning just one bi tool you know about 80% of others so it's really not as important which one you pick here so what should you know in Tau you should be about an intermediate user that knows how to connect to data add multiple data sources as well as creating visualizations with filters will get

you pretty far there's also a free version of Tableau that you can download and start practicing and you can even take the same bank statement data that you had earlier and use that to create some of the same visualizations to get practice month four is projects this is a step that I wouldn't skip because without any data work experience I don't have anything to show recruiters that I know how to do data analysis so knowing that the purpose of these project projects is to use on my resume and interviews I would strategically use them to

make myself stand out here are three tips for your projects tip one I'd create three to four projects that shows a combination of my skills so I wouldn't create a project in just Excel and a project in just SQL I would do a combination of Excel and SQL or SQL in Tableau and this shows the recruiter that I know which tools to use to solve which problems tip number two I create projects that have an analysis that solves a problem and tells a story data analysts always start their process first with the problem and it's

no different for a project a common mistake is to start with the data set first with no plan and then work aimlessly without knowing what it is that you're going to do it's like when I'm looking at the bank statement data and without a problem statement I would just take it and create all sorts of fancy graphs that look really good but don't mean anything it's only when I have the problem statement of what does a trend of my spending look like that I actually have a direction and can sit down and think about well

how would I best show this through a visualization and tell a story tip number three use free resources for data such as kaggle Reddit data.gov and even corser does have guided projects that you can pay for months 5 through 6 is the job application process I would prepare for interviews by updating my resume my LinkedIn and applying for data analyst jobs and I do have a video on how to create a data analyst resume with actionable tips which I'll leave up there for you to watch while applying for jobs I would start practicing technical questions

pretty much every single data analyst job that I applied to has required a SQL technical assessment along with the general interview and I didn't know this and was completely unprepared but you know better so in month 5 give yourself enough time to take some technical test so that when it comes time for the actual interview you'll be ready I've personally used Le code hacker rank for SQL interview questions and they were actually pretty accurate to the ones that I gotten in real life so try and do the medium easy questions and if you can pass

those then you'll be prepared with this R map I would start and then learn not learn and then start I hope this is the video that starts you on your data analyst journey and if you're interested in learning more about the soft skills a data analyst uses watch how to get ahead of 99% of data analyst and I will see you there