To be a great analyst, you need, in my opinion, 3 key skill sets. You must be technically competent. You must have soft skills, and you must be commercially savvy.
This first one is, I think, self-explanatory. When reviewing the plethora of job vacancies, these are the skills that are in demand, this is the skill set that is detailed in depth; mine and analyse data, build reporting, pilot new technologies, NLP, AI, ML, DL, experienced in the application of data science, experienced in the use of advanced machine learning techniques, exceptional attention to detail, experience with one of more of the commonly used statistical languages such as R, Python or SAS.
Our universities offer degrees in data science, stats, analytics, operational research, mathematics etc. But it takes more than phenomenal technical skills to be a great analyst. Yes, technical skills are essential, without them, one can never be a great analyst, but they're only part of the story.
To be a great analyst, one also needs soft skills. Unfortunately, these are often overlooked, or included as a one liner in the Experience, Qualifications and Skills requirement; perhaps something along the lines of, "excellent verbal and written communication skills essential". For the majority of analysts (and dare I suggest, many technically focused people), soft skills are not exactly intuitive, they're not really taught in universities, well, they are, by other technical people, and herein, lies the rub.
Analysts tend to be detail oriented and logical, they're trained to focus on the data, without the messy and difficult to quantify emotional and people-centred "pink and fluffy" bits. This is fantastic when communicating with other detail oriented and logical people, but presents significant challenges when interacting with people who have other priorities; people who care deeply about how whatever is being proposed will impact how people feel; people who can't be bothered with the detail, but want to understand the big picture impact. These people tend to struggle with analysts, and analysts struggle with them.
There is one further skillset that great analysts require; they must be commercially savvy. They must be able to determine what the impact of their work is. Some problems are interesting and challenging, but the practical impact of change is negligible. If you happen to work for an organisation that is all about interesting problems, this is great. Most organisations want bang for buck, they want to see money made or saved, they want to see tangible improvement, a reduction in the time it takes to do something, without compromising quality.
In my opinion, to be great, an analyst needs 3 core skill sets. Technical skills, this way we can all rest assured that the analysis and models are robust; they need to be commercially savvy, investing in change driven by the idea will deliver material, quantifiable benefits to the organisation, and they need a suite of soft skills, to ensure that they're communicating their ideas in ways that the people they're speaking to can relate to.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, what core skill sets do you think analysts need?
Image credit: Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash
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