How I’m building a job board for Data Analysts, Update #06 - for June 2023
Hi all,
on Dec 19th I launched DataAnalyst.com - this is the half-a-year-in 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 been online for just over 6 months (yay, half a year mark) and we’ve brought over 1,388 hand curated data analyst jobs onto the site - all of them including a salary range.
There’s now 1,400+ people subscribed to the newsletter, and I can’t thank you enough for your support and for joining us on the journey.
In the last two months, the site grew to around 5,000 monthly visitors, however in June we’ve seen a significant drop in visitor (-25%) / pageview numbers.
For now, I’m attributing this to the decrease in number of job postings added daily to the site (with that goes hand in hand decrease of social media posts on Twitter/Linked, and it didn’t help that my subreddit got banned for no reason - thanks spez).
In the early days, I would be posting between 10 - 15 jobs daily, looking to brute-force the marketplace conundrum and bring initial traffic in. At the same time I knew this was not sustainable in the long run, particularly on the monetization front - if companies see jobs added by me for free, why would they engage themselves?
On the other hand, this was the first month where we registered more data analyst applications being started from the site (4,561), than visitors (4,029). I see this being a healthy improvement in egagement, afterall, it’s not just about the number of visitors, but about the number of qualified applicants who actually apply to those oppotunities listed.
While looking at the numbers go down isn’t a pretty sight, I do believe that in combination with the organic traffic, it makes sense to have the (hopefully) short term dip, as it’ll pave way for monetizing. Obviously this means there will be less jobs to apply to for now, but until I see steady inflow of company-posted jobs, I will not be looking to decrease the frequency / quality / quanity of listings any more.
Speaking of which - Google impressions are over 25% up, leading to just over 50% increase in clicks, which suggests organic growth, but, it also leads me to a following rant…(apologies in advance)
Analytics rant
I like data (duh). I’m not saying I’m great with data, just that I do like to take it into account - I’m a firm believer that in most situations, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
Over the last two months, I’ve been running in parallel Google Analytics, GA4 and Nocodelytics.
First of all, seriously, GA4, what the f? As a Xoogler I’m beyond confused, has anyone from their team actually tried using it before forcing it out.
Secondly, none of the data adds up. Comparing to Google Analytics as the base, GA4 shows -10% of visitors/pageviews, while Nocodelytics +20% of visitors/pageviews.
And don’t even get me started on the Google Search Console - showing 3.3k clicks, while GA actually only showing around 1k organic. These numbers do.not.add.up
I’m not hung up on it, the project doesn’t live or die based on analytics, but trying to make sense of what works and what doesn’t, does get annoying.
BusinessAnalyst.com
Some of you may have noticed that I’ve also recently launched BusinessAnalyst.com - where I’m looking to replicate step by step what I’ve done over the last 6 months with DataAnalyst. The overall idea is to create a network of sites, benefiting from the same infrastructure, serving and helping different career paths, and making a collaboration with organisations much more appealing (after all, most companies who hire for data analysts also look for business analysts and vice versa). Arguably, this might not make much sense seeing that DA still hasn’t brought any revenue in, but on the other hand, I can reuse the whole tech stack and structures already in place, halve my cost per project, while doubling the surface area to catch me some luck. Anyways, how this will work out is a case study for another time.
2. The Data Analyst Guide - “How to Become a Data Analyst”
We are continuing on our mission to building out DataAnalyst.com - not just as a job board, but also as an educational hub - from interviews with experienced professional, best practices, to advice about getting into the industry.
As mentioned in my previous updates, on a monthly basis, we’ve been utilising the data available to developing and sharing 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 in the United States.
This ended up leading to the release of The data analyst salary guide - which provides the overview of salaries in various industries - and also shows a more detailed view on each industry page, with a deep dive into how much entry level, senior and lead data analysts can earn depending on their experience.
Building even further on our knowledge base of interviews, insights and resources, I’m super excited to share that we’ve launched the first version of The Data Analyst Guide - an in depth guide to becoming a data analyst.
The guide covers topics such as:
- understanding the role and responsibilities of a data analyst
- becoming a data analyst, and what it obtains - from education, experience, to technical and soft skills
- the well known not-so-secret hack - building your own portfolio
- career development and salary guide (yes, our own!)
As we continue growing, the goal is for the guide to be a living document - constantly evolving and incorporating new findings, advice and insights.
Share what you think about the first version.
For the US, we’ve also released the June edition of Market Insights, you can see the full report
3. “Day in the Life” - a series of interviews with data analysts sharing their experience, thoughts and advice.
The next interview from our series has been published. In these interviews, we aim to share stories and experiences about the route to becoming a data analyst, keeping up with the skillset, recommendations to aspiring data analysts and much more.
We spoke with Maggie - while technically her current title is Data Scientist, she primarily works on an Analytics team and have always been more in the Analytics space.
She has her own newsletter at Data Storyteller, where she shares her experience about her career pivot (she moved from marketing!) and also provides actionable advice for a career in data.
On her advice for those aspiring to enter the industry - how about moving internally, within your current organisation?
“The internal transfer is going to be the easiest way to break in. You already (presumably) have a good reputation at the company, you already understand the business, and if there is any kind of hiring freeze, hiring internally might be the only way to fill open roles. For entry or junior roles, many hiring managers would rather train an internal candidate (with a good reputation) on the technical skills than take a risk on an external hire. About 10% of the people on my current analytics team transferred internally (from BI/data engineering, software engineering, account management, etc).”
We’ve also touched upon the Question of the Year: Is AI/Chat GPT a threat to data analysts?
Highly recommend reading the full interview
What’s currently on my mind (random musings)
Re: Newsletter - when starting, I wanted the newsletter to be sent on a weekly basis, containing the latest jobs. The more I thought about it, the more I became against the idea - after-all, people could visit the site and see, why spam their emails? At the same time, the point of the site is to help people find a role - once they would, they wouldn’t really need weekly emails with latest jobs.
The current format is once per month, contains insights, interview and a bit of content - and it’s seeing consistent 60% open rate, and < 1% unsubscribe rate. It clearly provides some value - but the question is, could I increase the frequency? What type of content, value could I be bringing on a more consistent basis?
Re: Reaching out to companies for featured postings
I’ve been tracking job posts that I mark as “featured” on the site - on average, they would receive around 150 views in the first week, with 50 applications made.
Out of interest, I tried launching LinkedIn sponsored post campaign. Their estimate results? Pay $1,500/month for a total of 112 applicants
That definitely showcases the strength of DataAnalyst, but I am very skeptical about the (very poor) LinkedIn performance.
Six months in, and still at 0 paid job postings on the site. I’m not surprised, I didn’t really have expectations it would happen in the first year, but at the same time, I do need to make a plan for the end of Q3, Q4 and Q1 of how to bring companies on board. Why should they be posting on DataAnalyst while they posting on Indeed/LinkedIn? What’s the data that I can bring to show the value and ROI they could see from the site?
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…, but…above…)
- Monthly US data analyst market insights
- Improving the overall site experience (this one is a never ending activity)
- Continuing to bring you Data Analysts across their experience levels, to share tips, tricks and their thoughts
- Keep breaking the 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 have an ongoing “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.
Alex