🎢 🖨️ 🏳️ Interview with Analyst - Denis Sobolev, Product Manager, Head of B2B analytics Skyeng 🖖 👨🏿‍🚒 👽

What is the work of the analyst? What qualities are needed to successfully work in this area? What are the pros and cons of this profession? Today, under the heading # Analyst, Reply - Denis Sobolev, Product Manager, Head of B2B analytics Skyeng, speaker of the ProductStar course “Profession: Analyst”. Enjoy reading! :)

How did you become an analyst?

I can’t say that my story will be original. Since I graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Institute, I had a question: "Where to go to work?" Understanding that I have a good mathematical base, and also considering that 50% of techies go to work as analysts, I chose the same path. And of course, I liked it.

Who is an analyst?

An analyst is, first of all, a researcher. His task is to seek answers to questions. This can be done in many ways. You can and should communicate with people, look at quantitative indicators and, as a result, build the most objective picture of the world.

What is the work of the analyst?

If we move from lyrics to reality, we can distinguish several phases of the analyst’s work:

When you are just starting your career, the analyst’s work comes down, for the most part, to building reports. They can be made in special BI-systems, or in the good old Excel or Google Sheets.

The next phase is when research is already appearing, and this is one of the most interesting phases. Of course, it also involves working with data, but you are already solving a specific business problem. Research can be completely different. This may be a study of user segments: we want to understand how they differ, how they are similar, and all this can be described by a set of indicators. Or, research can be of the following kind: what can we optimize in business, which process is imperfect, or where does the business spend the most money? And to answer these questions, the analyst comes to the rescue.

What qualities are needed to successfully work as an analyst?

I think, here, too, two points need to be distinguished:

Hard skills: knowledge of mathematics and knowledge of programming languages (it can be either Python or the SQL query language), well, also work with Excel or Google Sheets.

The so-called soft skills: the ability to communicate with the customer and the ability to correctly take on the task. Find out what the customer really needs and implement it in a quality manner.

Why are analysts valued in business?

Today, in fact, all over the world, people have realized that the most valuable is information. Information about us, about users, about our habits, what we love, what we buy. This knowledge goes to the very first level. As a result, in Russia more and more companies are beginning to apply data-driven and data-informed approaches when decisions are made based on data.

Firstly, unfortunately, not all people can make decisions based on data, they just don’t understand how to do it. And secondly, this data still needs to be obtained, processed, aggregated and visualized so that it is easier to make decisions. The analyst is just the key link in this chain when there is a problem and you need to make the right decision. This is a rather big responsibility. You need to find this data as quickly as possible and even give recommendations for the business.

Pros and cons of the profession

From the pros, I can distinguish:

This is a fairly quiet work, in my opinion. And even now, when I myself am looking for answers to my questions and building some kind of report, I actually get high because nobody pulls me, I calmly do my work, and it's great. Well, of course, there are exceptions when something goes wrong and some key report falls, you have to quickly fix it, but this is rather the exception.

I think this is a really interesting job. In my practice, I looked for answers to very different questions. These were questions both in the sales department, and in the support department, and the study of the relationship between different indicators, and work with pricing. You have a big background, and this is really cool, because then you can choose different paths for your development.

The analyst, in a good way, is a respected person. If we go back to the Middle Ages, then the analyst there looks like some kind of wizard who has a set of spells with which he answers a question or shows some kind of focus, and people don’t understand how he did it. It is, in fact, very nice.

Of the minuses, I would single out the fact that the analyst can not always influence the final decision. You need to understand that the analyst makes recommendations, but the result is controlled by either a product manager or a leader. Here he may have his own opinion on this issue, or your recommendation, for a number of circumstances, may go nowhere. This also happens, you need to be prepared for this. Here you must always understand why this happened.

Is mathematics a must for the analyst?

I think it is necessary to make a reservation here that if you have a good 11 grade in a school, then probably in 60-70% of the tasks this will be more than enough. Even if we take knowledge of higher mathematics, statistics, then to solve most of the problems, you need only the basics.

Three Resources Analysts Should Know

I can recommend the Telegram channel "Internet analytics" .
Super useful resource. There are just tons of information. Constantly share useful links, research. I recommend to everyone.

I will also recommend you two books:

“Purpose. The Process of Continuous Improvement, ”Eliyahu Goldratt.
You need to shape the so-called business thinking. You need to know what is important for the business and what is not so.

“Ask Mom,” Robert Fitzpatrick.
It is usually recommended to the products. It provides best practices on how to do user custom actions. And for the analyst, this is also super important, because you will communicate a lot with customers, and they are the very users from whom you need to remove needs and understand what they really need. Well, in general, an important feature of the analyst is the ability to ask a lot of right questions.

I want to recommend the site statista.com .
If you are just starting your way, then just go see what reports are on this portal. This is a portal of world statistics, there is a lot of interesting things. For example, what share is mobile traffic and which is desktop? Just see how professionals visualize the data and what recommendations they can give there.

What professional advice would you give yourself at the beginning of your career?

You need to understand that analytics does not reach, say, 100%. You will always have some kind of error.

When I was just starting to work, I had this case: I killed a whole week to figure out which table I need to access to collect certain information, and there were only three of these tables. No matter how I twisted them, no matter what requests I rewrote, I never met the data. Then I just went to the accounting department and found out what error is permissible, and made a decision. Therefore, remember this.

You just need to choose the most reliable sources and not spend a lot of time figuring out all the details, most likely you will not find out anyway.

How to stand out from the rest of the candidates and get a job?

Oh, this is a rather complicated question, because first of all at interviews, of course, they look at experience and understand what tasks a person can solve. But, when I took people with no experience, I paid attention to:

Good test.
Usually a test one is some kind of Google Doc, in which you need to demonstrate your knowledge of formulas, and it's great if you yourself can shuffle a couple of formulas and reflect them in the test. Say, if you do not use the simplest functions, then this will be a plus.

Interest shown in the company.
I recommend google what the company is doing, and even prepare a couple of questions related to numbers. This is always welcome, because it is immediately obvious that a person is interested.

Why become an analyst?

I believe that analytics is one of the professions of the future. And the farther, the more these guys will be in demand, because, as we already said, the world is hunting for data, and more and more companies will build analytics at home and learn how to work with it. And of course, this is a very interesting profession. If you like to be a researcher, then analytics is a very good opportunity to fulfill your desires.

Why is it worth going to the ProductStar Profession: Analyst course ?

It seems to me that very cool speakers gathered on this course. I even want to see a number of lectures myself. It’s cool when you can share real experience, practical cases with you, and in my lectures I just tried to do it. Therefore, I recommend the ProductStar course to everyone.

Interview with Analyst - Denis Sobolev, Product Manager, Head of B2B analytics Skyeng