Interested in becoming an analyst

[Amplus]

Currently work in supply chain operations. Find it very boring and the pay is rubbish.

Noticed a lot of jobs seem to be for analyst roles. I can do vlookups, and pivot tables but the experience needed seems to be more varied that.

Any recommendations how I can get my foot in the door or courses I can take to make me more employable for analyst roles.

 

[HangTime]

There are many different types of "Analyst" - it's the word prefixing that which would give guidance as to how to get your foot in the door. What in particular are you looking for?

 

[Amplus]

Honestly I'm not sure. Supply Chain Analyst would seem the obvious route but doesn't seem to many opportunities doing that. Seen a lot of analysts require experience of VBA and especially SQA...easy / worth while to learn on a course perhaps??

 

[sigma]

Are there any projects going on in your department? Could offer some exposure.

 

[AHarvey]

What type of analyst roles are you looking at?

As mentioned there are many many types of analyst roles. I'm currently an application support analyst, working primarily with TSQL, I've seen some analyst roles advertised doing completely different things, in fact, some application support roles are also completely different.

What type of role are you doing in supply chain ops? I've done many things from running the warehouses, planning loads and routes, planning boards for stock control and orders etc. It can be quite a varied job depending on what you're doing.

If you want to look at general data analysis, you can get plenty of free SQL training, SQL manager is free I think and you can get free sample databases such as Northwind or AdventureWorks.

Learn SELECTS, TRANSACTIONS, UPDATES, DELETES, INSERTS, JOINS etc and start looking at data analyst jobs

 

[Amplus]

Thanks for the reply...currently operations in Supply Chain such as arranging transportation, clearances, daily reporting etc. Just find it boring tbh and the money not great.

I'm In terms of what type of anaylst role, I'm really not sure...what's the most in demand / easiest to get??. Been looking at general data anaylst roles, for.such a skilled job I'm shocked at how poor the pay is really. I know DATA is the big.thing at the moment so presumed pay would be higher although I'm guessing there is a job for.life if you are skilled.enough

 

[dowie]

This doesn't make much sense, you're not clear at all re: what you want to be. Any job with "analyst" in the job title?

I'm not sure that data analyst roles are badly paid, I guess that is generic enough though that it can mean anything from some monkey doing a data entry role through to someone doing a job requiring serious stats knowledge that elsewhere might be called "data scientist".

 

[Sheff]

Analyst is a fairly ubiquitous title, although if you're interested in data jobs in the public sector then the progression is generally Reporting Analyst/Information Assistant > Information Analyst > Senior Information Analyst/Data Analyst > Information Specialist/Data Scientist > Principal Information Analyst/Statistician/Consultant.

Some of these titles will mean different roles and responsibilities to different organisations which as dowie mentioned paints a confused picture, but experience with SQL, some basic stats knowledge, data visualisation and the ability to do a bit of stats programming is a good place to start.

You may have some success if you can incorporate some analytical work into your current role such as looking for trends in the figures you produce for your daily reporting, identifying weak links/improvement in the supply chain or even just presenting the data in a different way.

If you can communicate how this has successfully impacted the business then it may aid in progression internally or allow you to find a role elsewhere, for example NHS Blood and Transplant are very interested in supply chain management for obvious reasons, and have analysts working in this area.

 

[Amplus]

So management know I'm not happy but really want to keep me. I told them I want to move into the Data Analyst side so they are looking to move me to a postion in the company where I can do all the KPI reporting and forecasting and get me trained up on a program called Tableau...any one used Tableau?

 

[Amplus]

IntrestinglIn read an article online that Data Analysts and Data Scientists are two of the most required skillsets / jobs for 2019 so hoping it could be a potential lucrative career path to go down

 

[HeX]

So management know I'm not happy but really want to keep me. I told them I want to move into the Data Analyst side so they are looking to move me to a postion in the company where I can do all the KPI reporting and forecasting and get me trained up on a program called Tableau...any one used Tableau?

Tableau is basically a pretty BI front end for a SQL database.

So rather than like in the old days of Information where someone sat and churned out numbers, then processed and formatted them in Excel, then knocked up a nice spreadsheet and a graph and sent out a report (by which time the information is out of date), you instead configure a visual dashboard accessible online by multiple users that link straight to the source data which updates in real time.

We use a similar piece of software called Qlikview.

 

[wesimmo]

So management know I'm not happy but really want to keep me. I told them I want to move into the Data Analyst side so they are looking to move me to a postion in the company where I can do all the KPI reporting and forecasting and get me trained up on a program called Tableau...any one used Tableau?

I've not used it but my previous employer did, the MI guys seemed to like it.

Remember that Tableau and the like are only tools, just like being able to saw a piece of wood and hammer a nail into it doesn't make you a master carpenter, being able to use software will get you a foot in the door but won't make you an analyst.

I have 3 SQL analysts I work with now.

One is dangerously useless and will do what someone asks, exactly, even if it's the wrong thing they're asking for and doesn't do the basic sense checks and reconciliations to other data he's produced.

The second is technically the most proficient, very accurate but does what you ask, exactly.

The 3rd understands what you're trying to achieve and suggests methods or reports that will get you what you actually need using his technical knowledge as well as his experience of the data sets he has available to him and is able to link together.

 

[dowie]

IntrestinglIn read an article online that Data Analysts and Data Scientists are two of the most required skillsets / jobs for 2019 so hoping it could be a potential lucrative career path to go down

They're job titles not skillsets, if you want a lucrative career path then you'll probably have to do a bit more than just getting some experience working with tableau and SQL.

Data scientist roles can be very well paid but tend to require graduate degrees in relevant academic areas.

You could perhaps study part time?

 

[Rids]

Data scientist roles can be very well paid but tend to require graduate degrees in relevant academic areas.

I would also be concerned about missing the boat in regards to Data scientist roles, they're well paid because "Big data" is a relatively new thing and the amount of people will the skillset to effectively analyse and model it were few and far between 5 years ago which lead to high demand and a limited supply of talent. I do wonder if it will go the way of IT support, where its a race to the bottom salary wise for entry level roles with only the specialised / experienced roles commanding a high salary in the future.

 

[HangTime]

Tableau is a good tool to be trained up and get experience in, arguably more chance of 'missing the boat' compared to data science, but will give you a good grounding and is a very well used / respected tool in the traditional BI space.

I would also be concerned about missing the boat in regards to Data scientist roles, they're well paid because "Big data" is a relatively new thing and the amount of people will the skillset to effectively analyse and model it were few and far between 5 years ago which lead to high demand and a limited supply of talent. I do wonder if it will go the way of IT support, where its a race to the bottom salary wise for entry level roles with only the specialised / experienced roles commanding a high salary in the future.

I'd agree there's a risk of missing the boat if you don't get in soon, but I don't think it is quite at that point yet and in terms of a race to the bottom, that hasn't really happened yet even with 'traditional' data roles, they still pay 'decent' albeit not at the levels that data science does. MI / traditional data warehousing (non big data) pays a lot more than most generic support roles do. I guess the main risk with Data Science is that there will be a stream of graduates coming along that will grab all the entry level roles as it is the sort of thing where what people learn at uni is actually moderately relevant to the role, unlike a lot of IT qualifications.

Remember that Tableau and the like are only tools, just like being able to saw a piece of wood and hammer a nail into it doesn't make you a master carpenter, being able to use software will get you a foot in the door but won't make you an analyst.

It's a difficult one, the direction of travel with these sort of tools is to make them more and more user friendly, which on the one hand reduces the need for having lots of skills and experience to work on that area, but on the other hand means that you have to be a real specialist to set yourself out from the crowd (i.e. the tools become so easy to use that there is less need for basic technical analysts - sort of akin to what Rids was saying above).

 

[dowie]

I would also be concerned about missing the boat in regards to Data scientist roles, they're well paid because "Big data" is a relatively new thing and the amount of people will the skillset to effectively analyse and model it were few and far between 5 years ago which lead to high demand and a limited supply of talent. I do wonder if it will go the way of IT support, where its a race to the bottom salary wise for entry level roles with only the specialised / experienced roles commanding a high salary in the future.

Well it is a specialist role generally, it isn't just big data driving it, there is a lot of demand for people who understand various areas of machine learning and indeed simply people who have a solid understanding of stats and some decent programming skills. There are a whole range of jobs out there from reinforcement learning projects for the warehouses of online retailers through to pricing related projects for auctions related to online advertising, though to machine vision related projects etc..etc..

Re: "big data" there is probably a quick buck to be made by a developer who teaches him/herself Hadoop, Spark etc.. but without the theoretical background in stats/ML (generally obtained from a relevant MSc or PhD) that is probably going to lead to "data engineer" roles unless he/she is a good bull ****er. Then again the job titles aren't exactly clearly defined in this field.

I don't think it would go the way of IT support as there is a higher barrier of entry, though as with developer roles outsourcing some work to India is probably going to be an ongoing thing. We'll likely see a similar thing to quant finance roles in that various universities with start offering "data science" MSc degrees (a fair few already are), in some cases these courses might get dumbed down a bit relative to traditional MSc degrees in order to flog them to more students. I know of some people who got "financial engineering" degrees back in the day and didn't land quant roles but ended up as say business analysts in risk etc... the existence of those people doesn't stop the person with a solid background from being in demand still.

 

[FishFluff]

Data Scientist is one of those odd titles that can mean pretty much anything depending on the organisation. Ours get paid £50k+ but for that we expect them to have at minimum a degree in a maths based subject, preferably a Phd, plus several years of data modelling and analysis experience.

On the other hand I’ve seen some places that only require knowledge of SQL...