How to Get a Data Analyst Job in 2025

this was me 5 years ago I really wanted to become a data analyst so I went online and took a bunch of data analytics courses I took an Excel course

a tableau course a python course an R course and an SQL course after 3 months of Relentless course taking I finally

started applying to data analyst jobs and all I was met with was rejection so I went on the internet and searched up

how to become a data analyst in 2020 I watched dozens of YouTube videos on how to become a data analyst I bought all of these data analyst road maps and guides

and I even spent thousands of dollars on data analytics courses and boot camps and guess what still no job offers all I got were rejections and this was at a

point when I had just lost my job thanks to the covid-19 pandemic so I was in desperate need for money fast forward to today 5 years later I

have had a data analyst internship two full-time data analyst jobs a full-time data science role and also multiple freelance data analyst jobs outside of

my full-time job so what changed between me 5 years ago and me today if you're watching this video and you can relate to the 2020 version of me who had no

money and who really needed a data analyst job then here is the first thing that you should do stop watching these data analyst road map videos stop taking

analyst tutorials look I know that it can be tempting to watch these how I became a data analyst video right because you're watching another person

talk about how they've accomplished their dream it literally gives your brain a dopamine spike it makes you feel like you're taking action it makes you feel like you have a accomplish

something when in reality you haven't I used to be stuck in this cycle of watching road map video after road map video watching an endless number of

tutorials and feeling like I had accomplished something when in reality I was just getting the exact same advice from different people so I would watch a

YouTube video where someone talked about how they got their first data analyst job and that would motivate me for like 1 week after that I would search up how

to become a data analyst again and watch yet another video and all I was doing was getting the exact same advice so I felt like I was learning something new

when actually I was just repeating what I already knew look here are the skills that you need to get a data analyst job

some programming skills Excel SQL a bi tool and statistics this skill set is never going to change every every road

map video or article you watch is going to tell you the exact same thing just in different ways you might get a slightly different course recommendation or boot

camp recommendation each time but at the end of the day almost all of these learning resources will teach you the exact same thing so you just have to pick one and get started stop mindlessly

consuming YouTube video after YouTube video and instead Focus your effort into things like networking or build building projects because that's what's going to

get you hired please do not spend yet another year doing the same old as Einstein once said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and

expecting different results so now that I've hopefully convinced you to stop mindlessly consuming videos and instead go out there and build something let's

get into this video and I'm hoping that this is the last data analyst road map video that you will need okay I have divided this video into three chapters

in chapter one I will be talking about all of the technical skills needed to get a data analyst job now this will be a very quick summary and I will pair each skill with a Learning Resource so

that you know where to go and learn it this will be a very fast section I won't be going into too much detail because all of this information is readily available on the internet the internet

is literally flooded with resources on how to learn each of these these technical skills in Chapter 2 we will talk about additional steps that you can take to get hired as a data analyst this

includes things like building portfolio projects as well as building a portfolio website now in this chapter I will be drawing on my own experiences with

colleagues of mine other successful data analysts who managed to get their data analyst jobs because they did things that were unique because they stood out

from the competition each of them has a unique selling point that helped them get hired as a data analyst and I will be giving you examples of their success

stories and the things that they did to get hired and hopefully you can follow in their footsteps and do the same in chapter 3 we will talk about extra

things that you can do to get hired now most people apply to jobs on platforms like LinkedIn and indeed and they expect to hear back but that almost never

happens at least for me almost every every time I've applied to a job online I've either gotten autore rejected or ghosted but with just one or two

additional steps very small steps you can game the system and exponentially increase your chances of getting visibility and getting hired and that is

exactly what you're going to learn in Chapter 3 of this video feel free to skip to any chapter that you'd like and let's get into it okay so here are the technical skills that you must learn

learn to become a data analyst skill number one Excel you absolutely must know Excel to become a data analyst you will be analyzing data manipulating it

as well as presenting to stakeholders in Excel now you need to have at least an inmediate knowledge of excel which means that you need to know how to create a

pivot table build visualizations and charts use formulas as well as functions like vlookups and index match to get to this intermediate level of excel

knowledge it will take you about 2 weeks to 1 month and I recommend taking this 2hour free course by free code Camp to learn Excel for data analytics you can find a link to this course in my

description after learning Excel you need to learn SQL SQL stands for structured query language now most companies store their data in databases

and as a data analyst you have to go in extract this data analyze it and use it to deliver some kind of insight for example let's say you're working as a

data analyst in Spotify and the company wants to know how many customers it has served in the past year you would write an SQL query that looks like this to

answer that question now to learn SQL I recommend taking this course called SQL for data analytics this is a 4-Hour long course that will teach you all the SQL

that you need to become a data analyst the next concept conep that you need to learn is statistics statistics will give you a better understanding of your data set and it helps you deliver insights

that are as accurate as possible as a data analyst you need to learn two types of Statistics descriptive statistics and inferential statistics what is

descriptive statistics descriptive statistics basically describes your data set it tells you things like the mean median mode and variance of your data

set an example of this could be on average how many viewers does Natasha's YouTube channel get on a monthly basis this question can be answered using

descriptive statistics on the other hand inferential statistics is used to make inferences about a larger data set using

a smaller group of data for example let's say I have 20,000 subscribers on YouTube if I were to take 10 subscribers and ask them do you prefer thumbnail a

or thumbnail B I could use their response to make an inference about my entire subscriber base now to learn descriptive statistics I recommend

taking this course on Udacity and to learn inferential statistics I recommend taking this one they're both completely free and you can find a link to them in my description the fourth thing that you

need to learn is a bi tool a bi tool essentially lets you convert raw data which looks like this into some kind of meaningful insight into a report or a

dashboard that looks like this you can learn one of these two bi tools Tableau or powerbi these are the two most popular bi tools in the market you can

just pick one and start learning I initially learned Tableau but my current team uses powerbi so I've had to learn powerbi along the way I want to say that

it's going to be really easy to learn a bi tool once you already have skills like Excel and ql because the underlying concepts related to data aggregation and

manipulation will be very similar it will take you about one month to get a strong grasp of a bi tool like Tableau or powerbi I've linked courses to both

Tableau and powerbi in my description you can just pick one and get started the fifth thing that you need to learn is programming now I only want you to learn programming if you are done with

all of the things I mentioned earlier in this video learning Excel SQL a bi tool and statistics once you're done learning all of these skills if you feel like you

have more time if you want to upscale and be able to get roles that pay better then you can learn programming the thing is SQL and Excel after a certain point

cannot handle complex logic and certain aggregations and that is where programming skills come in you have two options you can learn either python or R and I recommend learning python because

it's a lot easier and also because it is a lot more in demand than R right now remember this is only after you have learned the core data analytics skill

set okay so to Learn Python I suggest taking this course by free code camp this is a 4-Hour long course that will teach you everything you need to know about python for data analytics and that

is it that is all of the technical skill that you need to become a data analyst in 2025 now after you've learned all of these technical skills after you've taken all of the courses that I've

mentioned in this video stop do not take even more online courses do not fall into this endless trap of taking tutorial after tutorial instead you need

to move on you need to start building data analytics projects chapter 2 data analytics projects remember how I told you that back in 20120 I kept applying

to data analyst jobs and I kept getting ghosted and rejected well the biggest change I made since then is I build data analyst projects and right now I am

going to show you the one data analytics project that helped me get my first data analyst job I was watching a movie one day and in the movie I heard about

something called the Beckle test the Beckle test is basically a way to test whether a movie has enough women represented in it to pass the Beckle test a movie needs to have at least two

women the women need to talk to each each other and they need to talk to each other about something other than a man now I watch a lot of movies and I

thought to myself surely every movie should pass the Beckle test right the bar is so low the criteria to pass the beal test is just having two women talk

to each other in the movie so I went out and decided to analyze this data myself I went to the internet I did some web scraping and I collected movie data it's

titled description genre cast and ratings and then I analyzed it and I realized surprisingly a lot of movies

did not pass the Beckle test and even more surprisingly movies that did pass the Beckle test performed worse than movies that didn't does this mean that

movies with more women in them perform worse this was a very interesting piece of analysis I wrote an entire article about this project and I posted it

online I also created a portfolio website and I put this article on my portfolio website when I got my first data analyst interview the interviewer

was very interested in this project they asked me a lot of questions like how did you get the idea for this project tell me some of your findings where did you

collect the data from we had a great chat and by the end of that interview I was hired so what does all of this mean for you you already know that in order

to become a data analyst you need to create portfolio projects but not every project is going to get you a job you need to create a project that is unique that is out of the box something that

helps you stand out from other applicants how do you do this let me give you some examples example one I have a colleague who built a data analytics dashboard to track his own

finances he built this dashboard so that he could visualize his daily spending Behavior and make sure that he wasn't overspending in certain areas of his life when he went for a data analytics

interview the interviewer was immediately impressed when they saw this project because to them it meant that he was interested in using data analytics

outside of his full-time job that he was able to use his data analytics skills his programming skills and his dashboarding skills to solve an actual problem in his life and because they

were so impressed by this project they decided to hire him example two I know someone who built a trading bot as a personal project this bot would predict

where they should invest their money in and although it didn't perform well it didn't beat the market and it performed pretty badly this person still got hired because of that project because they

built something cool in their free time using their programming and dashboarding skills now these are all people who I know and who I've worked with in in real

life they managed to get these jobs with zero experience just because of the cool projects that they created and showcased on their resume chapter three visibility

now let's say 6 months have passed let's fast forward you have learned all of the technical skill and you have built a bunch of cool data analytics projects

how do you go from there to then being able to land your first data analyst job the key is visibility you have to promote your work and you have to make

sure that other people know you exist let's go back to my gender diversity project after creating this project I didn't just let it sit in a GitHub

repository I wrote an entire article about this project and I promoted it on LinkedIn other people saw this project they commented on it and other data

analysts engaged with my work I didn't know any of these people in real life and I would not have been able to build up this network of data analysts if not

for platforms like LinkedIn and medium but because I was able to Showcase my work on the internet and because I was able to promote it I managed to build this community of other data analysts

and eventually as people started to share my work employers began to see some of my projects and they started to hire me for both full-time and freelance

data analy positions so how do you do the same thing how do you start getting these job offers here's what I want you to do after watching this video step one

build a portfolio website a portfolio website is one place where an employer can just see everything that there is to know about you so a person just needs to

click on your portfolio website and they can look at your bio your education history all of the projects that you have worked on as well as how to get in touch with you for more information this

is my portfolio website this is the portfolio website that got me my first job back in 2020 it's really simple it just has a simple Bio Section a section

showcasing all of my projects as well as links to my GitHub repository links to some dashboards and finally there's an education section and a contact Section

so that people can reach out to me for projects or for work inquiries so you've got to build a portfolio website that showcases all of your projects and all of your work in a single place so that

an employer can just come to your website and they'll be able to see everything that you have worked on how do you build your own portfolio website well I have an entire video tutorial

that teaches you how to build a portfolio website from scratch you can find the tutorial on my channel it is titled how to build a data science portfolio website with Chad GPT by the

end of the 40-minute video you will have an entire data analyst portfolio website that looks exactly like the one I'm showing you on screen here step two is

to promote your work after you've built your portfolio website you need to promote it everywhere write articles on medium about it share a link to it on

LinkedIn make sure that many people see your projects as well as your portfolio website because the more visibility you get the more likely it is that the right

person that an employer is going to see your work and the more likely it is that you will get hired remember success is about being at the right place at the

right time when you keep promoting your work you keep building projects and promoting it online eventually the right person is going to see it it's just going to click and an employer is going

to think hey that project looks really good I think we should get this person to build something similar for our company and that has happened to me multiple times before that's how I got

many of my freelance jobs and what once you get your first job even if it doesn't pay very well if you do a really good job this employer is going to trust you and they're going to hire you for

all their future work and better yet they're going to recommend you to other employers and they're going to give you referrals and from there you will have

this network of employers all of whom will be willing to hire you for their data analytics projects and that is how you build success you build Success

Through creating visibility and then doing a really good job after you get your first role and after that getting multiple recommendations and referrals

so that many more people hire you step three full-time job applications now after all of this you will have all of the technical skills needed to become a data analyst you would have built a

bunch of cool projects you have a nice portfolio website and you probably even have a network of other data analysts along with maybe even a few freelance

data analyst jobs now how do you go from this to being able to get your first full-time data analyst job this is when you need to start applying to job

postings on platforms like LinkedIn and indeed and here's what you need to include on your resume before you apply links to your projects links to your portfolio website everything that you've

been working on your education history as well as online courses that you've taken now even after doing all of this you will probably still get Auto

rejected and ghosted from a majority of jobs that you apply to and that is just because of ATS systems and partially because the hiring process is kind of

broken and this has happened to me many times before so here's what you need to do to circumvent this and increase your chances of getting a full-time job you

have to email recruiters or reach out to them directly so first find a job that you're interested in that you feel like you're qualified for and apply to the job directly after applying find the

recruiter behind that job posting or find a recruiter at that company and send them an email here's the template that usually works for me this is a

short concise message explaining to the recruiter what your qualifications are and what position you're interested in this makes it very easy for them to forward this message to the right

department and to speed things up now the reason you have to do this is because most of the time when you directly apply to a job you're probably going to get Auto rejected by their ATS

system for like no reason all your resume is going to get lost in a pile of hundreds of other applicants and sending an email to a recruiter at least puts

you up there in terms of visibility and it helps you get your first interview for me this is something that has worked in the past every time I've emailed recruiters I've had a much higher chance

of success as compared to just directly cold applying to the position okay I know that there was a lot of information so I am going to summarize everything that we just learned in this video step

one you need to learn all of the technical skills needed to become a data analyst which includes Excel statistics SQL programming and a bi tool step two

you need to build portfolio projects step three you need to build a portfolio web website to Showcase these projects step four you can start applying to jobs

and step five reach out to recruiters to improve your chances of getting hired okay I want to take a step back and acknowledge that this is a lot it is so

much to even learn the technical skills needed to become a data analyst and on top of that you need to build projects create a portfolio website Network reach

out to recruiters promote your work this is is so much and even after doing all of this you might still not get a data

analyst job that's just reality this was my reality in 2020 and it was an incredibly frustrating time for me and that's why I've listed everything that's

worked for me in this video everything that has helped me get out of that position and actually get my first job and I hope that the same thing happens for you I know that the job market isn't

great right now but I hope that everything that I've mentioned in this video helps you get your first data analyst job okay that's all for this video thank you so much for watching I

hope it added some kind of value to your data analyst journey I really hope you get that job soon if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my

channel and I will see you in the next one bye