Thread by @TheOyinbooke

What Should You Learn to Become an Intermediate Data Analyst?
I will tell you and also show you how to do it
🧵🧵🧵

You will agree with me that there are lots of resources and activities out there for beginner data analyst. This in itself is a challenge for the data community.

The beginners level is saturated, we have fewer Intermediate people today and for Advance, we can almost count them

There was a 3 Senior Data Analyst job vacancies recently and some elders in the community were looking for the best fit, it was then that we realized that we don't have enough senior analyst in Nigeria that could fit more in those leadership role. Especially younger minds

This obviously is a data gap and need to be address quickly. I will be pushing some efforts in this direction in the coming weeks and it will all start from this thread.

What do we define as intermediate skill? How about Advance Skill?
Let's see how you can navigate this

As you continue to build your data analytics prowess, you will realized that at some points most of your projects are looking similar e.g. connect to Excel DataSet, or Twitter API or any other API, clean the data, then build your visualisations.

Once you have done this for ...

...at least 5 projects, you need to start expanding your horizon.

1. Consider connecting to data from more varied sources. like .txt dataset, Web scraping, databases with different scenarios.
Install database servers like MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, etc.. and upload your past...

...excel files to the databases. Learn what it takes to connect your visualisation tools to them. In some cases, the settings will be quite different from the other.
This is a major learning point as it gets you familiar with these databases.
You will also get more familiar ...

..with SQL as you get to write queries more frequently.
In reality, most organisations have at least 3 data sources.
Excel
MS SQL Server
Oracle
BigQuery
AWS Storage, etc.
Learning how to connect to varieties of data sources and demonstrating these with a project is key

For example, the video below will guide you through installing MS SQL Server on your Computer and restoring sample database to start with


I will be adding more resources and guide in this thread to help you do same for other data sources

Still on varied data sources, a less talked about source is .txt file. This dataset can be gotten from different chat activities, e.g. WhatsApp Group Chats.
The exported chat is a .txt file and it will test your data cleaning skill to get it structured.
I will do a tutorial....

On this soon, so make sure you bookmark this thread and also follow me.
Working with all these varied data sources will broaden your data cleaning skills as you will be required to do things differently for most of them.
This is an intermediate skill and experience

2. Cloud Technology
Yep, the world is now hung to the cloud, like never before, cloud is now our starting point and not the limit.
You need to be familiar with cloud Services and their data offerings
E.g. Azure storages services, Google Storage services, AWS Storage services, etc

I will also do some video tutorials on each of these in the coming weeks. So, keep in touch.
The goal is not just to tell you, but to show you and walk you through it.

You will learn a lot from cloud services, new concepts such as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, this is the basic concept

Hey, you don't need to have a job before you can learn and build these skills. This is the missing point. Some people think they need a job to learn these things meanwhile, you can simulate them for yourself and acquire the skills.
It will give you an edge over others

3. Managing Data Project
You've always been at a position where a task is assigned to you and all you have to do is get the work done according to instructions.

You don't have to wait till you get promoted to a Management role before you start exhibiting that skill.

As a matter of fact, the best way to grow to a new level is by delivering performance for level A when you are still in level A-1.
Yep, you need to start learning the soft skills like project management, high level documentation for stakeholders engagement, communication skill,..

..etc
Intermediate data analyst is beyond being sound technically, it requires some soft skills which you must start building now.

How then do you structure managing a data project?
I will do a thread on this soon.
If you google this topic, you will find some useful tips..

..now that you know what it takes, how about the opportunity?
Very easy, leverage on the community.
Come up with a project as a data project manager, make a tweet for junior data analyst to join you. Just like that, you have a data project team.

Now, do the do.

To keep this thread short, I will stop here.
The focus going forward will be sharing tailored contents that will help you move from where you are now to an intermediate level.

Let me know what other areas we need to consider
Gracias