How do I become a Business Analytics professional?
I get this question frequently from both fresh graduates and experienced professionals.
So I thought of writing an article that would help both the fresh and experienced professionals to get into the analytics industry.
Now, let‘s dive into the approach.
There is a huge demand for Business Analytics professionals in the technology and financial services industries.
The recent Research and Markets report stated that the global big data IT spending in financial services market will grow 25.5% (CAGR) over the period 2014-2019.
As there is a huge demand for Business Analytics professionals in the technology and financial services industry, I have divided these two industries into four categories.
Choose a list of companies from any one category, I have listed only a few companies above, there are lots of companies available in each category.
Take one category and then shortlist some companies in that category. Use LinkedIn’s Advance Search feature to look for Business Analytics professionals in the companies you have chosen, and then send them a custom LinkedIn request.
Something like this:
 I’m a big data enthusiast. I’m really impressed with your background and would love to learn what drew into Big Data. I’d love to keep in touch and learn more about your work.
After they accept your request, send them a personal LinkedIn message stating that you would like to know how they got started in the field of analytics. Convey that you would like to get on a short call to  know more about their job profile.  Most of these professionals will be willing to help you. Talk to at least ten people to understand their job profile much better.
Structured thinking is the most important skill for an analytics professional to possess. Structured thinking is the process of developing a framework for an unstructured problem. Â So, you need to be able to design a process flow to complex business scenarios that you encounter in your everyday job.
The best method to develop this skill is to analyze business case studies. Business case questions improves not only your structured thinking process but also your numerical ability and speed of thought. The book Case In Point has lots of case studies, and step by step solutions to these case studies. So, go through the book Case In Point at least once.
Once you read the Case In Point book, next, read the book called Data Science for Business to develop your analytical thinking process. Data Science for business helps you to understand the underlying concepts of data science, and most importantly how to approach and be good at problem solving. The interesting thing is that the book shows you how data analytic techniques like k-means, logistic regression, linear regression are used to solve practical business problems.
Linear algebra and multivariable calculus are the foundations of data science. As a business analytics professional, you have to communicate frequently with data scientists. Data scientists are mathematical geeks, who would use terminologies like under fitting, overfitting, clustering, false positives, true negatives, etc.
