What I Am Doing to Stay Relevant as a Data Analyst | by Rashi Desai | May, 2023

How to navigate career growth in a competitive professional market

The world of technology and data is ever-growing and so is the need and demand for data professionals. Data-related jobs are at the forefront of career websites. Data Analyst is a growing career that pays well, has immense value for organizations, and promises a balanced body of work across the data lifecycle.

I started working as a healthcare data analyst about two years ago and moved my way up to be an analytics and reporting consultant, working with multiple tools and platforms that are widely used in my organization. Now, day by day, I pile up knowledge on specific products (within my company), striving to excel at it, not knowing if these tools and technologies are the ones widely used in the industry today. It also makes me wonder sometimes if my skills are still relevant and applicable if I set out to look for a new job.

As I see in my company, and hear my peers and network talk, there is a raging demand and supply of data analysts in the workforce. With the increasing influx of data analysts and similar professionals, I want to be agile and competitive (for if nothing more, to at least keep my job), and here’s what I am doing to stay relevant and be a cut above the rest.

I have made it a point not to limit myself to the day job for professional growth and development. Collaborating on projects outside my 9–5 has allowed me to work on skills outside my primary job, evolve as a professional and develop my thought process to approach a variety of problem statements.

For some, working outside your job could be a passion project or creating an opportunity, or simply broadening your network. You could , for example—

• Work on a research project and publish a paper — you could connect with a professor from a university (or your alma mater), students in grad school whom you can partner with to work on end-to-end projects with a defined outcome.
• Write about your learnings & experiences at work —basically, blog/vlog
  your journey in data. I started blogging in 2017 and that has been one of the most productive ways of staying updated with the world and get visibility.
• Be a speaker at one of the tech community events or conferences — a lot of professionals are great at technical skills but lack in communication skills. Presenting or speaking at a community event or a conference is one of the best ways to develop an understanding of the audience, making your work palatable for people with varied levels of knowledge. You can always start small and progress to talking to a larger audience. This will keep you updated and relevant for your body of work

The goal here is to enhance your portfolio with new skills and expand your network and experiences that you can leverage in the workplace.

Learning never stops, no matter how young or old you are.

I like investing my time and money in online certifications because it takes less time to develop knowledge or skills in a very specific subject area. Say, you identified Alteryx as a tool that could do wonders for you and your team and you want to have working knowledge, where would you go? The internet is the backbone of society today and an online certification can serve just well to do the job.

I recently have encountered a plethora of Tier-1 colleges offering online MicroMasters programs where you study for a year or less, at your own pace, and earn a MicroMasters degree from a reputed school that opens doors to the school’s network, study materials, and professors.

The goal here is to boost your productivity and growth, which then also increases your value to your employer.

You can also explore online certifications to align yourself with a job position you aspire or to get that promotion long waiting.

Consulting is one of the things I love spending time on — creating strategies, envisioning a solution from an amorphous or large problem statement, and providing data-driven actionable insights. It’s like watching a seed you planted over the winter turn into a plant over the summer. The process takes time and patience, but the results — aaaah!

After starting my job, I’ve been fortunate to connect with the right kind of people that landed me opportunities and be able to talk to startups in the healthcare space primarily and work with them as they build the ground up. For starters, here’s how you can set up connections —

• LinkedIn is always a good idea to find startups and founders — connect with like-minded people or professionals with similar or your dream career pathway and see what they’re doing today
• Attend community events — One of the most relevant ways to expand your network and seek new opportunities
• Set up coffee chats with people who intrigue you — from Twitter, your mentors, or friends from old jobs and such conversations may end up into a consulting gig

As a consultant, you can improve a startup’s lead generation, strategy, risks and evaluate aspects as an outsider looking inside, acting as a pivot. With public visibility (like Medium blogs), you open the doors for people to find their way to you and you never know — that could start exciting conversations to work with a unicorn of tomorrow 😉

The goal here is to first, put yourself out there and connect with people with whom you can collectively grow.

Many organizations allow professionals to work on secondary projects and that is your cue to working with new people, sharing knowledge, listening to novel conversations, and trying your hands on new tools and technologies. If not, simply be open to network; sit and introduce yourself to projects across your organization that you can then benchmark for your team and introduce innovation internally.

In the past, a random Teams chat has led me to a few exceptional coffee chats and an ability to recommend data strategies to other teams — it only takes identifying people with a body of work you like at your company and a quick message/email.

The goal here is to expand your horizon and feel connected to a larger vision.

Each day, your 9–5 would follow a similar structure more or less. But what makes it exciting is getting to know people with different skill sets, responsibilities, and disciplines, and learning from that.

For me, engaging in content and conversations outside my job feeds me with learning more and new and keeping my capabilities up to date. Working through the day you’d never realize how much the world changes with new tools, technologies, thoughts, grammar of business, and more.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

1. Read blogs and newsletters: read what the world has to say. The more you read, the likely you are to remember words and ideas and phrases to apply to your next project at work. In a conversation with a startup founder, I heard him say “data professionals can only be as good as their data” and so, now, every time there are process or accuracy improvement conversations at work, I throw that around for stakeholder awareness and buy-in
2. Listen to podcasts: there might not be a lot of good data-related podcasts but there will be plenty about creating a personal brand, reinventing yourself, micro habits, and more that can shape you.
   One of the biggest takeaways I had last year from a podcast called Take A Pause (which is now a practice) — document your weeks. Today, I write down my weeks at work, small wins & highlights of the day, how I added value to my team and the organization and those small notes become extremely valuable even for your end-year review.
3. Join tech/data communities: still one of the best ways to network with people with shared interests, skills and goals.
4. Socialize with peers and connections: schedule that coffee chat with peers at work, send that cold email asking to walk you through a new tool you loved. Basically, create meaningful relationships (it’s a give & take) that can add value to your professional life in the long run

The goal here is to know and adapt to the latest and greatest in the data horizon (whatever fits your role the best) and connect with like-minded folks to learn a thing or two.

That’s it from my end on this blog. Thank you for reading! I hope you found it an interesting read. Let me know in the comments about your experience and journey in data, and what you are looking for in 2023!

If you enjoy reading stories like these, consider signing up as a Medium member from this link.

Happy Data Tenting!

Rashi is a data wiz from Chicago who loves to visualize data and create insightful stories to communicate insights. She’s a full-time healthcare data analyst and blogs about data on weekends with a good cup of coffee…

How to navigate career growth in a competitive professional market

The world of technology and data is ever-growing and so is the need and demand for data professionals. Data-related jobs are at the forefront of career websites. Data Analyst is a growing career that pays well, has immense value for organizations, and promises a balanced body of work across the data lifecycle.

I started working as a healthcare data analyst about two years ago and moved my way up to be an analytics and reporting consultant, working with multiple tools and platforms that are widely used in my organization. Now, day by day, I pile up knowledge on specific products (within my company), striving to excel at it, not knowing if these tools and technologies are the ones widely used in the industry today. It also makes me wonder sometimes if my skills are still relevant and applicable if I set out to look for a new job.

As I see in my company, and hear my peers and network talk, there is a raging demand and supply of data analysts in the workforce. With the increasing influx of data analysts and similar professionals, I want to be agile and competitive (for if nothing more, to at least keep my job), and here’s what I am doing to stay relevant and be a cut above the rest.

I have made it a point not to limit myself to the day job for professional growth and development. Collaborating on projects outside my 9–5 has allowed me to work on skills outside my primary job, evolve as a professional and develop my thought process to approach a variety of problem statements.

For some, working outside your job could be a passion project or creating an opportunity, or simply broadening your network. You could , for example—

• Work on a research project and publish a paper — you could connect with a professor from a university (or your alma mater), students in grad school whom you can partner with to work on end-to-end projects with a defined outcome.
• Write about your learnings & experiences at work —basically, blog/vlog
  your journey in data. I started blogging in 2017 and that has been one of the most productive ways of staying updated with the world and get visibility.
• Be a speaker at one of the tech community events or conferences — a lot of professionals are great at technical skills but lack in communication skills. Presenting or speaking at a community event or a conference is one of the best ways to develop an understanding of the audience, making your work palatable for people with varied levels of knowledge. You can always start small and progress to talking to a larger audience. This will keep you updated and relevant for your body of work

The goal here is to enhance your portfolio with new skills and expand your network and experiences that you can leverage in the workplace.

Learning never stops, no matter how young or old you are.

I like investing my time and money in online certifications because it takes less time to develop knowledge or skills in a very specific subject area. Say, you identified Alteryx as a tool that could do wonders for you and your team and you want to have working knowledge, where would you go? The internet is the backbone of society today and an online certification can serve just well to do the job.

I recently have encountered a plethora of Tier-1 colleges offering online MicroMasters programs where you study for a year or less, at your own pace, and earn a MicroMasters degree from a reputed school that opens doors to the school’s network, study materials, and professors.

The goal here is to boost your productivity and growth, which then also increases your value to your employer.

You can also explore online certifications to align yourself with a job position you aspire or to get that promotion long waiting.

Consulting is one of the things I love spending time on — creating strategies, envisioning a solution from an amorphous or large problem statement, and providing data-driven actionable insights. It’s like watching a seed you planted over the winter turn into a plant over the summer. The process takes time and patience, but the results — aaaah!

After starting my job, I’ve been fortunate to connect with the right kind of people that landed me opportunities and be able to talk to startups in the healthcare space primarily and work with them as they build the ground up. For starters, here’s how you can set up connections —

• LinkedIn is always a good idea to find startups and founders — connect with like-minded people or professionals with similar or your dream career pathway and see what they’re doing today
• Attend community events — One of the most relevant ways to expand your network and seek new opportunities
• Set up coffee chats with people who intrigue you — from Twitter, your mentors, or friends from old jobs and such conversations may end up into a consulting gig

As a consultant, you can improve a startup’s lead generation, strategy, risks and evaluate aspects as an outsider looking inside, acting as a pivot. With public visibility (like Medium blogs), you open the doors for people to find their way to you and you never know — that could start exciting conversations to work with a unicorn of tomorrow 😉

The goal here is to first, put yourself out there and connect with people with whom you can collectively grow.

Many organizations allow professionals to work on secondary projects and that is your cue to working with new people, sharing knowledge, listening to novel conversations, and trying your hands on new tools and technologies. If not, simply be open to network; sit and introduce yourself to projects across your organization that you can then benchmark for your team and introduce innovation internally.

In the past, a random Teams chat has led me to a few exceptional coffee chats and an ability to recommend data strategies to other teams — it only takes identifying people with a body of work you like at your company and a quick message/email.

The goal here is to expand your horizon and feel connected to a larger vision.

Each day, your 9–5 would follow a similar structure more or less. But what makes it exciting is getting to know people with different skill sets, responsibilities, and disciplines, and learning from that.

For me, engaging in content and conversations outside my job feeds me with learning more and new and keeping my capabilities up to date. Working through the day you’d never realize how much the world changes with new tools, technologies, thoughts, grammar of business, and more.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

1. Read blogs and newsletters: read what the world has to say. The more you read, the likely you are to remember words and ideas and phrases to apply to your next project at work. In a conversation with a startup founder, I heard him say “data professionals can only be as good as their data” and so, now, every time there are process or accuracy improvement conversations at work, I throw that around for stakeholder awareness and buy-in
2. Listen to podcasts: there might not be a lot of good data-related podcasts but there will be plenty about creating a personal brand, reinventing yourself, micro habits, and more that can shape you.
   One of the biggest takeaways I had last year from a podcast called Take A Pause (which is now a practice) — document your weeks. Today, I write down my weeks at work, small wins & highlights of the day, how I added value to my team and the organization and those small notes become extremely valuable even for your end-year review.
3. Join tech/data communities: still one of the best ways to network with people with shared interests, skills and goals.
4. Socialize with peers and connections: schedule that coffee chat with peers at work, send that cold email asking to walk you through a new tool you loved. Basically, create meaningful relationships (it’s a give & take) that can add value to your professional life in the long run

The goal here is to know and adapt to the latest and greatest in the data horizon (whatever fits your role the best) and connect with like-minded folks to learn a thing or two.

That’s it from my end on this blog. Thank you for reading! I hope you found it an interesting read. Let me know in the comments about your experience and journey in data, and what you are looking for in 2023!

If you enjoy reading stories like these, consider signing up as a Medium member from this link.

Happy Data Tenting!

Rashi is a data wiz from Chicago who loves to visualize data and create insightful stories to communicate insights. She’s a full-time healthcare data analyst and blogs about data on weekends with a good cup of coffee…