How to break into business analysis with no experience

How to break into business analysis with no experience?

If you want to break into business analysis you might find it a little challenging and frustrating especially if you have no experience. This article will give you practical actionable steps of how to break into business analysis and become a business analyst, even if you have no experience.

Why become a business analyst?

Before you start your quest into the business analyst career, first be sure its something you really want to do. I’ve written an article on what business analysis is and there you will get an idea of what business analysts do on a daily basis. Once you are sure you want to work in this field, then lets work on a strategy to get you to break into business analysis.

Here is how to become a business analyst:

1. Get a Bachelor’s Degree

To be a business analyst you need college education. You do not necessarily have to have a business  or IT related degree but that helps. Degrees such as Information Systems, Business and Management, Industrial Engineering, Communications and even Human Resources can be useful as well. Your type of degree isn’t really as important to employers for a business analyst job, it is enough to just have at least a Bachelors Degree.

2. Learn Basic Programming

In order to break into business analysis you will need to communicate with technical teams a lot so you have to understand technical concepts and jargons. You do not usually need to write any code or build any software, but you should have  the knowledge base to effectively communicate to these teams. Spend some time learning the basics of programming. I would suggest learning XML and PHP as well as learning SQL to write queries. You do not need to build elaborate software with any of these programming languages, so don’t go overboard – you just need the basics so you can understand when it is being talked about.

3. Gain experience by using case studies

Not having experience is the probably the most difficult part of breaking into business analysis. You can’t get experience because you don’t have a job and you can’t get the job because you don’t have the experience. This happens all the time in every career. Here is how you can break this cycle: Create your own work experience.

How can you create your own work experience?

You can create your own work experience in business analysis by building an arsenal of work samples from business case studies. This will  serve to prove to employers that even though you never worked in the field, you understand the concepts and can demonstrate  with tangible evidence, the work that you can produce.

Where to get case studies?

How does this work?  Where will you find case studies? First, think of any system that you use that you think can be improved and create a case study to improve it. That is how you can create work experience. Obviously it will be missing the team interactions and discussions, but it is something you can use to show employers your analytic ability and your quality of work. In your case study you need to cover these areas:

• Define a problem,
• Do an “as is” study
• Come up with stakeholder questions
• Develop a “to be” state with the solution
• Create process flows
• Write requirements
• Design screen mockups
• Write user stories ( to show you understand agile methodologies)

Real world example of a creating your own work experience

Let’s say you use Amazon to buy a gift for someone. You realize that although Amazon offers a gift wrapping service, they do not allow you to choose the gift motif, color  or design elements. You would really like to have this service available when you buy a gift and see it as a deficiency in the current Amazon shopping experience.

You could use this as your case study. You could define the problem ( lack of gift wrapping options), do an analysis and develop the solution that revamps the checkout process  for Amazon and includes your new process to allow shoppers to choose gift wrap design selection at checkout.

Included in this analysis would be process flows designs, requirements for the new process, user stories for the new process and screen mockups for the new checkout screens.  This will demonstrate your understanding and is simple enough to explain in an interview. For more on writing user stories check out this article.

You can make a case study out of any service  where you think there can be improvement in the process. Doing this type of analysis and having the documentation for the process improvement can help to show initiative and creativity.

How to use the case study as work experience

In an interview if you are asked about work experience, you can admit that you have never worked in the field but you have good analytical skills and you are so interested in business analysis that you have done some case studies for services you personally use that you see room for improvement. Then you whip out your portfolio with the work samples and speak to each of them. This will help convince employers that you are serious about being a business analyst and show them that you are a viable candidate for the job. It also gives them an example of your quality of work.

Here is an article from the Bridging-the-Gap blog that describes more on how to do work samples: How to Provide Work Samples that Get You Hired for a Business Analyst Job.

4. Learn the Tools

Use the tools that would be used in the business analyst role. You can demonsrate competence in these tools with your case study work sample. This will be impressive in interviews. Some tools to learn are:

• MS Office ( Word, Excel, Powerpoint)
• MS Visio  ( for process flow diagrams)
• LucidChart ( online version to use in case you don’t have Visio, also for process flow diagrams )
• Balsamiq ( Mockups and Wireframing)

For more tools for business analysts see this article.

5. Get Mentorship

Another way to break into business analysis is by getting mentorship from existing business analysts. Joint the IIBA or at least attend their chapter meetings and seek out mentorship programs that they have. Get a copy of the BABOK (Business Analyst Body of Knowledge) and learn some of the techniques used in business analysis.

6. Build your resume

You need to work on building up your resume with your skills and any work experience that you do have. If you are working in another field that doesn’t relate to business analysis, then emphasize your transferable relevant skills. Word your current experience in such a way that employers can clearly see how those skills can apply to the business analyst job you are applying for.

For a sample business analyst resume click here.

7. Update Your LinkedIn Profile

To break into business analysis or any career you need to be social on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is very important to getting a job these days. You need to make sure you fill out as much of your LinkedIn profile as possible so that you can be found in search results. Get a good head shot picture that shows you looking professional ( no party pics please!). Get as much endorsements for your skills as you can.

8. Connect with Recruiters

Once you have improved your LinkedIn profile, then you can start reaching out to recruiters. Look for recruiters in the IT and technology space. They usually have the title “Technical Recruiter” or “IT Recruiter” behind their name. Do a search on LinkedIn for recruiters and choose the ‘People’  results, then simply send them invites. In no time, a number of them will accept and now you have recruiters in your network that will reach out to you for jobs.

9. Join Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are great to help you break into business analysis because they have people working in the field sharing valuable information and posting articles that will help you prepare for your career. Search facebook for business analysis groups and request to join.

10. Search for Jobs

Well this is a no brainer. If you want to break into business analysis or any career, clearly you have to be actively looking for a job. Get on Indeed, Glassdoor and other job boards and search. Look for full time jobs instead of contract, where possible. Contract jobs usually require more experience and they may be less opportunities to grow in a contract position. Look for level I Business Analyst roles or Junior Business Analyst  roles as these might be easier to get into.

11. Take an alternative position

If all else fails, there comes a point where you might have to take another job in order to break into business analysis. This is a strategy that can work very well if executed properly. Basically you look for a company that hires business analysts full time and if you can’t get in as a business analyst, then you take another role and try to transition to business analysis later.

To do this right, you have to make sure the company hires business analysts. Then you have to make sure the job you take can help you transition into a business analyst role. For example, if you want to be a business analyst, then taking a job in the same company as an executive chef is not going to help you very much.

Jobs that transition well into business analysis

Jobs that are easier to transition  from to break into business analysis are: programmer, systems analyst, trainer, technical support and quality assurance analyst.  If you can get into any of these fields, then you can rack up the transferable skills and build experience to help make the transition. When a business analyst job is advertised in the company, then you already will have one foot in the door to get it.

So are you ready to break into business analysis?

Please also check out this article  Pre-employment Assessment, Skill Testing and Interviewing – What’s the Difference?  for more ways on how to prepare for an interview.

These are my tips to break into business analysis! Was this useful for you? Please comment below and check out my other articles on business analysis.

Hopefully you can take action from these steps to help you in your job search. Good luck!