3 Steps to Getting a Job in Data with Zero Experience

Practical suggestions that will help you start an analytics career

One of my most popular Medium articles is about how to get into data and analytics without a STEM degree. Since I wrote that piece, I’ve had several individuals reach out to me via Linkedin to tell me how they were able to land their first analytics job by following some of my advice.

It’s been a few years since I wrote that article, so I’m writing this simpler version updated for 2022.

My hope is that it will help a few more of you to begin your analytics journey.

Step 1 — Build out a written portfolio.

Build out an array of blogs/documents/published papers that represent your data skills. Each piece should clearly explain a problem you set out to solve and the data skills you used to solve it — visualizations/algorithms/analysis. Put them all in one place (LinkedIn or Medium or website). Represent these on your LinkedIn page and share them with your network. Since you don’t have “business” experience — these pieces will be your main way of explaining to the world what you can do and how adept your skills are.

For these documents, choose problems that are relevant to business. Some examples include: analyzing marketing campaign performance, forecasting revenue, predicting likelihood to perform an action (purchase, convert, open, view), creating an executive…