It is a fact of the matter that data-related jobs are blowing up worldwide. Growth of both employment and the money to be made in the data sector is over 100% in any given quarter of any given year. Since we live in times where data is such a crucial part of our lives, many choose to join a data analyst program to gain employability skills in data analysis.
Even though the data sector has seen an unprecedented increment in the number of jobs, however, the entire data paradigm is relatively new. In fact, clear boundaries of various key roles like that of a data analyst have only been recently chalked out with great detail. Since this field is fairly new, finding good interview preparation questions is a little difficult.
We would be tackling it today by providing you with the most popular data analyst interview questions. However, before that, we would like to explore the career of a data analyst in detail.
Data Analyst as a career
Data analyst is one the most sought after and, by far, one of the most coveted jobs of the 21st century. Considering the very high demand for data analysts, one cannot help but look at the positive aspect of data analysis like the salary. At the same time, he/she is conveniently ignoring the roles and responsibilities which the job entails. In this section, we would cover what a data analyst does.
So, any data analyst is supposed to dabble around with data. They are supposed to collect data through various means like web scraping. Post collection of all the data, they are supposed to use their statistical and machine learning knowledge to model the available data. After the data modeling is completed, their job is to find out insights to help their organization.
Data analysts are not just responsible for finding insights from data but also supposed to make future predictions based on past data. Their role also covers the need to form reports of their findings appropriately. So, they have to file a report. And, with the help of good plotting and charting, they are supposed to make non-technical people understand what they did and what their research implies.
One of the best parts of being a data analyst is that you are not limited by industry. Meaning, whatever be the paradigm, a data analyst would be needed.
Now that we know what the job of data analysts entails, it is time to move our discussion forward and talk about the matter’s heart – the best data analyst interview questions.
Top Data Analyst interview questions
Listed below, you will find the best data analyst interview questions:
Q1. What are the primary technical and soft skills which are required to be a successful data analyst?
Ans. There are a lot of technical and soft skills that are required to be a successful data analyst. And, these are:
1. Soft skills:
a. You should have impeccable communication skills.
b. You should be able to convey your thinking to your peers as well as your higher-ups with ease.
c. You should be skilled enough to modulate the amount of technicality in your speech, depending upon the person you are having a conversation with. Meaning, for a non-technical person, you should try to use the minimum technical words such that he/she is able to have a clear understanding of what is happening and vice versa when you are talking to a tech-minded person.
Technical skills:
a. You should have a good hold over programming and problem-solving.
b. You should know Python, MATLAB, SQL, and NoSQL databases, serverless applications, containerized applications like Docker or Kubernetes, XML, SAS, Excel, or any other equivalent spreadsheet software.
c. You should also know the R programming language.
d. You should have high analytical abilities.
Q2. What do you think is the job of a data analyst?
Ans. This is a ubiquitous question in any data analyst interview. Hence, you should have a clear understanding of your job. We have listed them below:
- You are supposed to collect, filter or clean the data which you manage.
- After you are done with the collection and cleansing, you will have to do primary data analysis (or EDA).
- You will also then model the data and provide insights and predictions.
- You have the responsibility to keep the database that you are using secure.
Q3. What do you think are the best tools which can be used to perform data analysis?
Ans. There are many tools available through which you would be able to perform data analysis. While the exact mechanism would depend upon the job you are interviewing for, it wouldn’t hurt to know all the tools that are out there. We have listed the most prominent ones below:
- Tableau
- KNIME
- RapidMiner
- Google Fusion Tables
- Solver
Q4. What do you mean by KNN?
Ans. KNN or K-Nearest Neighbors is the technique that could be used in both supervised and unsupervised learning. The main motive of this method is to make clusters of the data depending on the Euclidean distance. In general, this algorithm assumes two central (or pivotal) points and calculates the distances of all the other points in data. If it is a supervised learning problem of classification, then it simply classifies data points based on which of the two classes it is near to. If it is a clustering problem (unsupervised learning), then this technique’s primary goal is to club together all the data points in a particular vicinity.
We hope that you are able to have a deeper understanding of data analyst as a career. We also hope that we could provide you with some good insightful interview questions that should help you prepare well. Since data analysis is relatively new and no formal education is available for data analysis, it would be best if you enroll yourself in a data analyst program.