Top Skills Every Data Analyst Need to Get a Job

Who is a Data Analyst?

To put it simply, a data analyst is someone who uses technical skills to analyze data and report insights.

On a typical day, a data analyst might use SQL skills to pull data from a company database, use programming skills to analyze that data, and then use communication skills to report their results to a larger audience.

So You Want to be a Data Analyst

Related: How To Become A Data Analyst

You’ve decided you want to be a data analyst. Or maybe your goal is to be a data scientist, but you know many entry-level jobs are analyst roles. In either case, you’re going to need to master data analyst skills to get you where you want to go.

But what are those skills? What are the things you need to know? In this article, you’ll learn the eight key skills you’ll need to get a job as a data analyst.

We’ll be focusing on skills and not on tools (like Python, R, SQL, Excel, Tableau, etc.)

1: Data Cleaning and Preparation

Research shows that data cleaning and preparation accounts for around 80% of the work of data professionals. This makes it perhaps the key skill for anyone serious about getting a job in data.

Commonly, a data analyst will need to retrieve data from one or more sources and prepare the data so it is ready for numerical and categorical analysis. Data cleaning also involves handling missing and inconsistent data that may affect your analysis.

Data cleaning isn’t always considered “sexy”, but preparing data can actually be a lot of fun when treated as a problem-solving exercise. In any case, it’s where most data projects start, so it’s a key skill you’ll need if you’re going to become a data analyst.

2: Data Analysis and Exploration

It might sound funny to list “data analysis” in a list of required data analyst skills. But analysis itself is a specific skill that needs to be mastered.

At its core, data analysis means taking a business question or need and turning it into a data question. Then, you’ll need to transform and analyze data to extract an answer to that question.

Another form of data analysis is exploration. Data exploration is looking to find interesting trends or relationships in the data that could bring value to a business.

Exploration might be guided by an original business question, but it also might be relatively unguided. By looking to find patterns and blips in the data, you may stumble across an opportunity for the business to decrease costs or increase growth!

3: Statistical Knowledge

A strong foundation in probability and statistics is an important data analyst skill. This knowledge will help guide your analysis and exploration and help you understand the data that you’re working with.

Additionally, understanding stats will help you make sure your analysis is valid and will help you avoid common fallacies and logical errors.

The exact level of statistical knowledge required will vary depending on the demands of your particular role and the data you’re working with. For example, if your company relies on probabilistic analysis, you’ll need a much more rigorous understanding of those areas than you would otherwise.

4: Creating Data Visualizations

Data visualizations make trends and patterns in data easier to understand. Humans are visual creatures, and most people aren’t going to be able to get meaningful insight by looking at a giant spreadsheet of numbers. As a data analyst, you’ll need to be able to create plots and charts to help communicate your data and findings visually.

This means creating clean, visually compelling charts that will help others understand the data. It also means avoiding things that are either difficult to interpret (like pie charts) or can be misleading (like manipulating axis values).

Visualizations can also be an important part of data exploration. Sometimes there are things that you can see visually in the data that can hide when you just look at the numbers.

5: Creating Dashboards and/or Reports

As a data analyst, you’ll need to empower others within your organization to use data to make key decisions. By building dashboards and reports, you’ll be giving others access to important data by removing technical barriers.

This might take the form of a simple chart and table with date filters, all the way up to a large dashboard containing hundreds of data points that are interactive and update automatically.

Job requirements can vary a lot from position to position, but almost every data analyst job is going to involve producing reports on your findings and/or building dashboards to showcase them.

6: Writing and Communication Skills

The ability to communicate in multiple formats is a key data analyst skill. Writing, speaking, explaining, listening— strong communication skills across all of these areas will help you succeed.

Communication is key in collaborating with your colleagues. For example, in a kickoff meeting with business stakeholders, careful listening skills are needed to understand the analyses they require. Similarly, during your project, you may need to be able to explain a complex topic to non-technical teammates.

Written communication is also incredibly important — you’ll almost certainly need to write up your analysis and recommendations.

Being clear, direct, and easily understood is a skill that will advance your career in data. It may be a “soft” skill, but don’t underestimate it — the best analytical skills in the world won’t be worth much unless you can explain what they mean and convince your colleagues to act on your findings.

 Want to Become a Data Analyst?

 In this article, we’ve covered what you need to learn to become a data analyst. If you want to learn how and build the technical skillset you need to successfully get a data analyst job, check out our interactive data analysis courses so that you can sharpen your skills.