SQL, Python, dashboards. The exact tools that get data analysts hired, in order.
SQL is the #1 skill in every data analyst job listing. Learn it first. SELECT, JOIN, GROUP BY, window functions, this alone makes you hireable.
Advanced Sheets: VLOOKUP, pivot tables, array formulas, conditional formatting. Still used daily in every data team. Don't skip this, master it.
pandas, matplotlib, numpy. Google Colab gives you free cloud notebooks. Python takes you from analyst to senior analyst, it's the difference maker.
Build dashboards that tell stories. Tableau Public lets you publish and share your work publicly, instant portfolio pieces that hiring managers can see.
Understand distributions, hypothesis testing, correlation, regression. Khan Academy teaches the theory, Claude explains it in plain English when you're stuck.
3-5 data projects with real datasets. Kaggle competitions count. GitHub for code, Notion for write-ups. Show your thinking, not just your queries.
Debug SQL queries, explain statistical concepts, help clean messy data. AI is your always-available senior analyst who never gets tired of questions.
SQL practice. Free
Spreadsheets. Free
Python & notebooks. Free
Visualization. Free
Statistics. Free
Portfolio. Free
AI assistant. Free tiers
Use government open data, Kaggle datasets, or scrape something interesting. Analysing real-world messy data shows you can handle what the job actually requires.
Insight matters more than technique. "Sales dropped 15% in Q3 because..." is worth more than a perfect regression model with no explanation.
The best analysts translate numbers into decisions. Practice explaining your findings to someone who doesn't know what a p-value is. That's the real job.
80% of a data analyst's job is cleaning and preparing data. Include messy-to-clean transformations in your portfolio, hiring managers know this is the hard part.
£30-55K UK / $60-100K US
Mid-level data analyst. Senior analysts and those who move into data science or analytics engineering can earn significantly more. Python skills push you to the higher end.
Find the exact tool stack for your target role, step by step, no fluff.
Explore more paths →