A Day in the Life of a Data Analyst - Interview with Industry Experts

Questions on Your Mind

Your Curiosity led you here and that is a good sign that you have the spirit of the data benders and ninjas. Lol

Life as a Data Analyst is not always full of writing codes and building dashboards and reports. in this session, our guests itemized the following as additional skill you need to master

• Stakeholders Management: How to do engage with immediate team members to get support or resources needed to get your work done? How best should you make request from managers on your project? How do I set the right expectations for the stakeholders and how to manage such expectation? etc.  
• Communication and Presentation Skill: Dashboards and Reports are not useful on their own, how do you get to communicate your findings and recommendation to the stakeholders? Having a good communication and presentation skill is of great advantage to Data Analyst
• Curiosity: Curiosity for a Data Analyst can't kill you, it will make you better. If you are not curious, you can't get the best from any data project and you will fail to meet the expectations of the stakeholders with many questions left unanswered.
• Ownership Mindset: Most of the time, a data analyst is an experienced Individual Contributor. In Many firms in Africa, you are responsible for sourcing and cleaning data, analyzing data, reporting, implementing and monitoring the recommendation.  You will need to have ownership mentality to take up a task and do all you have to do ethically to get the work done.
• Domain Knowledge: Having an industry knowledge is yet another advantage for every data analyst. what if you are still a student or without work experience? the best approach to this is to research on the KPIs and metrics common to the industry of your interest, learn more about them and that will help you get familiar with how they perceive and measure value. This actually differ from one industry to the other.
• Business Value: Data Analysis is not about the tool, it is about Business value. always bear this in mind as you apply both your soft and technical skills on projects. Ask yourself questions like - What value is in this project? Is it the same thing the stakeholders are expecting from it? Don't work on a beautiful nonsense projects. Beautiful because it looks so good, Nonsense because it didn't end up meeting the business needs
• and many more.

Watch the Session

Assignment

1. Complete your COVID19 Dashboard Using Excel here: https://aka.ms/30DLDATDay3 
2. Share your portfolio online using hashtag #30DaysOfLearning

Additional Resources

• If you are just joining, check the onboarding homepage: https://aka.ms/30DLOnboardingRecap 
• For 30 Days Calendar, check our Landing Page: https://aka.ms/30DLDATLandingPage 
• Microsoft Learn for Students: https://aka.ms/learnstudent