The Data Point #9: Creating Your Own Analytics Experience

Whether you’re targeting your first analytics role or you’re targeting a more advanced role, experience is tough to get.

When your current job doesn’t utilize a skill stack that your desired role does use, you have to find creative ways to learn and use them.

Upskilling on the side is a must, but using the skills you’re learning in real-world scenarios is always best.

Work projects will usually stand out more than personal projects or certifications.

It will be inherently easier to implement certain skills over others in your job. However, I usually find that if you can be creative, there’s often something you can do to stand out with technical skills, even if it’s small.

While you’re learning new skills on the side, think through ways you can implement them into your current role.

In my experience during interviews, talking about how you used a technical skill practically gives you much more credibility. So whenever possible, do this.

Identify a gap and fill it.

Let me provide an example.

Before transitioning to analytics, I was a billing and collections supervisor. Part of being a team leader meant reviewing metrics with my team regularly. However, the department had no proprietary way of doing this.

So what I decided to do was build a dashboard in Excel that monitored our team KPIs. We reviewed this weekly as a team.

I eventually transitioned this dashboard to Power BI once I learned how to use it. It was simple, but it worked. Reviewing our stats and goals together helped keep my team accountable and give them visuals of where we stood.

When I interviewed for my first Business Analyst role, this dashboard example served me well.

When I interviewed for what became my second analytics role, this same example stood out to them. This is because they were wanting to transition to Power BI. At that point, I had a demonstrated history of using Tableau in my Business Analyst role. But I also had previous working experience with Power BI before I was even officially an analyst. This was the tipping point in their decision to hire me.

Be creative and go the extra mile

Sometimes developing this working experience is milking opportunities for all that they’re worth.

I’ll provide another example.

Another aspect of my role as a billing/collections supervisor was to organize inter-departmental calls with clients that owed us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This often involved showing them a breakdown of everything they owed us. Well, I didn’t just show them a simple list like most of my colleagues. I would create Excel dashboards with slicers, conditional formatting, and pretty the whole thing up. I’d make it beautiful and exploratory.

I built these using a lot of the skills I was learning on the side.

When it came time to interview for the business analyst role, not only was I able to give additional examples of KPI dashboards I’ve built, but also that I collaborated with others to make the meetings happen. And of course, that these meetings resulted in progress.

Collaboration is another huge aspect of being an analyst that I write about often. I milked that experience in my analyst interviews.

To wrap up. As you’re learning new skills that will further your career, look for ways to use them now. Be creative, push yourself, and continue exploring opportunities in your current role.

That’s it for this week friends.

See you next time ✌️

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