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5 Steps to Transition Your Career To Analytics: Step 2

by Piyanka Jain•
Intel Data Center GPU codenamed Crescent Island architectural slide showcasing Xe3P AI optimized GPU IP, up to 480GB LPDDR5x memory capacity, and a 350W air-cooled PCIe form factor.
Intel’s Crescent Island GPU targets AI inference economics by prioritizing massive LPDDR5x memory capacity over costly HBM architectures within a practical 350W air-cooled design.

These lessons are part of Aryngs Analytics series for individuals looking to transition their career to analytics. 

In the first step of this five-part analytics career transition series, I helped you understand the analytics landscape, match job titles to career categories, and identify jobs right for you. Now that you know your target jobs, lets dig deeper into the skills needed for these jobs and map them to your background.

Think of the job like a big Lego ship and your skills are the pieces. The more pieces from your background that fit into the ship, the better youll fit that roleand the more likely youll interview for and land the job.

Analytics job skills sought by employers can be broadly classified into seven buckets. Watch for these requirements in the job description, along with some common verbiage to describe each skill:

  1. Analytics Skills: Passion for data analysis supported by personal and professional experiences, Strong familiarity with statistical concepts
  2. Tool Skills: Comfort with Excel and other standard productivity tools, Technical skills such as SQL, Python, R/SAS/Stata a plus, Knowledge of Omniture, Google Analytics required
  3. Education: Bachelors degree in a quantitative or technical field
  4. Problem-Solving Skills: Troubleshoot and prevent technical issues, Creatively solve problems while operating in a dynamic environment
  5. Communication Skills: Immaculate written and verbal communication
  6. Functional Background: Previous work experience in performance marketing, media buying, lead generation, or related spaces
  7. Industry/Work Experience: Previous work experience in financial services, consulting or other quant/data driven fields, Up to 3 years prior work experience

Now, select a few job descriptions that interest you and create a matrix of job requirements against your background to identify the gaps. If you followed my advice from Step 1: Identify Your Ideal Analytics Job, you would likely be applying to very similar jobs with very similar requirements.

Below is the beginning of a sample job skill gap matrix. Use this as a guide to build yours. Make sure to include not only the analytics skills and tools requirement but all seven categories.

skills_gap_matrix

Its likely your own matrix will identify gaps for Analytics and Tools Skills requirements as your experience in these areas may be limited. You may already meet Education requirements, since they are often fairly broad. However, if you dont have the precise education required, you may be able to document course work youve completed and meet the requirement. Also, the education job requirement becomes less relevant as your years of experience increase. For deep dive on advanced stat skills vs. business analytics skill, check out the 80/20 rule of analytics.

Finally, I propose one other item to consider as your map your skills against job requirements. As you look to transition your job, I would highly recommend finding a job within your current organization. Doing so is typically the easiest move and gives you the best chance of a lateral move without compromising your seniority or compensation. If that is not possible, I would recommend looking for job with overlapping industry and functions. Doing so would allow you to check off the boxes for the remaining four items on the job skills list above. For example, if you are currently an IT professional at a university supporting operations, looking to transition to an analytics job, look within your current university or a role in operations in similar educational institute. Once you have 2-3 years of experience in analytics, it will be fairly easy for you to move to other industries and functions.

If your own matrix reveals more skills gaps than you expected, dont worry. Those gaps can be filled by a wide range of resources to help you prepare for your career transition. In the next blog, Ill talk about how and where to acquire new skills to transition your career to analytics based on your own skill gaps. Meanwhile, check out Aryngs comprehensive Analytics Career Transition packages which includes an analytics aptitude assessment, analytics and testing training, experience with a real-time project, mentoring sessions and optional career coaching to find and land your analytics dream job. 

Piyanka Jain, President & CEO of Aryng, Author of bestseller ‘Behind Every Good Decision’

Piyanka Jain is President and CEO of Aryng - a management consulting company focused on Analytics for business impact. As a highly regarded industry thought leader in analytics, she has been a keynote speaker at business and analytics conferences including American Marketing Association, Predictive Analytics World, GigaOm, Google Analytics User Conference.  She speaks about data driven decision making to gain competitive advantage. In 15 years as an analytics leader, she has had 180M+ demonstrated impact on business.  As a gifted problem solver, she seeks out patterns and insights to drive change in her client’s organizations and impact top levers of business.  She considers customer satisfaction, empowerment and positive engagement as the highest rewards, and dollar impact as a natural consequence of it. Her book ‘Behind Every Good Decision’ is an actionable guide for business managers on data driven decision making through business analytics.

She has two Masters degrees with thesis involving applied mathematics and statistics. A hiker, runner and yogi, she lives in Sunnyvale, California with her husband Parth. 

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