The career opportunities in the field of data analytics or data science or other similar profiles are seeing a growth like never before. It is a great time to be alive and witness this extraordinary phenomenon where the industry is evolving so fast and the future isn’t clear but it is definitely promising. This background provides an excellent platform for young professionals to take advantage of and build careers in this exciting new field. Listed below are a few reasons why the data analyst/scientist are great prospects for young professionals graduating in a next few years.
1. Interesting Work – Data analytics is definitely not as challenging and fun as software development but it has its own set of challenges that make it very interesting work. For one, it aims to answer question related to market trends and behaviours. More advanced projects would involve learning mathematical techniques used for statistics. Apart from being interesting, one can be part of any industry since the skillset is transferrable in most cases.
2. Pays Well – Any professional in this field would testify that this profile pays well. And since, there is so much demand, this trend is not going to slow down any time soon. Most young graduates, with a technical education and some relevant industry experience (internships) can be hired as data analysts or business analysts and these jobs should pay around USD 60-70K. Of course, this number grows very generously as one gains more experience and grows in terms of designation. A middle management position would pay starting at USD 90-95K.
3. Growth Opportunities – As per recent studies, the world is only growing more curious, not less. This implies, that large companies are investing more and more to explore market trends more precisely. This has and will continue to result in development of new tools, experimental methodologies and business processes across industries. For young professionals, this implies ample opportunities to explore career options based on their industries of preference.
As lucrative and interesting the data analytics industry sounds, it can be very temperamental in its response to the market environment. Every tool in the industry is evolving constantly and coming with newer and improved solutions. This leads to very short and limited life on existing technologies. However, to be cautious, young professionals should look to build a skill set, which is conceptually complete so that skills are transferrable. There are broadly 3 areas to stress upon. These are data cleansing, data transformation & data visualisation. The industry standard tools for these are “Monarch”, ” Audit Command Language ” & “Spotfire” respectively. There are many options for these tools, however these make a good starting point.