How to start your Business Analyst career?

How to start your business analyst career, if that’s the question, you have in your mind, then you have reached the right place. Business analyst is one of the most promising career options in the modern era. It offers career growth, satisfaction, and good remuneration. The world of business analysis is vast and has many dimensions. One must start small and upskill regularly to reap the benefits of this field.

In this guide, we are going to provide a primer on how to get started with your business analyst career.

Who is a Business Analyst?

A Business Analyst is an interface between the Business (The client) and the Technology team. Understanding the role of Business Analyst is important if you want to become a Business Analyst. It will help you prepare well for the role.

To understand the role, it’s important to understand a project team structure. In a software project team, we first have a project manager/director who heads the team. However, if it is a big team or an organization, then there will be a senior project manager and under that, there will be multiple project managers.

Business Analysts, testing managers, Technical leads, and tech architects are part of the project team and report to the Project head/Manager. See the picture below.

Fig 1 Project Team Structure

Business Analyst in the team is responsible for understanding the requirements of the business team. These requirements are not detailed enough and may not be good for developing software. So, The Business Analyst details these requirements and prepares a requirements specifications document known as SRS/FRD etc.

Fig 2 Business Analyst in Project

To start your Business Analyst, it’s important to get yourself appropriately skilled so that the transition to this role is smooth and efficient.

Skills of a Business Analyst

Here is a set of skills which every business analyst must acquire to become a Business Analyst and to perform their day-to-day activities:

1. Soft skills: Soft skills are important for Business Analysts. A Business Analyst needs to interact with the client as well as the technology team. So, communication, interaction, and behavioural skills play a crucial role in your business analyst career. For example, presentation skills are also a part of communication skills, as they involve how effectively you can convey the information to your customers or your team.
2. Core BA skills: This includes your ability to create process diagrams, work on SRS documents, understand agile methodologies, learn about the software development process, understand requirement elicitation techniques, and learn about skills relevant to core BA skills such as UML, agile, process modelling, elicitation, and so on.
3. Domain knowledge: However, as an entry-level business analyst, it is not a mandatory skill but is considered good to have skill. For example, if you are working on a banking project, then you must understand banking terms and terminologies as it helps you to understand the business and the customers better.
4. Finally, we have Functional testing: It means that software that your team develops, then you as a business analyst must have the ability to validate the software. This way customers receive the final version of the software and do not feel dissatisfied.

Types of Business Analysts in the Modern Era

We have heard from learners at Techcanvass that when they look at the business analyst profile and the job descriptions, they find that the companies are expecting different skill sets for the same JD title – which is a business analyst. It is very confusing for everyone as to why in some cases, you need to have Python and R whereas in some cases completely different skills are asked for.

Why so much confusion about the types of business analysts? Let us clarify all the types of business analysts employed by the IT industry and clear the confusion.

Let us start by understanding first that business analysis is a function. It is not just a designation, there are several aspects that are related to business analysis, right from participating in the strategic analysis to execution of the project and the type of the projects that are being executed by the IT industry

Let us start by looking at the three different types of business analysts who work on a project.

1. IT Business Analyst

Here is a business analyst which is a completely non-programming role where as a business analyst you interact with the stakeholders to capture the requirements, detail it out for modeling, create prototypes, create process diagrams, and put it into a document called SRS or BRD. 

This profile is advertised most of the time and certifications like ECBA and the Business Analyst training programs primarily focus on this type of business analyst but apart from that you will also encounter types of business analyst where you are looking at programming skills so this is one of the primary types of business analyst which is employed by the IT industry which is a non-programming non- tech business analyst.

2. Business Analyst – Data Analytics

Another one is a business analyst who works on data analytics project or data analysis project. There you need to have skills that are related to data analytics like you need to know machine learning basics, you need to know artificial intelligence, you also might need to have our Python or programming skills.

3. Business Analyst – Reporting

The third type of business analyst is more to do with the reporting part so you are asked to work on reporting requirements of the customer. These reporting requirements can be simple to very complex, it could be as complex as creating a data warehouse and creating analytics reports or intelligence reports in that case you need to learn about visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau or even Python has the libraries to create visual charts. 

You also need to understand what are the different data analysis techniques. Something called exploratory data analysis is also going to be very useful. So, these are the primary three types of business analysts who work on different kinds of projects.

Background needed to become a Business Analyst

Do you need an IT background to become a Business Analyst? No, you don’t need an IT background to become a Business Analyst. We have helped professionals from diverse backgrounds in becoming a Business Analyst. The backgrounds of the aspirants were as shown below:

• Operations
• Travel
• Sales
• Marketing
• Market Research
• Teaching
• Technical Writing
• Banking
• Insurance
• Automotive Projects Finance

So, if you were worried about your non-IT background, then you need not worry. Just follow the plan explained below to make the transition.

Starting your Business Analyst career

Having understood the skills required in the previous section, let us now share the steps needed to start your BA career.

1. Assess your skills
2. Learn the skills
3. Get Certified
4. Gain Experience
5. Update Your resume
6. Prepare for Interview
7. Start applying for jobs

Step 1: Assess your skills

Once you have understood the skills required, the next step is to evaluate your skills. You have to check whether the skills you have are relevant for a business analyst role. So the skills which are relevant are known as transferable skills. For example, if you are a relationship manager, then you already have customer handling skills, which is a skill also relevant for a business analyst. Hence, you can use this skill as it is transferable to your business analyst career as well.

Now once you evaluate your skills, you might come across gaps. For example, there may be skills you may not know, like UML or Agile. Then in such a situation, you should start working on these skills. 

So how can you learn these skills? 

Step 2: Learn the skills

You can always join training programs that offer skill learning sessions like for soft skills, domain knowledge and so on. So you can start by joining a training program. For example, Techcanvass offers ECBA training programs and many other domain training programs, that allow you to leverage their one-on-one training sessions, practical knowledge, and other such features. You can visit the website and check out their training programs in detail. 

Step 3: Get certified

The next crucial step towards starting a business analyst career to GET CERTIFIED. Gaining a professional certification will put you 10x ahead in your business analysis career journey and will give you various job opportunities in the market.

Must get ECBA Certified because:

We recommend the IIBA ECBA Certification as it is an entry-level credential for aspiring business analysts and is one of the most renowned business analysis credentials globally. Gaining this certification will validate your skills and knowledge as this credential is not easy to crack as it sounds. So, the employer will feel obligated to look at your resume or consider you as a potential candidate for the job.

Techcanvass offers a comprehensive ECBA Certification training for becoming a Business Analyst and also for ECBA Certification Preparation. 

Step 4: Gain experience

Now this step involves gaining as much experience as you could in the business analysis domain. But the real question is how would you gain experience if you are unable to get work?

There are two ways, in which you can try and gain experience:

1.  Join as an intern even though the remuneration is not – what you want 6 months of internship will go a long way in helping you build confidence and making your resume employable. Few recommended internship portals are- Internshala and Glassdoor.
2. You can also approach your seniors, family members to help you get into a job, if they are working in IT companies

Step 5: Update your resume

Now while you are updating your resume, make sure you are using relevant keywords. In this new era, AI is playing an essential role in shortlisting the resumes for the companies. So, AI will scan the resumes for specific or keywords relevant to the business analyst role. If you are not using relevant keywords, your resume might not be shortlisted by the company.

Always remember that AI will scan your resume for experience, keywords, and certifications. Hence, it’s better to use relevant keywords in your resume and correctly mention your experience and list all your certifications.

Step 6: Prepare for interview

The next step is to prepare for job interviews. Here are few of our suggestions on how you can prepare for your interviews:

1. You can leverage the question-answer interview series on Youtube by Techcanvass.
2. When you enroll for your ECBA Certification training at Techcanvass, you can take advantage of the rigorous interview training sessions.
3. You can always network within the business analysis groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to find out the kind of questions other professionals were asked in the interview. So, it is always great to learn from other’s experiences.
4. You can go through the internet, skim through different blogs and articles around question-answers for entry-level BA interviews.

Step 7: Start applying for the BA jobs

The last step is of course to upload your updated resume on job portals and start applying to business analyst jobs.

For your ease, we are listing down the top job portals in India and USA for your reference.

Conclusion

Let us start with the most important thing. You don’t need to have a technology or IT background to become a Business Analyst. It means that Business analysis is an attractive option for everyone regardless of their educational and professional backgrounds due to its versatility and broad applicability.

Now, if you’re ready to dive into the dynamic world of Business Analysis, our ECBA certification course serves as the ideal gateway to a rewarding career. Offering essential skills and knowledge to thrive in any industry, this program is designed for individuals with passion and determination, irrespective of their IT background. Seize the opportunity to enrol now and unlock a future filled with possibilities!