How I’m building a job board for Data Analysts, Update #08 - for August 2023
Hi all,
on Dec 19th I launched DataAnalyst.com - this is the eighth 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.
So, just a reminder that early stages vision is to become the #1 job board for data analysts - hand-picking interesting data analyst job opportunities across industries.
Let’s dive right in:
Statistics
1. General Observations
Stats
DataAnalyst.com has been online for just over 8 months, and we’re bringing new, hand curated data analyst jobs onto the site daily - all of them including a salary range.
There’s now 1,800+ people subscribed to the newsletter, and I can’t thank you enough for your support and for joining us on the journey.
First job paid posting
To those who monitor the above table closely, you’ve probably noticed the number 1 in the paid posts cell for August.
Yes, it only took 7 months and 16 days to get a first paid job posting on the site. Hurray!
Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue purchased a fast-track job posting - it came organically, which is a great sign as well.
It also came in with a lesson learnt - after tweaking flows / forms, always double check that you didn’t leave a bug behind. Unfortunately for me I did, and they couldn’t complete the purchase, but fortunately they reached out and I solved the issue immediately. I’ve also upgraded the posting to a featured one, free of charge - I think this is particularly important. Linkedins, Indeeds of the world are too complex to ensure a human connection with each client, while as a solofounder, I want to make sure I go over and beyond each time someone puts trusts in me and the service. That’s something I do believe founders should strive for, and something that will set them apart.
Stats - Bounce, numbers, bounce
After seeing a massive dip in traffic, apply now clicks and Google impressions in July, looks like August numbers bounced back with vengeance, driven primarily by skyrocketing Google impressions / clicks.
I’d be grateful if someone could please explain to me Google Search Console Clicks vs Google Analytics Visitors - shouldn’t each click that comes from Google Search, leading to the site, also mean that’s a visitor coming in?
Where did 4,421 people come from?
- Direct - 51%
- Organic - 35%
- Social - 14% (automated job postings on Twitter, Linkedin, Reddit)
SEO optimisation - I’ve also spent some time over the summer using tools such as SEMRush / Ahrefs / Moz to run some high level audits and understand how the site performs on the SEO front. This led to a lot of time spent on making significant on-page changes to improve keyword optimisation, rewriting meta descriptions and adding alt descriptions to all the images on the site. Whether this was something that caused the sudden Google love, I don’t know, but this is probably something that could (and should) have been done a lot earlier. Having said that, it’s now something that I pay attention to with each update that I make on the site.
Things on top of my mind
a) Expired Listings
There’s feedback regarding some of the jobs on the site already expiring and leading to non-existing listings. Decided to address this in two ways:
First, I found out Ahrefs has a free “Site Audit” tier, which crawls the whole site and provides a report including all the issues i.e missing alt descriptions, including 404 links.
Second, on each listing I’ve now included a link for any visitor to report an expiring listing. Hopefully this will improve the experience. I’m still leaving listings (without apply buttons) on the site, so people can see previous open roles and salary ranges.
b) Outreach
One of my main priorities for the coming 3 months is reaching out to organisations hiring data analysts and educating them about the niche job board, and how they can benefit by sharing their opportunities on the site.
Additionally, I did notice quite a few .edu emails signed up to the Newsletter. This could be an interesting angle to explore, reaching out to universities, sharing that their students are using the site. This could lead to both driving in visitors, as well as potentially getting a backlink that would help increase the authority of the site.
c) UX/UI
Lesson learnt - do not use experimental browsers when you try to do website design - I’ve been using Arc browser since the start of the year, with the toolbar being on the left hand side.
I’ve recently used various browsers and monitors to see how the site looks on various sizes, and it’s an absolute mess -> will need to dedicate some time to standardize sections and elements, so it’s a more consistent experience.
BusinessAnalyst.com
As I’ve mentioned before, I recently launched BusinessAnalyst.com - where I’m looking to replicate step by step what I’ve done over the last 8 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 (afterall, 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 consistent 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.
2. “Day in the Life” - a series of interviews with data analysts sharing their experience, thoughts and advice.
Another 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.
Alex, who is a BI manager at AWS, has shared some fantastic insights, and I’d love to share his advice on building a portfolio.
“I’ve been mentoring a few folks on this recently, ranging from college grads to mid-career individuals in non-tech roles. My recommendation to each is to build an end to end portfolio of work. An example is using python to web scrape information from a website and persist to a normalized data structure in a database, using SQL to write queries and analyze that information, and then use Tableau or PowerBI to visualize results and share insights. Each step of this process is important for a rockstar Data Analyst/BI Engineer and will showcase the capability to do the work for hiring managers.”
We also briefly cover the question of the Year: Is AI/ChatGPT a threat to data analysts?
Highly recommend reading the full interview.
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
- Monthly US data analyst market summary
- 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
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