What Makes You a Unicorn in Data Analytics?

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Which one you like best?

Have you ever wondered if you’re good enough in your field?

Of course you have.

There are tell-tale signs that you’re a unicorn in data analytics. And it’s not what you think it is.

What Are They?

First, you understand the business extremely well.

This is something I learned from my manager in my first industry job out of academia. At the time I was in healthcare insurance, pricing Obamacare as an actuary.

Each day we had a lot of data issues and had to find answers in a tight time frame. Data discrepancy issues came from several major databases acquired through mergers at my company then.

My manager was always able to find answers to the weirdest data issues. He was a programmer before he became an actuary. However, that wasn’t why he was good at data analytics. It was from his “number” sense and his intimate knowledge with the healthcare data.

Before people came to him, he already knew what was wrong with the data. When he didn’t know, he’d be able to figure it out within an hour or two. He left the company and has been successful in data science and analytics.

Fast forward 9 years, I got to be in his position. I could finally understand how he was able to do it. In some way, I’ve matured to a point like him.

Here are the 4 tell-tale signs you’re a unicorn in data analytics:

1. You Can Predict Data Issues

You’ve been in the trenches long enough to know when the bomb can hit you.

Data can come from multiple sources. Different people have dealt with it, processed it and maybe manipulated it. When you know the business, you can tell where it can go wrong.

As an actuary, the first place I’d investigate was the procedure codes whenever we had unusually high claims besides fraud and abuse. For example, the procedure code would be 111. People entered it 1l1, 1ll, and lll.

The data is always messy, but you’ve seen enough to know how to handle it with ease.

2. You Always Deliver What Is Asked

You take the time to listen to your stakeholders. Be a therapist for all their data issues. When they make a suggestion, you implement it. Although it sounds simple, you’ll be shocked at how many stakeholders never get what they need.

During my time in consulting, the SQL programmer refused to make a change in the database schema because she didn’t think we needed it. She was let go after we tried for months to get her to do it. That was when I picked up SQL because I couldn’t stand waiting for someone like this to stall my work.

3. Your Stakeholders and You Are in Sync

You understand the business so well that you know what your stakeholders need before they even ask. I was intimately familiar with the healthcare data. I knew what my stakeholders wanted because I was a stakeholder once.

I remember one day I showed up at a kick-off meeting with a draft BI dashboard. After the demo, everyone just signed off, and we were done.

4. There Aren’t Weird Data Issues You Can’t Solve

There are always new data issues even for the same things you’ve been working on for months. Someone updated the data without telling you. Manual entries were not documented. I can go on and on for days. However, this doesn’t phase you because you’ve had enough experience to resolve the issues.

When a left join doesn’t work, you think of trailing spaces in the values that prevent you from joining correctly. With experience, you manage to figure out all kinds of data quirks.

What Makes You A Unicorn?

Unlike commonly believed that you need to know every cool thing in data science, machine learning,etc., you’re a unicorn in data analytics because you understand the business and can speak the lingo.

Technical skills are just a common denominator to enter the field. It has little to do with how well you program in Python, although that does help.

If you’re not eliminating pain points for your stakeholders, you’re useless to the business.

Data analytics is not an academic function of the business.

If you don’t help the business bring in revenue, you become a cost center that can be eliminated.

Knowing more technical stuff doesn’t move you up in the field.

Data analytics is about helping the business monetize.

If you can’t do that, you should find out why.

Here is how you can tell you’re a unicorn in data analytics:

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