What Does a Data Analyst Do?
A data analyst uses data to help organizations make sound business decisions. They look for trends, consistencies, and other markers to identify opportunities for improvement. Data analysts are knowledgeable in data processing software and business development strategies. They often collaborate with other data professionals to collect and analyze data, create reports based on their findings, and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the progress of business initiatives.
A data analyst must have excellent interpersonal skills as they work with various stakeholders to assess potential risks and offer solutions. Strong written and verbal communication skills, as well as solid mathematical skills, are essential to this position. A data analyst should have good knowledge of a variety of programming languages, such as SQL, R, or Python. They must also be proficient in statistics and statistical packages and data processing platforms. In addition to technical abilities they also need to translate business requirements into non-technical terms and vice versa.
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National Average Salary
Data analyst salaries vary by experience, industry, organization size, and geography. To explore salary ranges by local market, please visit our sister site zengig.com.
The average U.S. salary for a Data Analyst is:
$85,660
Data Analyst Job Descriptions
Example 1
We are looking for an energetic, detail-oriented Data Analyst to support our growing client base. The ideal candidate will have excellent organizational skills, work independently, learn multiple software programs, and be skilled in Microsoft Excel.
Responsibilities
- Update and maintain pricing on client websites
- Understand sales trends
- Ability to analyze marketing data
- Create templates to automate recurring tasks
- Help develop reports and analysis
- Build, maintain, and deliver professional customer service and maintain positive working relationships with our clients
Skills and qualifications
- Adept at both written and verbal communication
- Solution-oriented
- Excellent attention to detail
- Excellent time management and prioritizing skills
- Exceptional knowledge of computers and word processing software
- Must be proficient in Excel, including Excel’s data analytics tool
This is an exciting fast-growing marketing and development agency focused on our clients and our employee’s success. Our leadership prides itself on developing people in their careers to help them provide top-tier service to its clients and grow the company in a way that gives hard-working employees upward mobility in their career.
Example 2
The Data Analyst position is focused on improving company-wide effectiveness specifically in marketing effectiveness. The Data Analyst will collaborate with team members to interpret data and find opportunities for improvement in strategy and campaigns. As a Data Analyst, you will provide insight and recommendations to help us solve the complex problems that come with a fast-growing company!
Abilities and skills
- 2+ years of experience as a data analyst
- High proficiency in data extraction, manipulation, and analysis in SQL
- Ability to find correlations across various marketing channels and disparate data sets
- Strong understanding of relational database principles
- Skilled at identifying anomalies and patterns in business data
- Solid understanding of mathematical and statistical concepts
- Excellent attention to detail
- Experience in other programming languages for data manipulation such as Python is a plus
Duties
- Analyze the data flowing through the existing database and other workflow systems
- Structure and redesign the data that flows with the aim of maintaining a single source of truth for all master data and consistent reporting
- Acquire, ingest, and process data from multiple sources and systems into a data warehouse
- Collaborate with marketing teams to map data fields to hypotheses and curate, wrangle, and prepare data for use in reporting
Example 3
Provide a wide variety of administrative and staff support services to a manager or group of managers within an assigned functional area. May assist in training others. Follows established procedures to perform routine tasks and receives general guidance and direction to perform a variety of non-routine tasks with limited decision-making responsibility.
Responsibilities
- Enter/process client-specific data and portfolio holdings into firm propriety software
- Assist with an initial analysis of prospective client statements
- Create and prepare customized presentations for specific advisor and client meetings
- Print and bind client presentations
- Develop relationships with sales investment consultants
- Perform clerical and support tasks
- Maintain defined quality standards and expectations
- Some judgment is required to adapt procedures, processes, and techniques to apply to more complex assignments
- Resolves most questions and problems and refers new or unusual issues to a higher level
- Routine contact with internal and external customers is required to obtain, clarify, or provide facts and information
- May communicate information to internal or external customers to sell or service products
Qualification:
- 1-3 Years Experience – Intermediate level concepts, principles, and practices of providing administrative support
- Fundamental investment concepts, practices, and procedures used in the securities industry. Basic principles of banking, finance, and securities industry operations
- Intermediate-level terminology of financial markets and products
- Performing a range of staff and/or operational support activities for a manager or group of managers
- Answering telephones and assisting visitors. Prepare, transcribe, compose, type, editing correspondence, agendas and minutes, and other documents
- Scheduling and coordinating meetings, events, interviews, and appointments
- Preparing reports
- Gathering and analyzing basic information. Establishing and maintaining files, databases, and other records
- Performing routine analysis and calculations involved in preparing reports
- Sorting, screening, and distributing mail
- Operating standard office equipment and using required software applications
- Maintain currency in modern office management methods and techniques
- Read, comprehend, and apply business-related information
- Organize, manage, and track multiple detailed tasks and assignments with frequently changing priorities in a fast-paced work environment
- Communicate effectively, both orally and in writing
- Work collaboratively within a team environment
- Provide a high level of customer service
- Establish and maintain effective working relationships
Sample Interview Questions
- In your opinion, what are the key responsibilities of a data analyst?
- Are you familiar with any programming languages?
- What is your process like for data cleansing?
- What tools do you like to use for data analysis?
- What is data profiling?
- What is data mining?
- When you start a new project what is your process like?
- Which scripting language do you like to use the most?
- Can you tell me the difference between variance and covariance?
- What is clustering?
- What excites you most about data analysis?
- How do you keep up with data trends and advances in technology?
- Have you ever had a challenging data analytics project? If so, how did you overcome those challenges?