Skills of a data analyst

• Asking effective questions to the stakeholder to understand the problem that I am going to solve. This helps me to understand the stakeholder's needs. Five why can get me to reach the root of the problem. Discussing with the stakeholder to understand their actual need is very important as an analyst.

• In my free time, I should know about my business, by doing some research, by looking at historical reports, or by communicating with a senior business colleague will help me while making any important business decision.

• ASKING questions like why should you need this? What should I include? Anything that should be excluded on included?

• Data preparation skills will make me a good data analyst. Preparing data in the right way is most important for an analyst to collect the right insight and communicate the right finding to the stakeholder. Combining data by using joins or append, Concatenate, Split, Transform/ Transpose existing data to give a proper shape.

• Number crunching skills are also important for an analyst. Which includes basic statistical knowledge.

• Process data by CLEANING DATA is very much important before I proceed to analyze. Cleaning data means removing duplicates, remove blanks and errors from the data set. Find out any missing values or cells.

• ADD-HOC skill = I will be provided with data for quick analysis to prepare a report. To answer a specific business question.

• STORYTELLING = To communicate a story with my data findings. Here I need to develop bi tools like tableau, power bi to prepare a visual representation of my findings. And presenting those findings in a an effective way. It is like selling insights to my audience/ stakeholders.

~BY: Satyajit Sarangi