More Statistics job titles

Current trends impacting statistics jobs

A candidate who majored in Statistics, Data Science or Business Analytics is the most sought out by employers seeking to fill vacancies in these fields. A few of the best positions include statistician, operations analyst, data analyst, and business intelligence analyst. The market for data science and analytical skills is booming as this analysis aids businesses by informing trends and other metrics that can help them execute effective strategies. As finance and insurance, health care and retail trade are highly dependent on data science, the hunt for these professionals is enormous.

According to the employment projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in statistics will increase 34.6% by 2029.

Top six soft skills needed for statistics jobs

In the statistics industry, having strong mathematics and statistics knowledge is significant. However, you must also possess an analytical and technical understanding of conducting research, data acquisition, modeling and statistical analysis. Your success and productivity also depend significantly on your collaborative nature, effective communication, empathetic leadership and critical thinking.

Let’s take a look at the top soft skills you’ll need to be successful in statistics roles:

• Interpersonal and communication skills

  Working in the field of statistics requires collaborating with multiple teams, clients and stakeholders. To do this effectively, you need to apply interpersonal skills to work both with others and independently. You'll also be working to communicate your findings in the form of one-on-one, group meetings and presentations. Thus, your communication skills must be up to par to explain complex information in easily understood terms.

• Critical thinking

  The primary responsibility of most roles in the field is to analyze data. While data analytics is a technical skill, the ability to think critically is not. You must be capable of taking research questions, such as "why aren't our customers interested in our product?" and develop a process to find the answer to that question. You must have the ability to conceive ideas, plan an information gathering strategy, analyze data and extract inputs and conclusions, among other responsibilities. According to an article in Harvard Business Review, to develop your critical thinking skills, you must avoid assumptions, challenging the logic behind some of the company's arguments, and looking for input from others.

• Problem-solving skills

  Similarly to critical thinking skills, those wanting to work in statistics must possess problem-solving skills. Using the same question from the above scenario, "why aren't our customers interested in our product" you must apply your skills to solve the issue leading to a lack of sales, thus, producing sales. This is the main reason behind many jobs in statistics: to solve problems using data, not just develop a process to analyze it.

• Organizational skills

  When working with many data sets, multiple priorities, and varied tasks, organizational skills are a must. These skills will allow you to easily access the data when you need it, effectively prioritize your tasks based on due dates and complete projects on time.

• Attention to detail

  Analyzing data requires excellent attention to detail. The vast number of data sets one can be working with can easily lead to errors in data entry, analysis or inconsistencies. To ensure your reports are accurate, you must catch any errors or discrepancies in your work data before presenting.

• Innovation and automation

  A role that requires strong problem-solving and organizational skills like those in statistics requires the candidate to strive for innovation and automation of processes. It is valuable to improve upon existing processes and update them to streamline data collection and analysis, allowing you to get more work done in less effort.

Educational requirements

The minimum requirement for a role in statistics is a bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Statistics, Business Analysis, Data Analytics, Engineering, Computer Science, or similar fields. While some employers accept candidates with only a high school diploma, they prefer candidates with a formal degree, especially in software or programming languages such as SQL, Python, Azure, Tableau and PowerBI.

To advance in the field, you will have to receive a master’s degree along with between five to nine years of work experience in fields related to data science and leadership. If you’re looking to work in research or teach at universities, a Ph.D. in Statistics is essential.

Getting certified in the area of statistics is also beneficial to give you a competitive edge. Some reputed certifications you can consider in this area are Google Professional Data Engineer Certification, Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate or IBM Data Science Professional Certificate.