18.07.2023 Today’s Insights from DataCamp: The Top 10 Data Analytics Careers
Dear Students,
While it may seem like the term “analysis” is everywhere these days, some careers focus more heavily on applying analytical skills, in analyst roles, where you could spend hours analyzing the results of data analyses. (For reference, how many of you struggle a bit with the strange, varying English pronunciations of these words?)
For ambitious international students like you, who are passionate about slicing, dicing and interpreting data, one of the 10 fastest-growing careers (per the DataCamp article below) may be a great choice. Yet applicants to such roles, including you and your friends, cannot simply expect to sit in a corner, code, create models or explore neural network design. Instead, it could be argued that your greatest value to an organization is actually to clearly communicate results/findings to a business team, as well as to make recommendations/suggestions from your data analyses which positively impact commercial outcomes. This often isn’t a straightforward or easy task, though, given the distinct “languages” technical and functional professionals may “speak.” However, as Einstein put it, “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
As a result, rising talent like you will notice a theme across this range of data-oriented careers, known for their:
- Variety of roles
- Use of technology
- Impactful work
- Career advancement, and
- Job security
What is this theme?: Such career paths all require communication skills that are just as sharp as your technical skills!
But how do “communication skills” actually impact success within an analytics position? Effective communication skills, for example, allow you to ably:
- Break down and tease out challenging business issues with colleagues, both verbally and in writing
- Develop a collaborative relationship with teammates 3,000 miles away, over video
- Write a memo clearly explaining how a technical process works, for a senior member of the Finance or Marketing team, who are less data-savvy
- Contribute to an hour-long group presentation, detailing how a data set was analyzed, while walking through related charts and graphs with the CEO
- Craft a recommendation for updating Human Resources procedures, based on comparison with previous years’ processes (to HR professionals with little data analysis background)
- Navigate delicately around a technical “star” who is brilliant, but difficult to work with, while still being efficient and effective in partnering with him/her
- Pose probing questions during a 1:1 with the Operations Director about gaps in the information provided to resolve a supply chain data issue
- Respond tactfully to an impromptu, urgent, confrontative text from another data team member
And so on…
In short, communication skills enable technical skills to add value to a business. They are the “black box” between the “tech stuff” and the professionals who need to understand, apply and take action based on the “tech stuff.” This reality is just one more reason why our Mandarin Consulting program is so valuable for ambitious international students like you who are seeking analytics (and other technical) careers.
For specific career options and their average salaries, please see below.