I'll go into digital, let them teach me
How to become an analyst
Hard to find, easy to lose, impossible to forget
What is certification
Who needs certification and why
What are the prospects for certification?
Most specialists working in digital do not have a telegram database download specialized education, so having a diploma in our field plays a secondary role. The main thing is knowledge and skills, practical experience and recommendations from colleagues. They are becoming more important than a standard crust with a paper insert. In January 2019, the job search service Superjob even removed the "education" column from job postings. But questions arise: what criteria should companies use to search for qualified personnel and how can a novice specialist get into the profession? Perhaps certification will be the answer. In this article, I want to share my experience of passing certification and thoughts on why and who needs it and whether it has prospects in Russia.
I'll go into digital, let them teach me
First, a little history
.It was difficult for the pioneers in digital — the new wonderful world of Internet advertising was learned through trial and error, did not guarantee anything and was open to everyone. Specialists were engaged in self-training and came to certain decisions empirically.
There are now courses that provide a certain basis, but it is important not to make a mistake with the choice: in recent years there have been a lot of them, and a significant part of them are of low quality.
Every second person who has tried to launch an advertising campaign and understands where to look for traffic sources considers it necessary to talk about this at a webinar or business breakfast. I don’t want to upset fans of free courses and master classes from nameless characters, but 99% of this information can be easily found in the public domain. You will have to pay for useful knowledge and good speakers.
I will make a small digression and give some useful advice to those who have decided to buy a course on analytics and do not want to waste money:
Check out the course reviews on social media by hashtag. You can assess their veracity by checking out the commentator's profile.
Analyze the speakers — their publications, cases, etc. Pay attention to the disclosure of the topic in the materials and the ability to get rid of fluff. The report will be rich and interesting if the speaker knows how to correctly highlight and present the main idea.
Research your partners - strong brands won't advertise a bad product.
Assess the level of practical information in the program — relevant tools and methods. Open any master class called "Basics of Analytics" and compare the titles with the topics of the speeches. If they match by more than 20%, then you definitely shouldn't buy such a course.
Directly ask the opinion of those who have already completed the program: simply write to participants on social networks.
It is advisable to monitor agencies that support or organize educational programs in advance, since in most cases they offer employment to the best students. Of course, we are talking about a starting position with a probationary period, but you have to start somewhere. You will get the most important thing - practice and experience, the bearers of which are your future colleagues.
How to become an analyst
I will tell you my story, which is similar to the path of many specialists who came to digital from another field. I worked in a marketing agency in a financial and administrative position. Then I became extremely interested in the work of my colleagues: analysts, programmers, targetologists. I liked how analysts delved into the details of the business, saw an objective picture, studied the data and adjusted the course based on the numbers. I began to watch webinars, attend courses, meet specialists, analyze their cases and monitor the labor market.
After several months of self-study, I got into the marketing agency "Biplan". The company was expanding its analytics department and was looking for new employees who were ready to learn and grow together with other newcomers. At first, I had doubts - after all, I am not a programmer or a mathematician, although by that time I had accumulated a small practical base. But a caring mentor and manager, diligence, various projects and assistance in working on them, constant knowledge pumping and interest in the profession did their job.
An analyst should never stop at what has been achieved, continuing their education regardless of fatigue and workload. Fortunately, the regular emergence of new tools, analytics systems and expansion of their functionality will not let them get bored. Constant development and readiness for new challenges are an integral part of the profession.
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Hard to find, easy to lose, impossible to forget
When looking for an analyst, companies risk running into a low-skilled specialist who will not cope with the task of accumulating data and interpreting it. This problem is more often encountered by those who are trying to save on personnel. Representatives of medium and large businesses turn to an agency or form departments and divisions within the company.
On the agency side, there is an account manager, a traffic manager, and an agency director, so the client rarely communicates with analysts directly. Thus, it is difficult to get a bad analyst in the agency: the management itself will weed him out due to unsatisfactory results.
If a company wants to cut costs but still get a qualified specialist, then it needs to create favorable conditions so that the analyst can concentrate on the main thing.
What an analyst needs:
interesting and varied tasks;
growth prospects - both personal and within the company;
bonuses and premiums depending on the achievement of KPIs;
freedom in decision-making and the ability to be responsible for the final result;
access to specialized tools (additional costs need to be factored in here);
assistants and students to delegate and guide.
Where to find such a valuable employee and how to understand whether he is capable of solving the tasks set before him, working in a team and offering new non-standard solutions? Now let's move on to the main thing.
The Russian Center for Certification of Digital Specialists and RAEC have proposed a solution that should help companies determine who is in front of them: a crook with superficial knowledge who will spend money and will not even be able to explain the reason for the failure, or an experienced specialist.