Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash
Switching careers is never easy. It involves stepping out of one's comfort zone, confronting uncertainties, and dedicating countless hours to acquiring new skills and knowledge.
We know that a philosopher can become an analytics engineer. Now, consider a marketer, whose daily life revolves around understanding audiences, predicting trends, and crafting compelling narratives.How feasible is it for a Marketer to shift to an Analytics Engineer position?
Every profession, be it philosophy or marketing, carries a unique set of skills, and with the right mindset and resources, these skills can be channeled into the realm of analytics engineering.
While at a glance, these fields might seem worlds apart, the foundational data proficiency acquired in marketing plays a pivotal role when transitioning to analytics engineering.
Marketing professionals often develop hands-on experience with data analysis, visualization, and interpretation equips them with a keen analytical mindset, making the leap to analytics engineering more intuitive.
The marriage of marketing's strategic thinking with rigorous data handling and processing skills creates a unique blend of expertise. It's a testament to the fact that core skills developed in one domain can add value in another, underscoring the versatility and adaptability of data-driven professionals in our dynamic digital age.
I'm writing this blog while at my second week at the Nimbus Academy, learning to become an analytics engineer. My journey in data, however, started long ago.
While completing my Masters in corporate communication at the University of Amsterdam, I attended what was my favorite class of the entire course: Digital Analytics.
This course illuminated the steps of using data, from gathering and understanding it, to preparing it for analysis, building predictive models, and leveraging these models to provide actionable recommendations that tackle real-world challenges.
The course taught me data theory as well as coding in Python to clean and join datasets, perform explorative data analysis (EDA), and statistical analysis.
After completing my studies, I entered the professional world, full of enthusiasm to explore content and social media marketing. In these roles, however, what truly captured my attention was not just the content creation, but the intricate world of data and reporting.
This revelation inspired me to deepen my knowledge and skills, turning my career towards data. That's why I decided to upskill.
My upskilling journey began on a platform called DataCamp. It was here that I immersed myself in data theory and practical analysis techniques, working through each module with hunger for knowledge. As hours turned into days, my proficiency in data theory and SQL grew, culminating in obtaining a Data Analyst Professional Certificate.
My learning didn’t stop there. I turned to YouTube to grow my passion for data and stumbled upon creators such as Luke Barousse:
Data Scientist vs Data Engineer vs Data Analyst by Luke Barousse on YouTube.In short, yes. All is needed is a passion for data and the motivation to put effort in learning the necessary skills. The step from marketing to analytics engineering is not as vast as it might seem. It's a strategic career move that builds upon the foundation laid by your marketing analytics skills.