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Business Intelligence/Big Data as workfield - No experience/qualifications
Yogo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
You guys are a helpful bunch and I hope you can shed some light over my situation.
Here's the story:
I am educated as a video game researcher (M.Sc. Games) with a Bachelor background in English in Denmark. Because I am a researcher and not designer or developer, I never learned nor was taught how to code at my university. I've tried teaching myself, but it has proved to be harder than just so. It is doable, but it will take considerable time before I have the basics down.
Since graduating I have been unable to land a job. This is typical of the times, but even more so because my specific background is unheard of outside of university academia. Basically, nobody has a clue as to do with a professional background like me. Furthermore, the few positions in the Games Industry here require a substantial amount of credited work to even be considered for a job and are in the programming department (hence my first problem).
All hope is not lost however, and I still have my analytical sense and competence to handle gathered data and present it to the decision makers; hence my newfound interest in BI.
All my research surrounding BI seems to put me in a bind however. Typical BI candidates either come from a financial or statistical educational background with a little to moderate experience in coding. The coding language varies, but it seems SQL (Microsoft) and SAP are the most preferred.
What I have at most in either of those departments are my volunteer work at a local student bar as the accountant (bookkeeping) and my flair for data analysis ("data" here being everything related to the area being examined. Numbers, statements, opinions, the like).
As a last thing of note, paid/full time (re)-education is not an option. I'm currently receiving unemployment benefits and am quite dependent on it to sustain my livelihood. I have already used my "freebie" with my current education.
So my question is this: Where do I start and how do I train myself to better understand BI and the tools involved, so I can confidently say "Yes, I can do BI" given the above premise?
Here's the story:
I am educated as a video game researcher (M.Sc. Games) with a Bachelor background in English in Denmark. Because I am a researcher and not designer or developer, I never learned nor was taught how to code at my university. I've tried teaching myself, but it has proved to be harder than just so. It is doable, but it will take considerable time before I have the basics down.
Since graduating I have been unable to land a job. This is typical of the times, but even more so because my specific background is unheard of outside of university academia. Basically, nobody has a clue as to do with a professional background like me. Furthermore, the few positions in the Games Industry here require a substantial amount of credited work to even be considered for a job and are in the programming department (hence my first problem).
All hope is not lost however, and I still have my analytical sense and competence to handle gathered data and present it to the decision makers; hence my newfound interest in BI.
All my research surrounding BI seems to put me in a bind however. Typical BI candidates either come from a financial or statistical educational background with a little to moderate experience in coding. The coding language varies, but it seems SQL (Microsoft) and SAP are the most preferred.
What I have at most in either of those departments are my volunteer work at a local student bar as the accountant (bookkeeping) and my flair for data analysis ("data" here being everything related to the area being examined. Numbers, statements, opinions, the like).
As a last thing of note, paid/full time (re)-education is not an option. I'm currently receiving unemployment benefits and am quite dependent on it to sustain my livelihood. I have already used my "freebie" with my current education.
So my question is this: Where do I start and how do I train myself to better understand BI and the tools involved, so I can confidently say "Yes, I can do BI" given the above premise?
Yogo on
0
Posts
Other than that, I don't really have anything else. I'll ask my brother, who is I think nearer to this field than I am.
Learn SQL and try to get a job as a "Data Analyst" or "Reporting Analyst". Without knowing SQL or being a subject matter expert, you really don't bring much to the table for a "BI" role
See if there is something on Code Academy, but your best bet is to download the (Free) Microsoft AdventureWorks database and find a tutorial focused around that.
In addition to SQL, make sure you really know Excel and Access.*
*For an entry level role, you'll likely be expected to know at least the following
excel: vlookups, applying/using filters, pivot tables, basic chart creation
Access: Left joins, creating a query, creating/using an ODBC connection.
Please feel free to batsignal me if you have more specific questions.
Once I've done those, I'll be sure to contact you to see what else I can learn
Beyond learning SQL and HQL, I'd suggest attempting to pick up a common BI tool and begin creating analysis and reports on commonly available datasets. Some good ones to look into are MicroStrategy, Tableau or BusinessObjects.
Your research background should already prepare you for the primary goal of a BI person, which is to take data and make it tell a concise story.
Read some books about data modeling and database structures. Those are pretty big in BI.
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Beyond pure tool knowledge, the biggest things you can do to give yourself a leg up are to have expertise in statistical theories and methods as well as a generally curious and driven personality. Stats will get you to solid action points sooner, while the curiosity will uncover the right things in the data.
Also, all data is dirty. ALL OF IT.
If you're amazing in one or more and can build up the others you will be ok.
I for example know my data points inside outside and upside down because I am the subject matter expert for the business systems where I work. It comes naturally to me to look at 500k lines of transaction data and point out the bad one in under a minute. What I can't do is math or programming... I was kind'a led down this path because I abuse Excel with the best of them and I have a flair for storytelling/visualization.
I don't compete with the data scientist, but I play in the same pool. I do feel like I am building up my programming, my math will always be suspect, but I know I am in the game because I understand that data better then anyone else and I know how to verify/suspect the output of the dat scientist. I also come up with excellent system breaking use cases and events, which while driving everyone crazy helps move the BI to where it needs to be.
My personal hope is that I can combine my understanding of human behavior/storytelling with BI, so as to present the data in a manner which takes the social and human aspect into consideration. Often times I have heard or experienced a proposed change to a given system based on the acquired data without looking at the context of why said data came into existence. The soft element is often missing.
Eh, there's a lot of other applications in medical and other fields. I work in insurance, and we're starting to use it to pull data out of the notes the adjuster leaves on the claim, or on email correspondence chains. Not to mention speeding up processing time of qualitative data from things like surveys.
(I'm also trying to transition into data science/business intelligence. I talked to one person in data science at a video games company who suggested that I apply to business intelligence rather than data science. I have a more quantitative/coding background than @Yogo --BA physics, PhD biophysics expected by end of calendar year--but no experience in the field. And I don't necessarily want to do big data for big pharma, although that's probably the only place where my domain knowledge is relevant.)
If you want to prove something you haven't done professionally on a technical resume, do a side project involving it and then cite it on your resume.
Then they'll ask you about it in the phone screen / in person interviews, and you can really flex your knowledge of whatever you're talking about.
Depends on the role. If you're up for a programming role or expected to develop your own ETL (Extract - Transform - Load), there most likely will be some level of technical interview on it. Other roles - probably just some simple questions on it. Knowing how data structures work is far more important though, as you generally use things like informatica, SAS etc. to pull your data, which are mostly GUI-fied (if a bit odd at times). It's a field that's still sorting itself out, so there's a lot of latitude in what the role will be depending on where you land on the data analysis/statistics/presentation pyramid, as those are the 3 major facets of BI (IME).
You could benefit from downloading some sample data sets and a development copy of the SQL program from the vendor of your choice- I work primarily with Oracle, and I know they have free development tools. MySQL/PostgreSQL are free and open source, and I would think Microsoft also has some free tools. (I've used SQL Server at work but we had it licensed).