Guidebook for striving analysts
Part 1
Surveys
Hello, I’m Liucija, a second year Data Analyst student at Hyper Island. Together with my coursemate Beata, we have just undergone the process of finding our first internship/job as analysts. Through talking to our classmates and reflecting on our own journey, we’ve discovered that there are some misconceptions about data analyst role, required skills, and salary range among other things. The purpose of this article is to create some guidelines that will help data detective newbies to land their first internships/jobs in Sweden, faster and stress-free.
To make this happen, we started by creating a survey for analysts about their experience finding the first internship/job in Stockholm. We will discuss the results of the survey in part one of the article.
In the second part, we will share the insights from in-person interviews with six data analyst professionals. Stay tuned!
Student Survey Analysis
We’ve sent out our survey to all Hyper Island alumni, as well as fellow second year Data Analyst students who have recently found internships or jobs, and also shared it in other forums where the analysts were present. Given that we had a very specific target group in mind, we’re happy to have collected a sample of 26 responses, which still gave us many invaluable insights.
Here’s a quick overview of some basic stats of our sample group. The majority of the respondents are female, and the main age group is 30–34.
All survey participants are currently living and working in Stockholm, but we were curious to know where our respondents identified with, and the majority answered: Sweden.
One of the most interesting insights from this survey shows that half of the respondents found their first analyst internship or job position through a referral. It seems like networking and reaching out for help and guidance is a crucial part of successful job hunting.
There are no strict guidelines regarding educational level required to become employable as an analyst, so we inquired about the academic background in our survey. The responses varied, with the majority having a vocational diploma. We obviously need to take into consideration that big portion of our sample are alumni from Hyper Island, but it’s still nice to see that even without a university degree many have succeeded at becoming analysts.
Brewing a perfect hard skills potion.
To find the perfect formula to be attractive as an analyst on the Swedish job market, we asked the respondents what hard skills they possessed while applying for the first analyst internship or job. The top skills they mentioned were: Excel, BI tools, Python and SQL.
As a follow-up question, we wanted to know what were the most essential skills actually required for the job they landed. Excel is still a top hard skill to have, followed by SQL and BI tools, but it turns out that programming languages like Python and R are less in demand for entry-level jobs.
Be prepared — not sorry.
68% of respondents said that they had to complete some kind of technical test or a case study, so make sure to come prepared!
Tips from fellow analysts.
And last but not least, some tips directly from the survey for those analysts in search of internship or job:
“Be prepared for technical interviews. Do homework about companies and their industries.”
“Try to be good at at least one tool or language (Tableau or SQL) and post some projects using those tools online (some code on GitHub or Tableau public).”
“Walk the extra mile: learn hard skills by yourself, the world needs more committed and enthusiastic people. :)”
“Look for the right person you want to follow, assist, learn from and that has the job that you define as the dream job. Don’t focus on the company you want to work for.”
“Don’t be shy, make connections.”
More tips coming soon!
Continue reading the second part to find out what analyst professionals say about in-demand skills, interview preparation, salary range and more.
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Beata Wotoch & Liucija Daskute
Data Analyst Students
