Be the Business Intelligence Analyst Everyone Wants to Hire
As a business intelligence (BI) expert, you have the kind of in-demand skills that can buffer a tech professional from job market challenges. For example, TechServe Alliance reports that IT job growth has remained flat since September of 2021. Despite that challenging reality for tech experts, Sayva has seen steady demand for BI analysts.
In fact, the need for the data expertise and analytical capabilities of BI professionals is as strong as ever. What has changed is the global economy. Uncertainty and inflation are wreaking havoc on budgets, and that trickles down to hiring plans.
Be a Standout BI Unicorn
Knowing how to promote your BI know-how is key to ensuring economic slowdowns do not slow down your career growth. How? By aligning your skills with the strategic work and outcomes businesses need today, you become more than a good hire. It makes you a business-focused BI unicorn who stands out from the crowd.
What BI Skills Should You Highlight?
While technical skills and data experience are sure to make your business intelligence profile shine, don’t forget to showcase your communication savvy, strategy knowledge, and financial smarts companies are hunting for. They might just be the differentiating edge you need. What are those noteworthy skills?
Storytelling with Data. The best business intelligence analysts are great storytellers. They take complex data sets and analyses and then find the storylines behind them to answer the questions businesses need to answer. What’s behind these changes in customer behavior? Where are new market opportunities cropping up and why? Why is performance declining or increasing?
Business intelligence analysts with the skills to not only gather and analyze the data, but also creatively and clearly communicate that critical knowledge are rare and sought-after talents. Professionals whose business acumen is as sharp as their data mining skills are powerful partners to business leaders who want to make data-backed decisions and plans.
Business-Smart Data Visualization. What’s a great data story without great visuals? Less vibrant and less informative. All BI experts require strong skills in building and presenting data visualization tools. As with their storytelling, those who can bring business outcomes, needs, and opportunities to visual life are helping to educate and inspire business transformation and growth.
Programming Skills. With hiring budgets shrinking and hiring freezes more common, businesses are more likely to hire one BI expert rather than a team. BI analysts with strong programming skills in languages like Python or SQL are promising candidates because they can deliver both the mechanics behind the data work and manage the strategic data modeling and analysis. They can create scripts for automating data collection, mining, and modeling tasks that accelerate workflows and then bring that collected data to life.
Speed and Time Management. The digital world is a world that moves at a quick clip. Terabytes of data are moving at the speed of light across the world all the time. For a business to leverage data in real-time, BI analysts must be able to move purposefully and rapidly. Professionals who can demonstrate speed in their work will attract employers who understand the value of relevant and actionable data insights.
A Bias for Numbers. Finance and accounting teams are notoriously fond of BI analysts and their skills. The incredible amount of financial data that flows throughout a business and the marketplace holds great power and possibility; however, that’s only if a business can analyze it. Experts who can demonstrate experience supporting big data analysis for finance and accounting groups are at the top of most BI recruiting lists.
Are Salaries for Business Intelligence Analysts Changing?
Job postings may be down and layoffs up, but BI analyst salaries are holding strong. Historical data shows BI salaries increasing by 5-10%, depending on experience levels, since 2016. As of September of 2022, Glassdoor put the median BI analyst salary at $86,743 while the salary for experienced BI pros could earn well over $125,000. The economic challenges facing the technology market do not seem to be compressing pay, but increasing layoffs and hiring freezes are reducing the number of job opportunities.
Use Your Edge
While job security concerns and waning confidence may be new to a lot of technology professionals who have seen years of opportunity and eager employers, this is a good moment to inventory your experience and polish your professional profile. It’s not only a way to update your resume and portfolio to highlight your talent and business expertise, but also an opportunity to assess your professional growth as a business intelligence analyst. What have you done, where are your gaps, and where do you want to go? A current and thorough professional profile is as much a tool for informed, long-term career road mapping as it is for immediate job searching. Why not be ready for both? Need support finding your next business intelligence job or project? Contact Sayva and our team of technology career experts.
