5 skills you need to master to advance your career as a data analyst

You’ve landed a job as a data analyst, now what? Here are 5 skills that will help you in your career: 

1. Grow your technical skills

As obvious as that sounds, developing a deeper understanding of the tech stack you’re working with is the first step towards advancing your career. A good place to start would be to check if  you’re missing any of the fundamental parts of the data toolbox (you can check them out here).

2. Connect with your colleagues regularly

To help speed up your learning and grow your network, connect regularly with your teammates and other stakeholders across the organisation. Structure meetings so that everyone feels comfortable sharing their work and problem-solving when needed. If you’re one of the few data analysts on your team, aim to connect with data analysts through tech events like meetups or hackathons.

3. Develop a deep understanding of your domain/product

Make sure to attend and participate in business and product meetings. Try to develop a deeper understanding of the main challenges of the business as well as the surrounding landscape in terms of competition. 

4. Learn to identify high-quality data sources

When working on a problem, take a moment to verify the quality of the available data before delving into it. Many organizations base important metrics on data that may be noisy or outdated. The ability to identify and drive this aspect of the data analysis process is a great way to help the business make more well-informed decisions.

5. Develop your soft skills 

Data analysts need to be viewed as trusted advisors to their stakeholders in order to achieve impact. To gain that trust, data analysts need to develop their skills beyond just the technical ones and develop their communication, curiosity, empathy, listening, and presentation skills.

–  Khloud Khalid, Senior Data Analyst at Careem