 What's going on everybody welcome back to another video today we're going to talk about if you're really ready to start applying for that first job as a data analyst. Now I get asked this question all the time someone will send me the resume they'll send me a list of skills that they're good at and they'll say am I ready to start applying for a data analyst job at nine times out of 10 I say yes but how do I know that and why don't they know that. So in this short video I'm going to give you a small checklist of things that you should look at to see if you are ready to start applying for your very first job as a data analyst. Number one is have you watched all of the Alexi analyst videos. Now I had a subscriber reach out to me about two weeks ago and said that he had put that on his resume and got a senior level position right away. Now I can't verify if that's true but it sounds pretty true to me. All right so no number one is actually do you at least know two of the four core skills at a basic or intermediate level. Those core skills are SQL, Python, Tableau or Power BI and Excel. Now why do you only need to know two of those skills. Well most jobs don't need you to know every single one of them really well. They really might just be looking for someone who knows SQL or someone who knows Python or is really good at visualizing data in Tableau. They don't need somebody who knows every single thing and so if you're really good at SQL in Excel or Python in Excel or Tableau in Excel I really recommend knowing Excel. I think you can check this one off. Number two on our checklist is do you have a resume that is data analyst focused. So do you have your skills on there. Have you put your personal portfolio projects on your resume and do you have any certifications that you need to add to it. Now if you have number one and two checked off you were like 90% of the way there but if you don't have number two checked off I have an entire video on how you can create a data analyst resume so if you haven't done that be sure to check that one out. Now number three on our checklist is have you been preparing for interviews because once you start applying you could get an interview the next day, the next week, the next month and you need to be prepared for it. So you need to be preparing not just for the technical questions but also for the general questions. There are a few places that you can go to prepare for the technical questions. Two websites that I really like to prepare for SQL and Python technical questions are leak code and you can go to the database section for SQL and I also like Strata Scratch and I will leave links in the description for both of those. Now number four is probably my biggest piece of advice and it kind of goes against the ones that I just talked about but it's that you're never fully going to be ready and feel 100% confident in applying right you just have to go for it and I wish that I had started before I did I mean I waited probably two or maybe even three months too long before I should have been applying because once I got into those interviews and they started asking me questions and asking me if I knew this or this skill I realized that these were areas that I needed to focus in and that's what I started doing but I had waited too long or I felt like I had waited too long. I also realized that what they were looking for was usually just somebody who really knew SQL or really knew Python or really knew Excel exceptionally well and I didn't have to know every single skill and so the bar that I had set for myself was usually a lot higher than the bar that a lot of these places had really needed. I realized that a lot of these companies just wanted someone who knew how to do joins in SQL and had a good attitude and really was excited to work there that's almost all they were looking for. Honestly when you're first starting out and you're getting those entry-level jobs you're going to do a lot of learning on the job and so they don't expect you to know everything they don't expect you to come in with this wealth of knowledge and information they just kind of expect you to come in and do your best to have a good attitude and learn quickly. So if you can check out those first three I think that you are ready to start applying for your very first day of your job. I really don't see any reason to wait. I think that the experience and the information that you learn while you're actually applying is invaluable. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you like this video be sure to like and subscribe below and I'll see you in the next video.