Ivy Sep 13, 2014 No Comments
So you have completed your analytics training and are pitching for a job. Or you may have decided for a lateral shift in your analytics career and are looking for an analytics role that excites you. Whatever be, you need to get your portfolio in shape if you want to land a great job.
Select your Project/s wisely
As a student, you will be including your project in your application. Here is where you can get a jumpstart on others by selecting a project that is of ‘hot’ relevance in the current analytics landscape. How do you go about it? First, by discussing this with your peers and trainers. Second, looking up on what is trending in analytics in your location, i.e. what kind of projects are in demand, what job roles are being sought by top notch analytics firms or what solutions are offered by analytics firms in your city.
As a mid-career professional, you will have worked on several projects. However, if you are looking to make a career transition as most of us do, look for opportunities to work on projects that showcase your skill sets best and give you as much experience as possible. Make sure to include this in your public profile, and who knows, you may be cherry picked for a cream position!
Gather experience
Experience is what matters in most jobs, and more so in analytics. Work on as many projects possible, leveraging skills and software applications that extend your knowhow to the fullest possible. Which means, don’t limit yourself to Advanced Excel but also work with Toolpak, Data Mining and Geographic heat-map add-ins, to name a few. If you have learned SPSS in your training course, do not hesitate to work as an intern or trainee at even a small analytics start-up if it means working on R or an in-house product leveraging Statistica.
Procure certification
Today the job hiring scenario is not confined to a degree and analytics training, but also the number of certifications procured amongst other add-on qualifications. With analytics applications extending across almost all industries, domain knowledge of say healthcare, marketing, retail, insurance or finance are always preferred. So regardless of your degree major, you can always go for short-term certificate or diploma programmes that enhance your knowledge base. Additionally, the easy access to online certification in IT skills make it possible for the busy student or professional to gather know-how in relevant areas.
Learn Programmes
Analytics solutions in the market often require some basic knowledge of IT systems. So knowledge of say database systems, cloud technologies or social media apps helps to improve your portfolio.
Moreover as the analytics industry matures fast in India with homegrown products and offerings making a mark in the global market, the student or professional who learns the commonly applied programmes and database systems can surely land a great job that matches their salaries to their knowledge base.
Manage your public profile
In today’s competitive scenario, the difference between a good, great and cream job is often about how you project yourself in the public domain. Creating a good profile that showcases all your pluses is as important as your activity. Your professional networking in say Linked In should ideally be separate from your personal / social activity on Facebook. Nevertheless, till you make your mark, it is important to engage in social platforms responsibly.
Develop your soft skills
Soft skills have a very significant role in the analytics hiring. Working upon them is a continuous process that helps you land the right job. Learn more about the soft skills you need to crack an anlaytics interview from a previous IVY blog.
Brush up your presentation savvy
It is amazing how excellent students too sometimes do not make it up the career ladder as they should, given the explosion of opportunities. According to me, it is as much about the soft skills as the presentation ability.
All analytics roles, whether a developer in a niche analytics firm, an entry level business analyst, an in-house data analyst in a healthcare provider company or a risk professional; call for high skills in presentation. An analytics professional may have developed a high-end analytics solution but may fail to convince his management or say, even an angel investor of the efficacy of the product because of his poor presentation. Even within a firm, big or small, presentation and communication savvy are very important. The procurement of a project or landing of a tender, depends largely on the presentation savvy of the firm or individual. So this is an area that needs to be fine-tuned if you want to carve a successful and lucrative career in analytics.
Bottomline – You do not need to spend on learning new skills or software. The web is an extremely resourceful place. Anyone who is willing to spend some time every day, say an hour or two, can develop any of these competencies listed above. Yes, even presentation savvy can be perfected using a You Tube video!
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