Why is this a big concern for someone who was properly trained? Mainly because of 2 reasons:

1. Upcoming interview sessions
2. Fear of “What do I do after getting the job?”

I am going to divide this blog into 2 personas — one who has no experience at all (a freshie) and one who has professional experience, but not as a BA.

No experience

Let’s not go into the reason why after coming out of college somebody wants to become a BA right away; it’s not very uncommon.

A lot of people connected with me to get the answer to the same question. So here are some of the crucial steps you can follow:

1. Priority should always be to learn more and more and get that tag of experience at this stage.
2. Just for the sake of becoming a Business Analyst, don’t ignore the job roles coming through your on or off campus placements. Your focus should be getting the professional experience asap.
3. Opt for an internship, work under someone to understand a BA actually does in and out.
4. There are tons of resources available online in the form of articles, newsletters, webinars, video courses, e-books, etc. Pick one and start learning (make sure to write everything down as notes).
5. Prepare your own portfolio. Pick a business problem and start working on it by making your own BRD or FRD document templates.
6. Then use this portfolio to showcase your work for getting freelancing opportunities.
7. Apply for associate roles with 0–1 year of experience and get your hands dirty in as many professional activities as you can.
8. Please don’t focus on salary at the initial stage. Remember that this is the phase where you have so much time and opportunity to learn so that after a few years companies understand your expertise.

I also worked for 3 years in a non-BA profile, but that 3 year experience helped me a lot.

I was very aware about how the corporate life works, how client interaction happens, how to talk in meetings, how to tackle difficult situations, etc. These are some of the basic skills which companies look for in a BA.

No experience as a BA

This bucket may include people who have more than 1 year of experience into something other than BA (not considered as a freshie).

As I also fall into the same bucket, below are some of the tried and tested steps you can follow to make sure you don’t end up struggling with this problem.

Mindset shift

The first and most important step is to stop thinking about it and start acting as if you are already a BA.

You should be so convincing in your actions and words that anybody can believe you are experienced enough to be a business analyst. Take as much advantage as you can, as you are already a professional.

How can you do that?

• Engage more with both top and bottom management, to understand how business stakeholders are handled and how the requirements are built from scratch.
• Let your voice be heard in meetings.
• Be upfront to suggest any out of the box ideas you might have to deal with any situations that might arise during your project.
• Open your eyes and ears to notice the working style of your BA colleague.

Focus on learning

As I said above:

You should be so convincing in your actions and words that anybody can believe you are experienced enough to be a business analyst.

Learning → Become confident enough with your knowledge → Achieve the above.

How you can learn more:

• Make LinkedIn your best friend

I remember when I was desperate to learn about this role, I used to randomly find BAs on LinkedIn, connect with them (sometimes over a call) and try to understand their work. It also helped me to set my approach on how to move ahead for the role switch.

• Make basics clear

Initially, it is really important to know the skeleton of this role and be very crisp and clear with the basics. For that, I personally read this book “How to start a business analyst career” by Laura Brandenburg. It gave me an idea about this role and made my decision more firm.

• Try internal mobility or work as a shadow

Rather than moving out completely, it’s always less struggling to move internally in your organization.

Talk to your manager, let him know your interest in this role and ask if it is possible to move into some other project as a BA, or moreover, as a shadow under a Senior BA. This will help you get the hands-on experience that you need.

• Training (not mandatory)

For me, internal mobility was not an option since the work environment in my company didn’t actually required any BAs.

So the final option left was to get a professional, or rather practical, training from someone experienced, to bring out that confidence in me. (ping me if you need resources for this)

I mentioned this is “not a mandatory” step because I know for some people, investing into training will not be an easy option. In that case, you can go ahead and start learning from the BABOK, if you are consistent enough in self-study.

P.S. BABOK covers a whole lot of stuff which actually a BA may not follow in a practical life scenario. Having training as an option can be an advantage here.

• Read a lot (if you like so)

I personally like reading, and hence I opted for a lot of newsletters which weekly ping me over my email with a new topic to learn as a BA.

I also liked to watch youtube videos to understand “A day in a life of a Business Analyst” for getting that feel of living a day as a BA.

Reading this daily content will help to get the practical lifestyle idea rather than just the theoretical knowledge.

Mould your current role

Finally, after changing your mindset and getting all the knowledge, here comes the difficult part.

The very first question an interviewer will ask is for you to explain your current role/project. And there you’ll be blank if you haven’t prepared yourself, before hitting apply.

You have to shape your current job role into a business analyst role. The way you do it will totally depend on what role you are in but here’s how you can describe it:

• Project explanation

Whether you are a developer, tester or anything else, you should be well aware about the ins and outs of your project.

Project explanation should start with a description of a business problem and what solution you are providing.

For e.g., we are building a product which is a live reporting tool for XYZ (client) to assess their major KPIs and metrics for customer development.

It should be accompanied with your role in the project. Now here comes the tricky part where it’s easy to stumble. Explain your role as if you are already working as a BA, something like this:

My role starts with taking the initial requirements from stakeholders to understand why they need this type of tool, then going in depth into the specifications. Everything is being noted down in an official BRD document version by version. After that, I get involved with the design team to prepare the wireframes and get them approved. Working on functional user stories and grooming them with the engineering team is another role I perform.

You can also explain to them what your day looks like, but through the eyes of a BA. Now you might be thinking “I’m a developer, how can I explain what a BA does?”

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter because you are going to be a BA now. Notice the way your BA colleagues work, how they handle stuff, how they manage documents and put together JIRA stories. Ask as many questions as possible to analyse their day.

I’m going to reiterate this again and again — take the fullest advantage of being in the professional role and having that experience already.

• Situation based questions

This is the other level of difficulty in an interview where BAs are being asked for a particular situation that happened in their work and how they handled it.

Now here you have to be more professional in your answer. Remember this, a situation can occur to anyone in a project, not necessarily to a BA. Try to think how you could’ve handled it and answer accordingly.

Interviewers will never accept the transcripted google answer, and they know it really well. They hate the happy flow so it’s better for you to be more practical than theoretical.

Pro tip: here I took the advantage of my LinkedIn connections to understand different scenarios they handle daily.

• Revamp CV/LinkedIn/Naukri

Not leaving behind the first impression of you being a Business Analyst. Don’t forget to mould your CV, LinkedIn profile (very important) and Naukri profile (being in India) as a BA professional.

Make sure to include all important keywords relevant to a BA for ATS screening.

There’s a lot you can come across while switching your job role to a BA and having no prior experience in that role. But it all definitely starts from changing the way you think.

Let’s connect to understand more on overcoming this hurdle.

Follow Bhavini Sapra to get more insights on a BA lifestyle and how you can end up being in one.

I will be covering more on how to deal with after job situations in my next blog.

High five!