5 IMPORTANT SKILLS YOU NEED TO...

Have you been so curious about what skills it takes to be a data analyst? Have you ever dreamt of learning data analytics and becoming a professional data analyst?

In this article on “5 Important skills you need to become a data analyst“, insights will be given in clear terms important skills you need to become a data analyst. As you have noticed in the global workspace, there is a need to analyze and interpret data for insights into performance improvements and draw conclusions on products and services in organizations.

"Are you a job seeker and need to learn a new skill to get a job? Data analytics would not be
a bad idea. Are you a recruiter and need to look out for skills in data
analyst?.

 

Data analytics entails analyzing raw data with the aid of specialized systems and software in order to make conclusions about that information. It was the most required skill of 2019 and will remain in high demand throughout 2020 as more businesses invest in data projects and seek optimized business performance. This has made the search for knowledge about data analytics escalate as there is a huge demand for data analysts while job seekers need a good knowledge of data analytics to compete in the job market.

Here are 5 important skills you need, to become a data analyst:

1. Data Cleansing: Data cleansing is a stage in data analytics that entails the preparation of data by deleting or modifying incorrect, incomplete, irrelevant, duplicated, or improperly formatted data. As a data analyst, you must be skilled in data cleansing. You must be able to retrieve data from different sources and prepare the data readily for numerical and categorical analysis. Also, a data analyst must be able to handle missing and inconsistent data that may affect data analysis. Data cleansing skill is a very crucial skill you need to become a data analyst.

2. Data Exploration: Another important skill you need to become a professional data analyst is data exploration skills using visual analytics tools. Data exploration is the first step in data analysis where users explore a large data set and summarize the main characteristics of the data set, including its size, accuracy, initial patterns in the data and other attributes. A professional data analyst must be able to source for interesting trends or relationships in the data and search for patterns that could bring value to a business either by reducing cost or increasing growth or both.

3. Data Visualization: Data analysts must also be skilled in creating a visual context of data that will better communicate your findings. Data visualization involves transforming information into clean, compelling charts that will be easy to understand and interpret. To become a good data analyst, you must be skilled in data visualization, avoid complex representations of data that can be misleading and difficult to interpret.

4. Dashboard and Report Creation: Communication of data within an organization is important. Data analytics will be useless if it can’t be communicated to members of an organization. Creating dashboards and reports which will enable an organization to visualize their data by displaying metrics, graphs, gauges, maps, percentages and assessments of all the information that is streaming in and out of the company. Creating an interactive dashboard and report is a necessary skill for almost every data analyst as it showcases their work and professionalism.

5. Problem Solving: Data analytics is a decision simplification process for an organization and every data analyst must face some set of problems, challenges, human and machine errors on every task. You will be challenged with incomplete data, inconsistent data, tool restriction and many other problems. Ability to solve these problems is an important skill to be a data analyst

This article has been able to expose you to the skills needed to become a data analyst. Finance, Agriculture, human resource, power, marketing, and other business sectors are hiring the skill sets of data analysts. You can get a job in any industry as a data analyst. What you need next is how to use the various tools needed to become a data analyst.

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