Data Analyst
Turn raw data into actionable business insights. Use tools like Power BI, SQL, and Excel to help organizations make data-driven decisions.
What a typical day looks like
Days start with checking which stakeholders have messaged overnight. Usually marketing wants a quick query about last week's campaign performance. Sales wants pipeline numbers for the leadership meeting. I batch these small requests for the morning. By 10 I am in deep work mode on whatever the main project is — currently a churn analysis for the head of product. SQL queries, Python notebooks for the deeper modelling, Power BI for the dashboard at the end. Lunch is usually with the team or solo with a book. Afternoons are mixed: some meetings (sprint planning, the weekly business review where I present numbers), some more deep work, sometimes ad-hoc questions from leadership. I try to leave by 5:30. The skill that separates good analysts from great ones is communication. The hardest part of my job is not the SQL, it is explaining what the numbers mean to people who don't think in numbers.
Hour-by-hour
Skills you need
Required
Nice to have
Build these to stand out
Hands-on projects beat any CV bullet point. Pick one and finish it.
Customer Cohort Dashboard
Take a public dataset (e.g. Olist, Kaggle's e-commerce). Build a Power BI or Tableau dashboard that shows monthly cohorts, retention curves, and average order value by cohort. Include 3 to 5 slicers.
Demonstrates the core skills: SQL, BI tool, cohort thinking. Recruiters love it.
End-to-End Sales Analytics Pipeline
Use a public sales dataset. Build the full pipeline: import CSV to a database (Postgres or DuckDB), clean and transform with dbt, build a Power BI report on top. Document each step.
Shows you understand the modern data stack. Stands out for senior analyst roles.
Personal Spending Analysis
Export your bank statements (or use a public dataset). Categorise transactions, build monthly trends, identify patterns. Present findings as a 5-slide deck. Bonus: make a small prediction model.
Shows you can communicate insights, not just generate charts. A small, personal story is more memorable.