I’m here today to show you the fastest and most efficient way to become a business analyst, regardless of whether or not you have any relevant experience. If you read carefully to the information in this blog, I can guarantee that you will not waste your time learning useless skills and cover useless topics that are not required to become a business analyst. But first of all, why would you even want to become a business analyst? It’s a job that comes with a high salary, it is a pretty future-proof career, and many companies offer these roles as work-from-home roles or at least hybrid roles where you don’t have to be in the office every day.
I’m a firm believer that a great data analyst is also a great business analyst, and the other way around. At its core, to get a business analyst job you’ll need three things.
First, you need to prove that you’re qualified to gain credibility. Then you’ll need to have the right skills such as requirements gathering and analysis, process mapping and improvement skills, project management skills, data analysis skills, and probably most importantly stakeholder management and communication skills. I’ll go into these skills in more detail later on in the blog. And finally, you’ll need a great resume to land those interviews which can then turn into lucrative job offers.
Before jumping into these three areas in more detail, let’s go through what a business analyst actually does so that you can get a better understanding of what your day-to-day activities could look like. Business analysts bridge the gap between IT and the business. Think of them as the glue between the technical and non-technical people, the glue between business needs and technology solutions.
They help organizations improve processes, products, services, or even software. The role can be really diverse in terms of actual tasks, but the primary focus is always on translating business requirements into practical and actionable insights for stakeholders, which is why the combination of great stakeholder management and communication skills and data analysis skills can be such a killer combination for a business analyst. Now that you know what a business analyst actually does, let’s see how you can get qualified.
The easiest way, of course, is if you already have a degree, a relevant degree, where you’ve gained a blend of analytical, business, and technical skills. So degrees like business administration, finance, economics, management information systems, computer science, information technology, data science, or data analytics would be great. But don’t worry if you don’t have a degree, as you can get qualified through numerous other avenues.
Say, for example, you could take an online course and get certified through that. And I know that there are so many courses and certifications out there, so to make it simple for you, let me show you some quality programs from Simply Learn who are reviewed and recommended by Forbes. Whether it’s the Certified Business Analyst Professional Program, the Business Analyst Program, or the Postgraduate Program in Business Analysis, you’ll learn to tackle complex business problems.
Let’s take the Business Analyst Program, for example. You’ll gain proficiency in core business analysis, modeling, and reporting skills through hands-on projects, case studies, and a capstone project. You’ll become industry-ready with the International Institute of Business Analysis Accredited Courses, and you’ll cover tools like Excel, Tableau, Jira, MySQL, Python, and you’ll also learn to leverage the latest Gen AI tools like ChatGPT, Dolly2, Gemini, and MidJourney, and much, much more.
Getting qualified matters because if you cannot show to recruiters and companies that you can do what you say you can do, then no matter how skilled you may be, it won’t matter, will it? Now, the only thing I would like to emphasize here is that you will highly likely not get a job just by getting qualified. There are many others out who are also qualified, so think of gaining credibility as the bare minimum that puts you in a good position to apply to jobs, not a position to land all the jobs. With qualifications out of the way, let me move on to the skills you’ll need as a business analyst.
To me, the most important thing is that you know how to solve complex business problems through combining your technical and non-technical skills. I understand that all of us are different and there are many ways to solve the same problem, so instead of listing the exact skills I think you should learn, I’ll give you an idea of the wide range of business analyst skills that you can learn. In general, you’ll need to be good at requirements gathering and analysis.
This means that you need to work with stakeholders to identify and clearly document business needs, analyze processes and workflows, identify areas for improvements. You need to be able to translate the requirements into actionable insights. You also need to have great communication skills as business analysts are the bridge between technical solutions and business needs.
So, you’ll have to bridge the between technical and non-technical stakeholders. As a business analyst, you also need to have data analysis skills so that you can actually analyze business data, identify trends and provide insights and reports to support strategy and operational improvements. Excel, SQL, Tableau, Power BI, Python.
These are just some of the technical tools that you need to be good at. At the very least, I would urge you to learn Excel, SQL and a visualization tool like Tableau or Power BI. I talk about these data analysis skills and give you practical industry examples day in day out in my exclusive data community that you can join for absolutely free through my website at DataWhopper so please have a look if you’re determined to improve your data analysis skills faster.
Like much faster. Oh, and whilst you’re on the website, and this is only for the really committed ones, you should also check out my data analysis bundle that contains everything you need to land an analyst job. Think of a stunning data portfolio, a complete data roadmap, and practical guided projects so that you’re not just learning aimlessly.
You’ll also certainly have to do some project management to help design and implement business solutions, work with various IT teams, business leaders, and other project managers to ensure all technical solutions get delivered on time. You might also have to identify and mitigate risks in business processes and projects and suggest solutions or come up with contingency plans to minimize risks and disruption to the business. As you can see, the role can be super varied and you for sure will not be bored as the business analyst roles and responsibilities cover such a diverse range of tasks.
Now that I covered how you can get qualified and gain the necessary skills needed to become a business analyst, let me move on to the final bit to how you can construct a resume that will land you the which in turn would land you the job offers. The number one mistake I see people make when it comes to writing their resumes is this. They include too much non-relevant experience and too little relevant experience.
Keep your resume to a one-pager format and make it live and breathe business analysis. If you have a completely non-relevant experience, don’t include it on your resume. If you have an experience that’s not directly linked to a business analyst role, but you carried out many business analysis tasks and activities within this role, include those specific tasks on your resume.
Let me give you a simple example here. Let’s say I’m the owner of a little coffee cart. If I’m applying for business analyst jobs, I would not put it on my resume that I make fantastic americanos, lattes, cappuccinos, and flat whites.
Though great skills in the bursta world, not too useful in the business analytics world. I would, however, put on my resume that I used Excel to track my costs and expenses and created automated visualizations and dashboards to identify trends and understand my coffee business better. You see what I did there, right? I put a business analyst hat on and picked out the activities that I carried out as a coffee cart owner that involved business analysis tasks such as producing insights and reports using a technical tool such as Excel.
Please make sure you write a resume that showcases your business analyst skills, not skills in general. You only have one page, so about 500-600 words, to convince the recruiter or hiring manager to give you a shot at an interview. Make every word count.
There are so many free resume builders out there that you could use. You could build your resume with resume.io, enhancecv.com, or Canva.
I’m certain if you implement the steps I detailed today, you will shorten your path to a business analyst job. If you enjoy content like this, make sure to check out some of my other blogs right here. Thanks so much for taking just a little time out of your day to read this, and I shall see you in the next one.