I have been working in Analytics for more than 9 years now, and I’ve had a quite exciting and continuously growing career. It’s incredible to see many and many more people being interested in the field. We ran a 5-week meetup class for women that want to switch to an analytics role in their careers. I found that similar questions kept coming:

Can I do it if I haven’t studied something relevant?
What are the skills that I need to learn?
What are the tools you are using?
Should I apply for small, medium or large companies for junior roles?
WHERE DO I EVEN START?

It’s a lot; thinking of switching your career to something different can be overwhelming. There is a lot of information out there, some relevant to you, some not. How can you know?

My journey

All I will describe is my own journey and experience from sharing with other people in the field. I worked for Meta for 5,5 years as a Data Engineer and eventually moved to a Manager role, and before that, I worked as a Business Intelligence Analyst & a BI Consultant.

I studied Mechanical Engineering and always loved Maths. I wanted to become a Maths teacher as a kid, but my grades were high, so I decided to follow engineering. I never enjoyed it much, to be honest, and at the end of my studies was looking for something different. I graduated during a significant economic crisis in Greece (2012), so not many jobs were in the market at the time. I did some student jobs in parallel with my studies and then started a PhD. That’s when I fell in love with data patterns. I found fascinating the exploration of topics, behaviors through data. I started learning things on my own at the time, Python mainly. I remember it was incredibly frustrating, and I was losing hope I could program. Also, I remember I could never focus on one thing (my PhD). I had ten different ideas always running in my head, which would lead to ten more of them. Like a butterfly, my mind would get distracted with every flower it would see. To the point where I had completely lost track of what I was doing and trying to solve.

Note: PhD need lots of discipline and mentorship. I realised I am a person that likes to multitask. It could be my side project, but not my main. I also realised that following an academic career might be a very long journey, which discouraged me from the path I’d taken.

Anyhow, 2.5 years went by. I wrote papers, went to conferences, learned lots of research, but I was still not progressing as I wanted to. An opportunity was then given to me for a three-month project in Berlin, where I would do analytics research for an NGO. Sounded so exciting.

I did go. And I learned so much so fast.

Lesson 1

Within three months, my coding skills improved dramatically. It makes such a difference when people around you can show you things, and you can ask questions, rather than researching aaaaaall by yourself.

I found myself liking Berlin and enjoying this new path. Having colleagues, a job, seeing things moving a bit faster. I decided to try and find a job and extend my trip there if possible.

I applied to Junior Analyst/Junior BI Analyst roles, with these 3-month experience being the only work experience I had.

I sent many applications and got accepted to have interviews with 2 startups. I got the job from the first company that responded. With the second, I had one interview but already had a job offer from the previous one.

You might think this is luck, but I am a very hard-working person and learn fast. I somehow knew I wanted to go to this field and my love for Maths & patterns helped. When I got my interviews, I worked hard to learn SQL & researched a lot to understand how analytics work. Also, even if I didn’t know at the time, my experience in my PhD & studies also had helped me to approach problems the right way.

Lesson 2

I didn’t focus on the tools I knew, but I focused on my analytical skills & passion. At the time, I knew NO visualisation tool, no SQL specifics; all I had ever used was some python libraries. However, I was too excited and genuinely interested in what’s going on and how data can help make decisions. I was asking the right questions just because I enjoyed the process of thinking how to answer questions with data.

Product Understanding is one of my strengths. And it might not be yours necessarily. But you do need to develop this skill if you were to start an analytics career. And this is one of the skills that will help you move forward.

How do you think of a product? And how can data help you with it.

Tools/Technologies

Where do you start from? What do you need to learn?

SQL

My biggest advice here is to learn SQL. It’s extremely in high demand. And it’s easy. Easier than Python & R, and you will need it in so many analytics positions.

One way to start with is w3schools.

You can always download some public datasets and play with them. There are also online editors where you could explore playing with data

Visualisation

There are tons of visualisation tools out there, and for a junior role, you cannot be expected to know many of these tools. But there are lots of free trials where you could download the tools and play around.

The most popular I have seen out there are: PowerBI, Tableau, Looker.

Tableau has great tutorials, and you can play around with the online version and post in the online community. Watch how they create visualisations and also get inspired from my favourite visualisation legend.

Build your analytical intuition

I don’t have any recommendation here for online links, but research online and understand data, patterns & how they can help you in different scenarios. If you are already working for a company, understand how data helps take day to day decisions. Incorporate these ideas into your thought process.

Can I do it if I haven’t studied something relevant?

YES. I know people from philosophy, music that became analysts or software engineers. It’s not an easy transition, but if you like it, if you enjoy getting into the numbers, you can do it. It WILL need hard work at first, and there are many new concepts. But it is doable, and it is happening. There are more and more analytics courses out there and more and more demand.

Should I apply for small, medium or large companies for junior roles?

Medium or large companies will hire more juniors and invest more in them. That’s probably your best shot. Big startups also want passionate people. You need to convince one company with your enthusiasm, and then you are in. Once you have your first job, you can only grow.

Your network also might be full of people who can give you referrals or insights. Reach out to people and ask.

The advice also of my friend was: “Apply first to companies that you don’t wanna work for”. Have interviews with them, explore how it is, and learn from your mistakes. When you have more experience in the process, apply for the companies you want to work.

I think it’s a piece of great advice.

Another way also could be to look at your existing company for a role switch or acquire the skills you want.

My biggest advice is to try and fail. Failure is the path to second chances. Instead of thinking you failed, understand what happened and learn from it. Then ask more questions and try again. Our curious minds can always give new perspectives and approaches. Your background is not as important as your passion and thinking. Never underestimate this!

How to start a career in Analytics