A business analyst is a person who helps businesses to analyze their existing systems/processes & helps them optimize them with the help of tech.
It is one of the most sought jobs in IT. Many engineers who don’t like to code, switch to business analysis. Also, there are many professionals who switch to a business analyst role even if they like to code.
The reason for the same is this is a techno-functional role that involves communication with multiple stakeholders & helps one move towards management area.
In this Expert Speaks interview, we have an amazing business analyst Diwakar Singh with us.
Who is Diwakar Singh?
Diwakar Singh is the founder of BA Helpline & a business analyst at TCS. He did his engineering from Odisha.
Diwakar has more than 6 years of experience as a Business Analyst. He has worked on several projects. He is helping a lot of business analyst aspirants to move into this field.
Let us know more about him, his experiences & tips for business analysis in this interview.
Interview with Diwakar Singh
#1. From engineering to becoming a Business Analyst at TCS, tell us about your journey.
I got selected in TCS as an Assistant System Engineer in my final year of B.Tech.
I joined TCS in 2016 and did my initial 3 months of training in Java, Springboot, Angular, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Bootstrap.
I always wanted to become a programmer and so was very excited to learn those new technologies during the training. However, destiny has something else planned for me.
After completing my training period, I was sent to Mumbai and was given a role of Business Analyst which surprised me.
That was the first time I heard about the role of Business Analyst and initially was not happy with this.
It is said that “ Where there is a will there’s a way” but in my case it was just the opposite, I had no way so I generated that will.
Initial few months were very challenging but since I was left with no option, I made business analysis my passion. So here I am today with more than 6 years of experience in business analysis.
#2. You are building “BA Helpline”. Please tell us more about it.
I faced a lot of challenges, difficulties, and humiliation when I began my career in Business Analysis.
In fact, I thought of quitting once, but I had no option at that time. That’s the main reason for setting up a platform like BA Helpline where I can guide, mentor, motivate, and inspire every business analyst out there in the world.
Currently, through the BA Helpline I am helping aspiring BAs by taking Counselling sessions, reviewing & building resumes, providing BA training, preparing them for BA interviews, and helping them in BA job search.
For this, I made a telegram group where daily BA/DA jobs are posted.
Through my LinkedIn posts, I share a lot of BA documents, books, training materials, interview questions, and BA knowledge.
There are a lot of problems that an aspiring Business Analyst faces so I want to solve all those problems through the BA Helpline. This is going to be a platform which has solutions to all those problems.
#3. How can one become a Business Analyst?
We become Business Analyst from the day we start performing business analysis which only happens when one gets an opportunity for the same, and getting that opportunity is a big challenge for freshers or someone who don’t have prior experience in BA.
Most of the organizations hire experienced BAs so there are very few opportunities for someone who is not experienced. Also, experience is something which cant be bought from the market.
My advice to all the BA aspirants would be to first focus on learning and developing the required skills and then patiently keep on hunting for the opportunities.
#4. What are the top 5 skills that every business analyst must have?
At the top, I will always keep the soft skills:
- Communication
- Ability to understand a problem
- Problem solving
- Ownership
- Leadership
- Proactiveness
- Management
- Critical thinking.
It is these soft skills that actually help you to perform business analysis.
This is then followed by core BA skills such as
- Understanding and defining scope
- Stakeholder Analysis & Mapping
- Requirement Elicitation
- Requirement Analysis & Modelling
- Requirement Management & Documentation
There are many more skills but I have highlighted the important ones.
#5. What tools should an aspiring business analyst learn?
The five tools that I would suggest a BA aspirant to learn are:
- Jira
- Confluence
- MS Visio (or any modelling tool like draw.io, lucid chart, etc.)
- Balsamiq mockup
- Advanced MS Excel.
#6. What according to Diwarkar Singh is the difference between business analysis and business analytics?
Most of the beginners assume this to be the same.
To answer this question, it is not the same. Yes, there are some similarities but at the same time there are differences in terms of skill sets, responsibilities, deliverables.
Business analytics refers to data analytics where the primary focus is on data and statistical analysis whereas in business analysis the primary focus is on business processes and functions.
For performing business analytics, one requires statistical, mathematical and programming knowledge such as R, Python, SQL whereas for business analysis you should understand business(domain), modelling techniques to analyze business requirement/problem, scope and requirement definition skills and many more.
Yes a business analyst does use data to understand or perform some analysis but the way a data analyst uses it, is very different.
I have seen few start-ups and companies mention in their job description the responsibilities of a business analyst but they recruit a business analyst. This causes a lot of confusion among Business Analyst aspirants. So we should not mix this.
#7. How do you spend your free time?
When I am free I am on Linkedin answering questions of BA aspirants, taking counselling sessions, researching and collating BA documents so that I can share them through my posts.
To be very honest, this is how I am spending my free time from May 2021
#8. Can you give a few interview tips for aspiring business analysts?
So, here are a few tips from my side:
1. Read the Job Description thoroughly and get yourself familiar with all the keywords mentioned in JD.
It doesn’t matter if you have not used a few techniques/tools but take an idea about those by watching any youtube videos or reading some articles on the internet.
This will boost your confidence and if asked questions related to that then instead of saying”I don’t know”, you can say something about it and show your curiosity to learn more if got an opportunity.
Always ensure that you explain concepts with the help of examples.
2. Read your resume thoroughly.
Ensure whatever you have mentioned in your resume, you have some knowledge about that and you can speak with confidence, and explain with the help of examples.
3. For questions like, “Tell me about yourself” and “Describe your roles and responsibilities in the last project”, prepare your answers beforehand.
Do not frame answers during the interview. So before the interview you should write down the answer and practice it by speaking.
The whole idea is to be confident from the first question itself.
4. Go through sample interview questions
There are a lot of sample interview questions on the internet but that will only help if you have done sequential learning.
So don’t just appear for the interview by reading those interview questions. Such questions will only help when you have an idea about the end to end flow of business analysis.
5. Don’t read anything new on the interview day.
Keep your mind cool and go with the attitude that this is not the only opportunity, if the results are not in my favour then I will try for the other one.
#9. What are a few certifications/courses that you would recommend for an aspiring Business Analyst?
If you are a beginner, you should start with “Fundamentals of Business Analysis” from Udemy or “Become a Business Analyst” from Linkedin learning.
If you are an experienced BA then you can go for CCBA, CBAP certifications from IIBA.
#10. Would you like to nominate someone for this interview series?
As of now there is no one in my mind whom I can nominate.
Conclusion
No issues Diwakar. You can nominate someone whenever the name comes in your mind. Thank you so much for the insightful interview.
I hope this helps aspiring business analysts.
If you have any further questions on business analysis, you can comment below. Alternatively you can message Diwakar Singh on LinkedIn
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