Are Hard Skills All That You Need to Become a Data Analyst?
While all quick hacks out there in how to be a Data Analyst would tell you what kind of SQL language, statistical methods, and data visualization you need to know and familiarize yourself with, this one won’t. Your hard skills expertise won’t get you far without having the necessary soft skills and emotional intelligence needed to become one of the best Data Analysts out there.
As a fresh Computer Science graduate with zero working experience, I embarked on my real-life journey as a working adult in Tokopedia, one of the biggest and leading e-commerce(s) in Indonesia. Being equipped with a bunch of technical skills, I then realize how much technical skills matter less than to be able to communicate properly and have the willingness to improve yourself.
Here are 5 key points to keep in mind.
Keep your curiosity alive
One of data analysts’ main jobs is certainly to translate data into something understandable and useful to use in data-driven decision making. Now, if you want to be able to give various insights and creative suggestions, you will need to know what is going on in the current market and understand how the business works, from a holistic point of view.
This requires constant learning; even when you feel like you’re already familiar with a certain topic, you don’t. There are always new things to learn. Be it knowing about the other departments’ projects and way of work, or as simple as how your business partner views a certain situation. Their opinion might be contrastingly different from yours.
As what my lead would always tell me,
Sky is the limit.
An analyst who’s eager to keep an open mind and listen will be able to gain an understanding of customers’ interests and their various opinions towards the current business. Your curiosity and willingness to learn will allow you to see every little opportunity to learn, in any shape or form that will bring you far.
Adaptability is your survival key
The world is ever-changing, there are pretty much new products or competitors out there now and then. The consumer behavior patterns are shifting, ways to create a personalized campaign for consumers need to follow the new trends that keep coming in at a very rapid pace. Like how the music industry now uses the current hottest social media platform, Tik Tok, to show music teasers instead of the ‘old-fashioned’ YouTube.
Hence, having the ability to shift our perspective and point-of-view will allow us to be able to perceive different insights and generate new ideas that apply to the data on our hands. After all, data is just data until we give meaning to it.
Using the right words
When your business partner approached you with a hypothesis that he/she wants to prove with data. As an analyst, you’re the one who knows what kind of data is available and what is possible. Your role would be to reciprocate their ideas with your opinion of why this hypothesis of theirs is, in this example, not possible to prove. This might be caused by missing foreign keys in the database structure or the data are not correlated.
You know you understand these technicalities perfectly, but if you communicate with them explaining the flawed database structure, they are unlikely to understand what you are saying.
Hence, an analyst’s work does not solely rely on pulling data and visualizing them, it goes beyond being able to negotiate and influence our business partners that certain assumptions are just not reflected by the data or why their hypothesis is wrong. The right use of words is undoubtedly crucial in conveying what we are trying to deliver and suggest.
Teamwork does make the dream work
An analyst is usually a part of a team, which works collaboratively hand in hand with other departments to innovatively create new products or improve the existing ones.
One unity of a team allows splitting tasks and pitching different kinds of ideas. One analyst might be overwhelmed in dealing with a big text analysis project that is filled with junk data, but with having a team, they can share the task which lessens the burden and increases efficiency.
Basically, Captain America wouldn’t have been able to defeat Thanos on his own without the whole Avengers team coming to the rescue. I mean, he is a superhero, but even a superhero needs help.
Your problem-solving skill is very much needed
By now, you probably have it by heart the line of ‘select … from … where …’; the line all data analysts use on an everyday basis. It’s not a rare occurrence to face errors with your code or the never-ending problems to solve from your business partners due to the fast-pace growth of that startup life. In these moments, you are demanded to perform under pressure and give a solution.
Your ability to identify the problem and work on it to achieve a way out is essential in gaining trust from other people and proving your skills. Start by nailing the problems you have at hand, and try to work it up by taking new challenges. Keep in mind that something out of the box and unusual might be a great solution at times. So, go put your creative gears to work!
Every success story is a tale of constant adaptation, revision, and change. -Richard Branson
The bottom line, knowing how to perfectly reject the null hypothesis or write the most efficient queries is not enough. It would be beneficial, but that is not all that you need.
The 5 key points above take conscious effort and ongoing practice. Yet, when you get the hang of making these a habit, you will be presenting yourself in a way that will attract people to respect and trust you; which will serve your growth and credibility over time.
