How I’m building a job board for Data Analysts, Update #03 - for March 2023
Hi all,
on Dec 19th I launched DataAnalyst.com - this is the third update.
Want to make sure I document the journey, and keep myself honest, so each month I will be making a post about the statistics, progress, some thoughts and what are the next steps I want to be focusing on.
Early stages vision is to become the #1 job board for data analysts - hand-picking interesting data analyst job opportunities across industries.
Where I would like to see this going - my long term vision, is building a community of aspiring and professional data enthusiasts. A place for those who love data to collaborate, share, learn and develop their careers.
So, let’s dive right in.
Statistics
1. General Observations
Stats
DataAnalyst.com has now been live for just over three months, and we’ve published over 950 hand curated data analyst jobs onto the site - all of them including a salary range.
In March, we’ve seen steady traffic with just over 3,000 unique visitors, 15,000 page-views and we’ve been able to register approximately 2,900 data analyst applications being started from the site! While the numbers are a little bit lower than in a (shorter) February, I’m still very happy with the engagement, especially since very little marketing of the platform is done. Google impressions are also growing, so hopefully we’ll see a steady increase of organic traffic in the coming months.
First Testimonial
As you may have already noticed, we still haven’t had any paid posts published on the site. Over the last 3 months, there’s been very little done to reach out to HR departments of companies and to educate them about DataAnalyst existence, and our proposition. The primary reason is that I’d still like to see the traffic numbers improve, so when I do speak to those accountable for hiring, I could build the case of us being able to bring them qualified leads, much easier.
Nevertheless, I have been reaching out and talking to my Xoogler network (many of them are either running their own startup, or advising on growth), and I’m super excited to share the news that over the last month we’ve been cooperating with a data startup (an alternative to Snowflake that’s fast, simple to use, and open source), to bring them qualified candidates, and to help them build out their data team.
While those roles were not necessarily purely data analyst ones, the data analysis skills are transferable in the sense where one can also develop their career as data engineer or data solutions architect, particularly for those with more experience under their belt.
Being able to bring qualified candidates is extremely important for us, and this was a great first step in showcasing our authority and reach in the data analyst hiring space.
We will build on this experience, and continue developing trusted partnerships with organisations, to bring more expert interviews, and data analyst job opportunities on our site, for all of you to learn from and explore.
Ongoing challenges
It’s not all roses, and I am worried about being able to effectively cover the UK market - starting with lack of salary transparency, but also the market is largely being operated by recruitment industry, resulting in lower number of direct company listings. I am committed to my approach to only have job listings with salary posted, so will need to monitor over the next month if the time spent on the UK is worthwhile, particularly as there’s less than 5% of the visitors coming from the UK, and as a solo founder with limited time on my hands.
The “other side” of building with no-code solutions as a non-technical person
“Things take time, things break, and little annoying bugs add up.”
It’s something that I have been trying to figure out how to address - I don’t know how to code, to the degree where I couldn’t code myself out of a box.
Now, I know how to copy & paste code that can help me on the task, how to “read” the said code and tweak it to do what I need (on the 100th attempt), but when it comes to putting together few lines of code from scratch to fix an issue or deploy a new simple feature, I am absolutely clueless.
When it comes to no-code solutions, they are brilliant in a sense that they can provide few pre-built blocks so one can quickly stitch up a working prototype, or even a simple end-to-end solution. However, either the feature that you need is available in the core proposition, or one has to custom code it and integrate themselves. Another alternative is that there’s an add-on with a monthly subscription fee, but that gets expensive really quickly.
Let me just illustrate it with an example: I have received multiple follow ups from people mentioning how there’s quite a few expired job posts on the site. If I would put myself in the shoes of the visitor, I’d honestly be annoyed too.
No-code solution within Webflow? Auto-archive job postings after 45 days. While simple, and would probably clean up 80% of expired posts, it would still miss out on some expired, and archive some that are still active.
Optimal solution? Offer a button / emoji for people to report expired jobs, display the reported count on the posting to inform others, and auto-archive on a certain threshold. Effective, but I’ve been successfully failing all my experiments with this.
So, where I’m heading with this - reminder to myself, and to all those who build - 80 / 20 rule exists, and it works for a reason.
Also, I want to thank again to those of you who reached out with ideas, and feedback for improvement - I really value and reflect on all your thoughts, you are being heard, and just note that with me learning to code as I’m building the site, it does take a while to get things working, and launch on the site.
2. Data Analyst Job Market Insights
As the amount of job opportunities on the site grows, we’re utilising the data available to bringing you the third (March) edition of Market Insights - a deep dive into the data analyst job market, where we can have a look at the job openings and provide you all with insights on the latest hiring trends for the past month in the US and UK markets.
With the insights I’m trying to bring answers to questions such as: Which industries are hiring the most? Are we seeing any salary increases? And what about the remote working trend?
I can totally see that at least at the start, this will not be extensive enough to highlight any trends, but I do believe that doing this on a monthly basis, it is something that will provide value over the long term to those looking for roles - the more data points we collect, the more insights we can uncover.
For the US, March edition, you can see the full report here
3. “Day in the Life” - a series of interviews with data analysts sharing their experience, thoughts and advice.
We have shared the first interview on the 9th March, and it was with Eddie.
Eddie spoke about his career journey at a pharma/biotech company, where he started as Clinical Data Associate, grew into an analyst role, and now is in a Data Manager position.
My key insight from the interview was his advice to someone trying to get into the industry: “Don’t overestimate your competition. Many people just assume everyone else is an expert. They’re not! I’ve seen people in high level data roles that are only just starting to learn how to program.”
Highly recommend reading the full interview
4. Company directory
We’ve added a new page on site, where you can browse or search our list of companies who are currently looking to expand their team and have data analyst jobs available.
You can search for a specific company (i.e Apple, Nike), or keywords (i.e healthcare, logistics), our intelligent search can find it all!
Warning, it also looks for broad results in company descriptions, so you may come across a match or two that won’t make much sense, but hey, experiments.
Things in the pipeline
- New data analyst jobs, added daily
- Actually launching the weekly newsletter with the pick of best jobs directly to your inbox (yes, I know…)
- Monthly market insights (for the US & the UK market)
- Improving the overall site experience (this one is a never ending activity)
- Currently testing a feature that would allow visitors to report an expired job posting
3 ways you could help
- Looking for a new challenge? Check out the website - I’m adding new jobs daily
- Looking to hire a data analyst to your team? Do you know anyone looking to hire? Shoot me a message at alex@dataanalyst.com, and I’ll upgrade your first listing for free!
- As I mentioned, we’ve just launched the “Day of a Data Analyst” series. For those of you who are open to do an email based interview about your data analyst career journey, please just send me a message and we’ll organise something - would love to get you featured and share your experience with our readers!
If you have any questions, concerns, come across glitches - please just reach out, happy to chat.
Thank you all again, and see you in a month.
P.S: I realize these are getting longer, TLDR: Overall numbers good; First positive Testimonial; UK numbers down; Coding skills leaving a lot to be desired; Market Insights published; Great interview with Eddie
Alex