7 Things You Need To Know About A Career In Analytics

A career in analytics is a great way to build your career and invest in your future. As the industry matures, there is more demand for skilled data professionals across domains and a lot of people are considering a shift into analytics.

If you are also considering the shift, there are a few things you need to know about a career in analytics. For this very reason, we have weekly webinars on how to build a career in analytics and how to gain essential skills.

During the course of the webinars, we have received questions about a career in analytics by many professionals seeking to change careers or add analytics skills to their resume. We collected some of the most important questions asked from these to help you get started.

1. QUANTITATIVE SKILLS ARE IMPORTANT, BUT ARE NOT A PREREQUISITE TO LEARN ANALYTICS

At the end of the day, analytics is about numbers. So, some knowledge or understanding of math and statistics will definitely help. But, it is not necessary that you must have it. Just like with everything else, you will learn it, more so with Jigsaw Academy’s courses as all of them begin with the basics before moving on to the core concepts. This way, if you have no idea about statistics and analytics before the course, by the end of it you will be able to easily handle any data set.  

2. IT DOES NOT WORK SIMILAR TO THE ‘IT’ OR OTHER INDUSTRIES IN TERMS OF PLACEMENTS, SALARIES ETC.

If you are making a career transition into analytics from a different course, one thing you will have to remember is that you are a fresher to analytics, though you have work experience in other domains/fields. Since analytics is not taught in our colleges and universities, the concept of placement does not fit in this scenario. Most companies that hire for analytics roles look for people with some level of experience in handling, managing and analysing data.

How do you leverage your skill and experience and not start at the bottom again? You can do this by getting some hands-on experience with contests, challenges, hackathons, projects etc. that let you work on live data sets. This will enable you to highlight your skills with data and offset the fact that you might not have experience in an analytics role.

The pay in analytics for freshers is better than most other fields, including IT. You can get more info on this in the Industry Report 2017.

3.  ANALYTICS IS NOT A BUBBLE, IT IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE

Every technology and trend these days seem to hit a peak before phasing out. Not so much with analytics. Though you might have been hearing about it in the last few years, it has been around for long. We’ve all been using data analysis long before the hype and buzz.

But now that it has gone mainstream, its applications have exponentially increased. From analysing market trends to predicting customer behaviour to understand machine behaviour, analytics is everywhere and is being used in every sector.

There is no question that data will drive everything we do. From using your smartphone to travelling in a cab, data is being collected everywhere and analysed to improve our life experiences.

Data is the new currency, and it is here to stay.

4. ANALYTICS IS FOR EVERYONE, IN EVERY FIELD

Iterating what was said in the previous point, data is everywhere, and it is for everyone. Whether you have a background in engineering, commerce, business, or anything else, analytics can help improve your career.

Businesses are now increasingly data driven and data dependent, with all executive decisions being based on outcomes of data analysis.

5.    A CODING OR PROGRAMMING BACKGROUND IS NOT NECESSARY TO ENTER OR SUCCEED IN ANALYTICS

Data analysis is usually done through software which require use of programming and algorithms. But just like with math and statistics, it is not imperative that you already know programming before you take up analytics.

Jigsaw Academy’s courses walk you through the different data analysis tools and software and teach from the ground up, so you need worry about not having programming knowledge or skills. The course material and Jigsaw’s pedagogy will take care of that.

6. THE KIND OF ANALYTICS TECHNIQUES USED IN DIFFERENT DOMAINS VARIES

For example, it would not be easy for you to understand the nuances of HR Analytics if you come from a background other than HR. Analytics is all about using data skills in combination with domain knowledge or expertise. If you are a marketing professional and are looking to upskill, then understanding marketing mix modelling is more relevant to you than knowing how to detect credit card fraud – a concept more relevant for a finance professional.

It is all about understanding the knowledge you have and leveraging it. If you are looking to make a complete career change into data science or data analysis, then you will gain an understanding of how to use different concepts and techniques to solve different business problems.

But if you learn to apply data science techniques in the domain of your expertise or experience, then there is no stopping you.

7. BIG DATA IS A SUBSET OF DATA ANALYTICS

Big Data Analytics is not a technology of its own, but is a section of analytics that applies to large data sets which are far bigger than conventional data sets.

While the core concepts remain the same, the techniques vary in terms of how to handle, manage, store, and analyse Big Data owing to the sheer volume of data available.

So do you need to learn Big Data techniques? That depends on a few things: are you in the IT sector? Do you have the need to store and analyse huge amounts of data? Do you have any programming experience?

Once you evaluate these, you can decide whether you should go for Big Data or Data Science or Machine Learning.

These are some of the key things you need to keep in mind before you begin your analytics journey. If you are at the brink of making your decision and need a program that is geared towards building elite technology professionals, then the Postgraduate Program in Data Science and Machine Learning is a good place to start. You don’t need any prior analytics experience to enrol for this, as everything is taught right from the basics. You can click here to register and get information about the program delivered right to your inbox.

For everything else, Jigsaw Academy is always there to help you chart your analytics career path.