How to Decide If You Should Accept That Data Analyst Job Offer

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of your data analyst interviews and got an offer. You couldn’t be more excited.

Are you going to accept because the main reasons are a higher salary and a higher title than your current job? If you answered “yes”, read on.

Today I’d like to discuss what factors you should consider before deciding to accept that data analyst job offer.

1. Interest in the company business

Does the company business align with your personal interests?

Remember you’re going to spend 40+ hours a week looking at the data for years to come. If you love playing video games and this was an online gaming company would you love your job more than working for a company selling furniture?

Having interest in the company business will increase your engagement and help you gain a firsthand perspective to find actionable insights.

2. Data culture

How is data used in decision making at the company?

Is the data team well established? What is the data infrastructure like?

The answers to these questions will dictate what your life will be as a data analyst.

Lack of data infrastructure means you may end up having to manually pull and load raw data to do analysis because it doesn’t exist in the database. You’ll spend a majority of your time trying to get data instead of analyzing data.

If you’re one of the first data hires and you want to learn from others this company is probably not a good fit for you. If you’re a senior analyst and want to showcase your skills then being the first few data hires is a good opportunity for you. If there’s no data science team then there’s potential to incorporate modeling into your work and learn on the job.

Decide if the data culture at this company is a right fit for you now based on your career goals.

3. Learning potential

How many additional skills can you learn at this new company?

Every company has a different set of tools and systems they use. Learning how to use these tools and systems will help expand your resume.

If there are many analysts on the data team and the data culture is very strong then there’s great potential for you to learn from others on the team and work on new types of analysis you’ve never done before.

4. Company growth potential

Is this company likely to grow and increase the size of the data team?

This can be a startup losing money but if the business is growing your role can grow as the business grows. If the company is stagnant and business is slow then there will be less money to expand the data team and promote you in the future.

5. Manager and stakeholders

Is your manager going to mentor you and help you grow to the next level?

If you’re a junior analyst and your manager seems like they will be too busy or lacks the skills to mentor you, then you’re on your own and it will be harder for you to reach the next level.

Do your stakeholders use data to make decisions?

You can be the best analyst in the world but you can’t demonstrate value if your stakeholders won’t accept your recommendations and rely on gut feel. Having stakeholders rely on your analysis to improve the business goes a long way to establish your credibility.

6. Line of business

Are you supporting one department or multiple ones?

If you’re a junior analyst, supporting multiple departments gives you the greatest exposure to different parts of the business and helps you gain more experience in a variety of analysis. If you’re a senior analyst this may not be ideal because you may have fewer opportunities to demonstrate your expertise in one area.

Is the department you‘ll be supporting a cost center or revenue center?

Marketing is a cost center. If you support marketing and it turns out marketing can’t bring in more sales than what they spend then there will be very a low chance of growth in marketing to expand your role.

Conversely, sales is a revenue center. If you support sales and help increase conversion rates, then you’re much more likely to get noticed and as sales grow they could hire more analysts and have you lead them.

7. Work-life balance

I don’t know about you but I suffer from diminishing returns after a certain point in the day. I need to rest and recharge because it helps me think through a problem more easily than looking at it for 12 hours straight.

If you know your job will be high stress with long hours then you’ll burn out quickly and start looking for a new job. A healthy work-life balance will keep you happy and engaged.

Final Thoughts

We are so focused on salary and title because those are the most common factors people use to evaluate a job offer. Now you know 7 more factors to consider before accepting that data analyst job offer. The decision is in your hands now. Choose wisely.