I recently completed my data analytics course on Coursera and I
would like to encourage anyone that wants to pursue a career in
data analytics to consider taking this course. This course may be
just what you need to kickstart your career as a data analyst. Let
me start by stressing that I am in no way affiliated with Google or
Coursera, this is simply my personal opinion based on my experience
taking and completing this course. I will share with you ten (10)
reasons why you should take this course too.
1. There is a huge demand for data analysts
globally. Demand for data analysts has continued to rise.
We are living in a world where data is the new gold. Organizations
have realized that their competitive advantage lies in their
abilities to extract insightful information from the huge amount of
data that is out there. Organizations are looking for people with
the right set of skills to help them unlock the power that is in
the data. People that can get raw data and transform it into a
useful format that can contribute to an organization’s competitive
advantage and decision-making are highly sought after. At the time
of writing this article, Indeed (jobs website) had over 40k job
openings for data analysts. When you become a data analyst, you can
work in any industry that you want. A data analyst can work in
finance, health, transport, tech, entertainment, art, and so many
other industries. You can even work for yourself. Think about it,
by taking this course you will gain in-demand skills that you can
apply in whatever industry you choose to work in. That is great
power if you ask me.
2. This course has no prerequisites.
The only thing that it demands from you is the hunger to learn. You
will meet and learn from google employees (with different
backgrounds) that have become very successful data analysts. They
will share their journeys, knowledge, skills, and industry insights
with you. So it does not matter what your current occupation is, or
what your background looks like, you can still take this course.
The course will teach you everything from scratch. You will learn
how to clean, organize, analyze and visualize data. You will have
plenty of assessments to complete, and at the end, you will
complete a full project that will bring together everything that
you have learned. This is something that I loved about the
course.
3. You will learn how to use Google
Sheets/Excel. If you have always wanted to learn
spreadsheets or just brush up on your spreadsheet skills, this
course will help you do just that. In this course, you will have a
choice to either use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Excel/Google
Sheets are one of the most used tools in the data analytics field.
98% of all data analyst job postings demand that one be competent
in spreadsheets. This course will teach you how to clean data,
write functions and create visualizations using spreadsheets. You
will learn about Pivot Tables, data formatting, and conditional
formatting using both Excel and Google Sheets. The course also
provides plenty of materials and assessments to practice your
spreadsheet skills on. By the end of the course, you will be able
to add spreadsheets to your skillset.
4. You will learn programming with
R. R is a statistical language that is hugely useful in
the data processing world. It is a very popular language in data
analytics. Big tech companies such as Amazon, Meta, and Google use
R for their data analytics. You cannot go wrong with R. At the time
of writing this article, there were over 1 million job openings
that require R programming skills. Learning R will make you stand
out from the crowd. If you have always wanted to learn a
programming language, this course will give you a chance to learn a
powerful statistical programming language. Don’t worry if you don’t
know anything, this course will start from the very basics of the R
programming language. Remember that this course is
beginner-friendly. The good news is that once you learn one
programming language, it will be easy for you to learn other
programming languages.
5. You will be introduced to SQL using
Google’s Big Query. Analyzing data in spreadsheets is all
fun until the rows of data are in millions. Spreadsheets struggle
to analyze very huge amounts of data. That’s when SQL (Structured
Query Language) becomes handy. SQL was built to handle huge amounts
of data, an amount of data that you will struggle to process in a
spreadsheet. Simply put, you cannot be a data analyst if you do not
know SQL. Almost every data analytics job requires that you know
SQL. This course will teach you everything you need to know to
start your SQL learning and mastering journey. You will learn how
to write queries using SQL, how to clean data, how to do
calculations, how to join data from different tables and so much
more. This course uses the Google Big Query platform, but the
skills that you will learn can be used on any SQL platform. SQL is
a very powerful language to have on your resume.
6. The course will teach you about
Tableau. To be able to create powerful visualizations of
your data is a powerful skill to have on your resume. Every data
analyst is required to have this skill set in their locker. People
that know how to use Tableau are paid handsomely by the industry.
Once you master this tool, your job prospects will always be
bright. This course will introduce you to all that you need to know
to start using the Tableau platform and create powerful and
beautiful visualizations for your analysis. You cannot learn this
skill in a day, that is why this Google data analytics course
provides not just plenty of exercises, but also pretty of extra
resources that will help you become a master of Tableau over
time.
7. This course will have your job ready in 6
months. The course aims to have you job-ready in 6 months.
After you finish the course, you should be competent enough to
apply for data analyst entry-level jobs. The course has tips from
people in the industry (mostly employees from Google) and resources
that will help you find your first data analyst job. It also
provides tips (from hiring managers) on how to write a killer
resume that gets you interviews, and how to negotiate your salary
with potential employers. It provides extra resources that you can
dig into to increase your chances of landing an entry-level data
analyst job.
8. A data analyst role will help you become a
data scientist, a machine learning engineer, or a data
engineer. This entry-level qualification will open doors
of possibilities for you. The skills that you will obtain from this
course, are the same type of skills that are widely used by data
scientists, machine learning engineers, and data engineers. You can
easily build on what you will learn in this course to take up more
advanced roles in the world of data. The demand for these highly
sought-after professionals is projected to grow even more in the
coming years. Completing this course will have you in great
company.
9. You can apply for financial aid.
Coursera charges $39 per month for anyone who wants to learn on
their platform. However, if you want to study this course and you
do not have the money at the moment, you can apply for financial
aid. Google has made it possible for people that cannot afford to
pay to study for free. Think about it, you have a chance to obtain
a world-class qualification for free.
10. You will be learning from a tech giant —
Google. Google is the 5th most valuable company in the
world. Their products are some of the most in-demand products of
the tech world. A Google certificate on your resume will impress
any potential employer. This certificate will make you stand out
from the crowd.
If you are interested in taking the course, you can use the link
Ts karen cummings las vegasto find the course. Good luck.