 What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another video. Today we're going to talk about how you can become a data analyst in 2022. Now that feels really weird to say 2022 because I feel like it's still like six months away, but it's already here. And so a lot of people are going to be creating new year's resolutions. They're going to be creating goals for themselves. And for a lot of people who are trying to get into data analytics, the goal for this year is to get a new job to transition or to get that first job as a data analyst. And that's what this video is all about. So I'm going to walk you through these steps that I would take if I was starting over today on exactly what things I would be focusing on and then I'll give you some rough estimates and time frames about how long you should be spending on each step so that you don't get stuck too long on one step. You can kind of push yourself to get to that next step so they can keep progressing throughout the year. Now before we jump into it, I want to give a huge shout out to the sponsor of this video and that is Coursera. Coursera is having a huge sale on their Coursera Plus and so you can get $100 off up until January 13th. And so if you plan on spending a lot of time learning those data analyst skills that we will talk about in this video, you can just get a discount on that. And so if that is something that you want, I will have a link in the description so that you can go and get that $100 discount. Without further ado, let's jump into it. And I have five points that we're going to talk about and number one is learning the right skills. Honestly, there are a lot of different things that you need to know to become a data analyst, but the hard skills, the actual skills you're going to be using to do the data analysis are super important. You kind of can't get a job as a data analyst without them. And so that's kind of the first building block which is learning the correct skills. If for whatever reason I forgot every single thing that I knew about data analysis, the number one skill that I would start learning again is SQL. SQL is such a powerful skill to have and honestly, you'll see it on just about every job description for a data analyst. If they're using some type of relational database, you know, they may not be using SQL server or my SQL, but they'd be using something else that they use SQL with. And honestly, it's just a super useful skill. You can query the data that sits in a database and you can extract it and look at it and do all sorts of things with it. And so that is the number one thing that I would look at before. If you want to dip your toes in the water before you actually go and purchase a subscription or a course to learn SQL, you can take my beginner to advanced series here on YouTube. You can just go to my page and find it. It has about 20 videos or so that takes you all the way from the very basics all the way to a little bit more of the advanced things. And you know, I just feel like it's a pretty good place to start if you've never seen SQL. The next thing that I would learn is a visualization tool like Tableau or Power BI. And honestly, that combined with SQL is kind of an unstoppable force. You can probably apply for most jobs out there with just knowing those two skills if you know them well. And so I highly recommend picking up one of those if you had to choose, you know, if you're really a Microsoft guy or girl and you really, really like that, I would go with Power BI. If you want something that I think is a little bit more universally used, I think Tableau is the way to go. I think more companies use it than Power BI or I know that more companies use it than Power BI. And so if you are looking to do one of those, I highly recommend picking up two of those. There's so many other options, but those are the main two that I would choose. Again, another self plug. I have a tutorial series for beginners. So if you want to just get a feel for it, you can go ahead and watch that as well. The third skill that I'd be focusing on is Excel. And honestly, Excel is just everywhere. It's in every domain and every job and almost everybody uses it in some way in the tech space, at least. And so I wouldn't skip out on that. If you've never used Excel before, that's absolutely critical that you know how to do that. It's not even listed on a lot of job descriptions anymore, because it's just, it's just expected that you know how to use it. So I would absolutely be focusing on that. I'm going through a tutorial series on Excel right now, but I haven't completed it. So, you know, look up on YouTube, just basics of Excel for data analysts, and you'll find lots of videos on that stuff. The very last skill that I would be focusing on is Python. I recommend that last because it is quite a bit more technical. It's definitely program heavy. And so if you've never done that before, it can be very daunting. That's why I kind of recommended starting with SQL and things like Tableau Power BI Excel. I would start with those ones first, because they're much easier to learn and understand and get the basics down. Python to me was super challenging at first and just took me a long time to get used to, but it's extremely useful for data analysts, especially if you want to visualize data or put it into data frames or run calculations or all these things on your data. And so I do recommend learning it, although I do recommend learning it last. Now, where are you going to go to learn these skills? The first place that I would start with is YouTube. There are so many amazing free courses that you can take on YouTube. So you just get a basic, simple understanding of these skills before you go and pay for something. After that, I would head over to Coursera, and I'm not just saying that because they are the sponsor of this video. I'm saying that because I've been using Coursera for years, two courses that I would recommend on Coursera are the IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate and the Google Data Analyst Professional Certificate. The IBM Data Analyst Certificate is going to have all the skills that I just mentioned. And at the end, you have a certificate that you can put on your LinkedIn or on your resume, which we'll get to in a little bit. If you are a true beginner and if you really are just getting into this field and you don't know any of those skills yet, that one might be a little bit too difficult. And I've taken it myself. I've also taken the Data Science or IBM Data Science certificate as well. They can be challenging at times. So if you're a true beginner, the Google Data Analyst Professional Certificate may be the way to go because it really truly is for beginners. And again, at the end of it, you get a certificate that you can use to kind of show that you've learned these skills. And hopefully that will help you get a job in the future. Now, after you learn all of those skills, you need to be able to show hiring managers or recruiters that you actually know those skills. And how are you going to do that? You need to create a portfolio. A portfolio is where you can create projects and actually show off these skills and then put them all in kind of one place on a website. And then somebody can go and look at these and say, wow, this guy actually knows how to use SQL or Python or Tableau. And then they feel a lot more confident hiring you. This is honestly one of the biggest things that you can do to help yourself get noticed and get a job and show employers that you know these skills. But it's one of the biggest things that people don't do because it's kind of challenging. It can take a long time to think about a good project, do it well, put it somewhere. And it can be really difficult to just do in general. And so that's why I created the Data Analyst Portfolio Project Series, where I walk through five projects and you can do all of them and walk through all of them and create a portfolio website at the end, which I show you how to do. That's a huge plug for me. But honestly, it's a huge plug for you because I'm showing you how to do these projects. And then at the end, you have an entire portfolio project. And at the end, you have my complete permission to use it as your own portfolio, because you were the one who walked through it and put in the work and put in the ever to actually create it. And so share that with people and put that on your resume because that will genuinely help you get a job. The very next thing that you need to do is to create a resume. And it's pretty self-explanatory. You kind of need a resume to get a job these days, maybe in the future, we won't need resumes anymore. But in 2022, you definitely need a resume. So put all of those skills that you learned, put those certificates, put those portfolio projects, all of those things that we just talked about, if you do them, will create a resume for you. You may have absolutely no experience before this. You may have a completely different job or you're right out of college. But if you do all those things that we just talked about you, how all the skills and you'll have the projects, and you'll be able to create a resume from scratch. I have several videos talking about how you can create a data analyst resume with all my recommendations and things to do. I will leave a link in the description with that video. Now, the next thing that you should do is update your LinkedIn. Now, a lot of people and not everybody, but a lot of people will check somebody's LinkedIn after they get their resume. They're really interested in somebody they go and they start searching for them or they check out their LinkedIn. I know that when I was on the hiring team for my last team, and me as a manager now, I do that. I'm going to check your LinkedIn. And so if your LinkedIn basically has nothing, it doesn't really help me that much or it could hurt you. But if you have a really good LinkedIn with all of your projects and your skills, and you know you've created posts and you're engaged in the community, that's just a really good sign. Now, after you have done every single thing on this list so far, the very last thing that I would do is start working with a recruiter to find a job. Now, not everybody has a recruiter in their area, but a lot of the places that are hiring data analysts are going to be in main metropolitan areas that do have recruiters. And so if you're kind of out in the middle of nowhere, you can find, you know, recruiters for remote jobs, or you can find recruiters in main areas that hire for remote jobs. A lot of places in like the middle of Idaho or like Utah, it's not going to be a lot of data analyst jobs if you're out in the middle of nowhere. That's just the honest truth. And so if you're looking for a remote job, you know, maybe you've tried to find a recruiter in some metropolitan area or help you find an in-person job that you're willing to relocate for. And one of the best places to reach out to recruiters is on LinkedIn. You know, recruiters are everywhere on LinkedIn. And if you haven't been on here for a long time, you'll probably be getting messages from recruiters asking if you want a job in this or that. And so you can find recruiters here on LinkedIn. And I have an entire video dedicated to show you how to do that. So I highly recommend looking at that and seeing how I would do that if I were in your shoes. Now, at the beginning, I promised you timeframes for all of these steps. And I want to do that. I didn't want to do it throughout the video because I felt like it would just kind of confusing. But I'm going to give it to you all right now. So the very first step was learning the right skills. And to be upfront, this one is going to take the longest by far. It's just that initial investment to learn those skills. I would be investing around two to three months, at least an hour or two a day, if you can swing it to be learning all these skills. In those two to three months, you should absolutely learn the basics of all these skills, if not learning the intermediate level of concepts of all of these skills. For step number two, which is creating a portfolio and a portfolio website, I would be spending about one month doing this. Now, I say one month, but it could take shorter or it could take longer. It could be a lot shorter if you use my series and that's all you do. But if you want to do more and more difficult projects and come up with those on your own, those can take a while. And so, you know, I would give yourself about a month to be able to do all of that and get everything set up. So right now, we're sitting at around three to four month range. The very next thing is creating a resume. And honestly, with the first two steps taking about two to three months and then a month, this one is crazy short. This one should take you about a week. If you just create a simple resume that highlights all the things that we just talked about, you know, it can get you a long way. So it doesn't have to be crazy fancy. It doesn't have to have every single thing that you've ever done in your life. You know, you just keep it simple and use the things I tell you in, you know, that other video that I showed you how to create that resume. And it honestly shouldn't take that long. The next step was updating your LinkedIn and I would give yourself a week for this. You should just be able to get on LinkedIn, update all this stuff and make it look good. Honestly, it should take you a day, but I'm going to give you a week as just kind of like push yourself to get it done within a week and not procrastinate it longer. Now, the very last step is working with a recruiter and finding a job. And so I'm actually going to kind of break that into two steps because the first one is just working with a recruiter and you can get in touch with a recruiter and start working with them in about two to three weeks, you know, reaching out, doing cold emails, cold messages on LinkedIn, all that good stuff. You can do that within a couple of weeks. So I would give yourself three weeks to do that. Defining the job piece can vary greatly. It can take somebody a month to find a job. It can take somebody six months or even up to a year to find a job if, you know, they're in just a not a great area for jobs or, you know, they're an absolute beginner and they don't have a fantastic resume or portfolio. It can take some people a lot longer just for various reasons. And so that one is going to vary extremely widely. So if you were falling along with the timeframe, it was two to three months to actually learn the skills. It was another month to create the portfolio website. Then you had a week for a resume, a week for LinkedIn. So that's four and a half months. And then you have two to three weeks to work with the recruiter and then a lot longer to find a job. So you're looking at roughly around five months to do all of those things. Now that gets you all set up to actually find a job. And then, you know, it can take a while to find a job. So it can take somebody one month or it can take somebody six months or even longer. And it just varies on all those things that we just talked about. And so you're looking at six months to a year to completely make that transition from scratch. I hope that in 2022, you absolutely crush it and work super hard to become a data analyst. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you liked this video, be sure to like and subscribe below and I'll see you next week.