FAQ: Increase your chance of getting a job in data analytics
This question came from a recent 1:1 session.
How do I increase my chances of getting a job in the data analytics field?
Learning the relevant skills for a job is no longer enough to get an offer. What else can you do?
Networking
Having a strong professional network can payoff during the job search in a few ways - not just referrals, but also job leads on openings you wouldn’t have otherwise heard about, and insider information on what to expect during the interview process.
But how do you build a network? I think a lot of folks assume networking is this difficult, tricky thing. But I like to look at it as building relationships (dare I suggest - friendships!) with people who have similar career goals. If you’re approaching it with a “what can I get out of this” mindset, you probably won’t be as successful as approaching it with the curiosity of wanting to meet people who you can learn from and support (and hopefully they will do the same for you).
Anyway, back to the how. Don’t overthink it.
Join Slack and Discord communities. Participate in conversations. If you interact with someone who seems interesting, ask if they’re willing to connect on LinkedIn and/or have a virtual coffee chat.
Search your university’s alumni network and reach out to people working in data or at companies you’re interested in. (No, they do not need to be from the same major as you!) Alumni love helping current students (as well as other alumni).
Attend local meetup and industry events. Don’t know of any? Check meetup.com, search LinkedIn Groups, and also look for local channels in those Slack communities I mentioned above. Or post on LinkedIn and ask your network if anyone knows of anything relevant in your city.
Request to connect with people on LinkedIn but be thoughtful about it! Don’t just spam every person with a certain job title. Look for people with similar career paths, who are doing the type of work you’d like to do in the type of industry you’d like to be in. It’s even more useful if they are in the same city or at least country as you. Personally, I like to send a note with my connection request, not just so they know I’m not spamming every Data Scientist out there but also for myself, in the future, if I need to remember how/why we connected, I go to their profile and hit “message” and usually see my note. And once we connect, I like to follow up and ask if they’d like to schedule a virtual coffee chat.
Need more help with networking? Check out this post on my blog.
Get Experience and Build a Portfolio Through Projects
Storytime: We had an open role on my team, and an internal candidate was interested and sent her resume to my boss. Even though this person had recently completed a Masters in Business Analytics, my boss felt she wouldn’t be a good candidate because we were looking for experienced candidates and there was nothing on her resume that demonstrated she had ever actually applied the necessary skills to do the job. So even when you have a fancy credential, you still need to show that you can do the work. Put together a portfolio, and also summarize those relevant projects on your resume. You’re going to have to do that anyway during interviews, you will inevitably be asked some variation of “Tell me about a time you solved a problem with data?”
Need project ideas? Here you go.
Not sure how to approach a project? Here you go.
Broaden Your Search
Are you only searching for “Data Analyst” or some other narrow job title? Only remote jobs? Only via LinkedIn?
If that’s not working, then time to broaden.
Try other sites like Otta.com or DataAnalyst.com. Set up notifications for all the job board channels in those Slack communities listed above.
Consider hybrid or in-person roles (they generally have less competition).
And search for more job titles and terms (depending on your background and what you are targeting):
Data Associate, Data Specialist
Business Intelligence, BI
Data Visualization
Reporting, Insights, Metrics, Measurement, Forecasting
Decision Science, Decision Support
Experimentation
Machine Learning
Applied Scientist or Research Scientist
Also search by skills — SQL, Python, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, dbt, statistics, predictive modeling, hypothesis testing, etc.
Automate Job Applications
This isn’t something I’ve tried personally, but I’ve heard (from anecdotal stories on the internet) that it can work to get more interviews, and more interviews means more chances for a job offer. But you can write a script to automatically apply for jobs, and then you aren’t limited by how many jobs you can manually apply for. If you want to try it out, here is a tutorial I found. (Let me know how it goes!)
Be willing to get experience in a non-data role
Lots of people working in analytics and data science didn’t start their career in that field. Mainly because those fields didn’t really exist when some of us started our careers. There were “analyst” or “statistician” roles but they weren’t nearly as common as they are today.
So where else can you start? I started my career in marketing, my boss started in accounting, and I have coworkers who started in software engineering, business development, account management, and customer success.
You can still get your hands on data in a lot of corporate roles that don’t have anything “Data” in the title. Use this to get experience and prove that you can solve problems with data and make sure that is reflected on your resume.
Plus, applying for a role as an internal candidate gives you a huge leg up over external candidates. So if you do land a role that isn’t “Data”, still network with the folks doing analytics and data science. Learn what type of work they do and what skills they look for, and also make sure they know that’s the career path you’re interested in. You’ll probably find out about any openings before external candidates.
Want to become a Data Analyst and don’t know where to get started with all of the above? Check out my Roadmap, it has a ton of links to more resources.
Otherwise, if you have a question of your own, hit reply and send me an email, or if you’d like to be anonymous, submit it here.
Read my answers to past FAQs.
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