When I switched from marketing to an analyst job two years ago, I was convinced that the most important thing was to gain hard, technical skills. I felt stressed and anxious because it felt like I was lacking them.
Over time I realized that analytics is primarily a business discipline, albeit with technical components. In reality, analytics work should focus on the business side of things, and technical side is given far more importance than it actually deserves.
Instead, communication skills, understanding of business processes and the ability to generate insights using data are far more crucial. They elevate a descriptive analysis to a prescriptive one. The latter creates more additional value for the business, so it increases your career capital faster.
In my current position, I have seen several examples when colleagues having excellent BI and SQL skills could not unlock their potential and grow quickly without understanding the underlying marketing and sales processes.
Sometimes tech skills are overrated. Human connection and business acumen might be a better area to develop.
