Data analyst

Customer records, banking data, pricing developments... data analysts scrutinise and interpret company data to help guide strategic decision-making.

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Data analyst – tasks

Although data analysts and data scientists work in similar fields, their jobs differ. As a data analyst, you'll work less on the technical side of database systems. Instead, you'll concentrate on analysing the data itself, including:

  • Selecting and preparing data for analysis
  • Summarising results in written and visual form
  • Presenting results
  • Carrying out standard analyses and maintaining data systems

If you're looking to find a job as a data analyst, you can find out more about what they do here.


The financial and marketing sectors, along with the manufacturing industry, are the pioneers in the use of data analytic methods. But more and more business segments are recognising the potential of this technology. Meanwhile, you can also find interesting data analyst jobs in these areas:

  • Telecommunications
  • E-commerce
  • Healthcare
  • Energy supply

Fun fact

It’s not enough to just collect data, you actually have to know how to interpret it. Ever heard of survivorship bias? During the Second World War, the American air force wanted to reinforce the armour on their planes. They carefully studied all the planes that returned from their missions, which showed bullet holes on the wings, tail and the centre of the aircraft. Pretty straight forward to just reinforce those areas, right? Wrong! At least according to mathematician Abraham Wald. He rightly said that if the planes damaged in those specific areas made it back, they survived precisely because those impacts weren’t all that serious. On the contrary, he argued that all the other parts of the plane should be more heavily armoured (the front of the aircraft, the engines) because the planes hit with bullets in those places never returned. Clever!

Skills

Hard skills

  • Algorithms
  • Data quality assessment
  • Query languages
  • Use office systems
  • Statistics
  • Visual presentation techniques

Soft skills

  • Human projection
  • Self-adjustment
  • Social perception

Important skills to have as a data analyst

Working as a data analyst requires you to have some technical skills, including programming languages:

  • SQL for database queries
  • HTML for web scraping and server connections
  • Python for analyses and visualisations
  • Machine learning libraries such as PyTorch or TensorFlow

As a data analyst, you examine large amounts of data to identify meaningful patterns. This requires an enormous amount of patience and concentration. And being comfortable working with statistics is vital. This is the only way to ensure that what appear to be correlations aren't just coincidental patterns. This is a crucial skill since your analyses form the basis for important business decisions. So, it's also important to have a basic understanding of the technical and business aspects of your questions.

Data analyst – qualifications

Statistics, computer science and, depending on the specific field, basic technical and business knowledge. Working as a data analyst requires a broad spectrum of expertise. But you should be particularly proficient in working with statistics. If you want to forge a career path as a data analyst, you need to make sure you have all these skills down first. If you're studying computer science, then a focus on data science or data analytics can pay off.

For students of information systems, it's again important to focus on acquiring skills in statistics. The career path of a data analyst is also open to you if you've got a degree in business administration or engineering. In this case, you'll be able to impress recruiters with your experience in their specific business field. However, you'll still need to have programming skills.

Data analyst – salary

Demand for data analysts is increasing and this trend doesn't look like stopping. If you're currently completing your studies to become a data analyst, then you have the chances of landing a job in this field and commanding a good starting salary. The average salary of a data analyst in a junior position is £28,000. Take note: the world of data analytics is evolving rapidly. If you stay on the ball and impress your managers, you'll be sure to open up very interesting development opportunities for yourself.

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