2/3 How to create a portfolio in a snap ⚡️
1. Why a portfolio will definitely increase your chances to get hired? 🤑
This email is the second on how to start a data project for Data Analyst beginners. Last week we saw how to start from scratch and choose your personal project.
Now that you have a more precise idea of what you could achieve, it is time to learn how to build it. Let’s dive into it.
⏱ Reading time: 2 min
Legitimize one’s knowledge to the relevant audience and demonstrate one’s abilities as the competition is fierce 🏆
A portfolio can be very beneficial for a future data analysts as it allows them to showcase their skills, knowledge, and experience to potential employers. It can give them an edge over other candidates and increase their chances of getting hired.
Demonstrates your skills and expertise: A portfolio showcases your skills and expertise in data analysis, visualization, and presentation. It helps potential employers or clients understand what you can do and how you can add value to their organization.
Provides evidence of your work: A portfolio provides evidence of your work and the impact it has had. It demonstrates your ability to take data and turn it into insights that can inform decision-making.
Helps you stand out in a competitive job market: In a competitive job market, a portfolio can help you stand out from other candidates. It shows that you are proactive and dedicated to your work.
Allows you to showcase your creativity: A portfolio is an opportunity to showcase your creativity and problem-solving skills. You can demonstrate how you approach complex data problems and how you develop innovative solutions.
Builds your personal brand: Creating a portfolio is a way to build your personal brand and establish yourself as a thought leader in the field of data analysis. You can share your portfolio on social media and other platforms to increase your visibility and reach.
Overall, a portfolio is a powerful tool for data analysts or any data job looking to advance what you are looking for.
2. What should a good portfolio include?
A portfolio obviously depends on what you are seeking. In this newsletter, we only cover Data Analysts’ portfolios.
An overview of web portfolios: The bible of good profiles
If you don’t get the last email, here is a quick reminder of the good profile to learn from :
As you can see it is not about how many projects you are achieving but making them as visual as possible. Quality before quantity, always.
The structure of a good portfolio
Make your profile impactful 👊
Present a good overview of which need you are willing to solve and what your ambitions are. More than technique, a good portfolio should be the most user-friendly as possible and eye-catching to make your audience grasp your talent as showcasing insights.
Don’t forget that your first target is your next client or your employer, who does not have much time to read your profile and surely won’t look closely at your code.
Make your data interactive 📱
The more your audience will interact with the analysis you are providing, the more valuable you will be in the eyes of your audience. Dashboard on Tableau or any free BI Tools is way more impactful than reading a notebook as an insipid summary of code and visualizations
Not more not less
3. Tools for doing an outstanding portfolio without any coding skill 🆘
Process: websites for giving you ideas about projects 💡
Which platforms and projects to curate on the web?
Explore online data visualization galleries and blogs. These resources often feature inspiring examples of data analysis and visualization.
👉 YouTube : a lot of content is available on the platform, go check it !
👉 DataCamp : DataCamp is an online courses platforms that provide you Data Analysis Tracks and Open Projects with a full range of contents on the blog.
👉 Kaggle : Kaggle is a must-know popular database for every data contest and project of the data nerd community. Major enterprises are uploading their databases in many business areas like sport, health and care, retail, food, and beverages…
👉 ChatGPT: ChatGPT is the fastest way to have code for every visualization you want without changing it every time the parameters and looking in libraries for numerous options for rendering your graph catchy. 😉
Take action: open APIs for building your own databases and data pipelines 🤿
Plenty of open APIs are available on the web for running data pipelines. As mentioned in the previous email, public APIs are a good way to get data for your project.
https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
I will send a complete tutorial in a dedicated email for building your step-by-step data pipeline and running it on your local machine without any data engineering skills, only code basics.
Think about visualization before coding 📊
How do you want to visualize the data you want to show? This will depend on the KPIs by which one you want to conduct your analysis.
Do you want to analyze a numeric value over time?
Do you want to analyze proportions?
How many series do you have to include in your graphs?
Answering these two questions will highly improve your understanding of what you are delivering and how to explain it consequently. Your graphs should be eye-catcher and seize one KPI each, not several. Otherwise, you will confuse your audience.
Numerous sites exist for giving you tutorials about how to visualize with R and Python or Tableau and Power BI.
From Data to Viz is a great site for choosing the right graph by each type of KPI (numeric, category, areas…)
Natives graphs of BI tools are often great to start with as you don’t want to show your audience visualizations they never saw before. Keep it simple. In a majority of cases the line and bar charts are great for your need as they are highly customizable (stacked bar or areas, markers and labels…)
4.3 Make it public : tools for showcasing your data analyst skills as Data Analyst 🧑🏫
Notion
Notion is an all-in-one organizer, a writing tool you can even publish with. As you are focusing on being a better Data Analyst and not a back or front-end developer, you can dynamically import your Data Visualizations in PDF format or as pictures inside your portfolio for showcasing your insights to your audience.
👉 Notion
Here you can see my portfolio where I have included some projects :
➕ You can even format your CV as a page inside your portfolio
Linkedin is your best friend for publishing and lets others hear about your successes and projects. Don’t be shy to write on your LinkedIn page, you will get used to it.
Tableau Public
Tableau offers you a one-year free tear license as student. It is a great visualization tool you can even make your viewers interact with on tableau public. Instead of Power BI which only offers you a two weeks free tier license and is not as easy to handle at is shows.
You can download it there 👉 Tableau Public
GitHub
GitHub allows you to commit, add and pull your code for managing your projects and implementations. Every tech-savvy people should have some basics in GitHub management for documenting and saving your code in a company repository, for example.
By the way, I am thinking about providing you additional content like step-by-step tutorial e-books for Data Analysis with all the resources you need for boosting your start of a career as a junior freelancer. Will you be interested ?
It is all for today, I hope you get some useful resources to start your project. In the next email, we will tackle how to properly showcase it for your audience 😉