One of the most frustrating things can be looking for a new job. This is especially true if you are trying to break into a new field, with no idea what skills companies want in a particular field. So you are basically left to comb through job postings and try and figure out what you need to be successful. I have tried to simplify that process by looking for the most common skills mentioned in job postings, this time for a Data Analyst.

Data

The data was found using 365 job postings in the Toronto area on the website Indeed. Here are the most common skills found by searching “Data Analyst”. The largest words represent the skills found most commonly:

Word cloud of most commonly found skills in Data Analyst job listings.

Let’s get into some numbers now. Of the skills mentioned above, here are the top 5 mentioned in job postings, categorized by the type of skill:

Programming Languages: SQL (30%), Python (13%), R (7%), Java (7%), VBA (7%)

Software: Excel (44%), Access (29%), Powerpoint (18%), Word (15%), Tableau (9%)

Process: Web (15%), Agile (14%), Quality Assurance (10%), ETL (5%), Big Data (4%)

Non-Technical: Written (48%), Reports (46%), Customer (43%), Verbal (29%), Project Management (16%)

And here are all the skills, with the same grouping visualized:

Bar graph grouped by skill type showing each skill and what percentage of Data Analyst listings contained it.

Finally, here is the raw data that can be looked through for the skills mentioned in the graph above:

Skill Type of Skill % of Posts ACCESS Software 20 AGILE Process 14 AWS Software 5 AZURE Software 5 BIG DATA Process 4 C# Programming Languages 4 CLOUD Process 10 CUSTOMER Non-Technical 43 ETL Process 5 EXCEL Software 44 GOOGLE ANALYTICS Software 5 HADOOP Software 3 HTML Programming Languages 5 JAVA Programming Languages 7 JAVASCRIPT Programming Languages 6 JIRA Process 3 LINUX Software 3 MICROSOFT OFFICE Software 15 MS OFFICE Software 13 MYSQL Programming Languages 4 POWER BI Software 7 POWERPOINT Software 18 PRESENTATIONS Non-Technical 10 PROJECT MANAGEMENT Process 16 PYTHON Programming Languages 13 QUALITY ASSURANCE Process 10 R Programming Languages 7 REPORTS Non-Technical 46 SAS Software 5 SHAREPOINT Software 2 SPARK Software 3 SQL Programming Languages 30 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Non-Technical 3 TABLEAU Software 9 VBA Programming Languages 6 VERBAL Non-Technical 29 VISIO Software 4 VISUALIZATION Non-Technical 10 WEB Process 15 WORD Software 16 WRITTEN Non-Technical 48 XML Programming Languages 3

Conclusion

From the grouping results, it seems that non-technical skills are the most important for a Data Analyst. Software, programming languages, and process-related knowledge follow in order of most mentioned.

As far as non-technical skills go, being able to write reports and communicate are requirements, as they are for most analyst roles.

If there is one software to know, Excel seems to be the one. Most people have encountered this program before, but investing in a deeper knowledge could be beneficial as it is overwhelmingly the most mentioned. Because of this, it is likely to show up on any technical interview.

Programming languages are usually more flexible as the concepts are transferable. If there is one to learn for a prospective data analyst, Python looks like a solid choice.

General process skills are also good to know but don’t seem required. If the candidate has any business experience, these are probably already familiar and if not can be learned on the job in most cases.

Keep these skills in mind when preparing to apply for jobs as a Data Analyst.

Leave a comment below if you’d like me to analyze jobs in another city and/or field.

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