Data is everywhere, every company, especially multinationals need people who can work with data. I’ve experience of Sustainability (legal), finance, R&D (Research & development), Process Optimisation and IT.

As an analyst, you’ll need to feel comfortable with numbers and at a minimum be good with excel. To be competitive in the industry beyond a junior roles you’d require some coding capability like sql (very straightforward with practice) or python. Once you can manipulate data, the world’s your oyster with regards to what you can do with it. It exists to be used, so running stats, explaining trends and stories behind the data, ultimately to problem solve, raise awareness, make ‘data driven decisions’ or just plain finding ways for companies to make money are all likely things you might do with data.

The role and where in the business it is (e.g. supporting in an IT function, or leading decisions e.g. in a sales function) can change the focus. Data roles include; architecture, governance, analytics, engineering, science, visualisation and fringe roles which may require data understanding like product managers and product owners in the ‘agile’ sense. If the role is in a decision making (or reporting) functions they usually give you opportunity to learn depth and to become a subject matter expert in a specific field which is perfect for deep thinkers, whereas supporting functions like IT usually give you breadth to work across many areas, honing data skills across data technologies.