In the field of data, data analysts are responsible for answering questions about business from context of data; leverage data to create new product features and tend to do more modeling and open-ended research. This article aims to provide an overview of the data analytics industry and types of data analyst jobs for both undergraduate and graduate students.
Data Analysis
To provide context for the data analytics industry, let us first uncover what is data analysis. Data analysis is the process where the analyst gathers insights from data that is used to inform better business decisions. The data analysis process typically has five different phases: 1) Choose which data to analyze, 2) Collect the data, 3) Clean the data to prepare for analysis, 3) Analyze the data, and 4) Interpret the results of the analysis.
Various forms of data analysis can exist depending on the question you are seeking to answer. These forms include descriptive analysis, diagnostic analysis, predictive analysis, and prescriptive analysis. Descriptive analysis let us know what happened. Diagnostic analysis explains why it happened. Predictive analytics creates projections about the future. Prescriptive analysis provides advice on what actions to undergo. Here is more information about these forms.
This section references information that can be found on Coursera.
While any major can pursue a career in data analytics by acquiring relevant skills and experience, data analysts typically acquire a bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, math, data science, data analytics, or related fields. Aside from a formal degree program, data analytics skills can be gained via certifications such as the Certified Analytics Professional and Cloudera Certified Associate Data Analyst.
As a data analyst, your responsibilities may consist of the following:
- Identify data analytics problems that present the greatest opportunities to your organization
- Determine correct data sets and variables
- Collect large sets of structured and unstructured data from different sources
- Clean and validate data to ensure it is accurate, complete, and uniform
- Carefully plan and apply models and algorithms to obtain stores of big data
- Analyze data to identify patterns and trends
- Interpret data to uncover solutions and opportunities
- Communicate findings to stakeholders using visuals and other methods
Most data analyst jobs require relevant professional experience which can be acquired through internships, capstone projects, and fellowships that entail transferrable skills and technical skills employers in the field are looking for.
How might you communicate the value of your skills and experience to employers?
- Build a portfolio that demonstrates your skills.
- Create a Github account.
- Practice presenting your findings.
General Types of Data Analyst Jobs
Medical and health care analyst
Use data analytics to improve health care outcomes. Acquire, combine, and evaluate data from various sources to contribute to better patient care, streamlined health care processes, and assessed health care institutions. Primarily work on the business side of medicine. Here is more information about this career path.
Market and research analyst
Assist companies with searching for and delivering data-informed insights about prospective markets, competitors, and customer behavior to help companies develop and maintain market competitiveness. You can find more information about this career here.
Business analyst
Utilize data to provide businesses and other organizations with insights and recommendations about changes in business, including IT processes, organizational structure, and staff development. You can learn more about this type of career here.
Business intelligence analyst
Gather, clean, and analyze key business data and other information on revenue, sales, markets, and customer engagement to help organizations make more informed business decisions. Here is further information about this analyst career.
Operations research analyst
Use mathematics and logic to assist organizations in making sound decisions and solving problems. May be involved in many aspects of the organization such as resource allocation, production development, supple chain management, and price setting. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has additional information about this role here.
Intelligence analyst
Collect and analyze or evaluate information from various sources like law enforcement databases, surveillance, intelligence networks, and geographic information systems. Make use of intelligence data to forecast organized crime activities. See more about this career on O*NET.
According to O*Net and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), here are additional job roles that relate or over lap with data analytics.
- Bioinformatics
- Bioinformatics Technician
- Business
- Management Analyst
- Data
- Database Architect
- Data Mining Specialist
- Data Warehousing Specialist
- Data Science
- Data Scientist
- Sports Statistical Analyst
- Statistician
- Statistical Assistant
- Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering Technologist and Technicians
- Environment
- Quality Control Analyst
- Finance
- Credit Analyst
- Financial Analyst
- Financial Quantitative Analyst
- Financial and Investment Analyst
- Fraud Examiner, Investigator and Analyst
- Healthcare
- Clinical Data Manager
- Marketing
- Marketing Specialist
- Media
- News Analyst, Reporter and Journalist
- Technology
- Computer and Information Research Scientist
- Computer Systems Analyst
- Digital Forensics Analyst
- Information Security Analyst
In your job search, consider the skills and experiences you are building outside of your degree program. It may be encouraging to know that you do not have to have a industry-specific major (i.e., computer science, math, data science, data analytics, etc.). to demonstrate you have the experiences and skills to be qualified for the job. You can meet with a career advisor in an appointment to discuss how to communicate your skills and experiences in a way that demonstrates how you add value to the employer. Some strategies for this include tailoring your resume to align with job description’s key language and telling your story in a way that highlights your knowledge of the company, job, and team.
Take this list of alumni and the majors they completed for example. They encompass a variety of majors and all demonstrated qualifications to pursue a job related to data analytics.
Job Titles
Majors
Handshake is a great starting place to research and explore job titles and industries within the data analytics field that you are interested in. You can access Handshake by using your Duke credentials. In the “Jobs” tab, use key words (i.e., job titles) and filters to search for data analyst job opportunities. It is recommended you change up the key words and filters you are using to achieve variability in your search results.
