TLDR: I have 1.5 of work experience with Excel, Google Data Studio and web tracking tools (no SQL or Python), want to know if I could use it to enter the field of data analysis having a job gap of 1.5-2 years.
I am 27 and hold a bachelor's degree in international relations. After finishing my studies, I worked in the tourism industry, which was more or less related to my major. Then I decided to change my career and, with some preparation, landed an internship as a web analyst at a European office of a US Google partner agency.
I worked for this company for a little over 1.5 years and reached the mid position. I got experience mainly using Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio, Excel, and Google Sheets.It was more of a monkey job than I wanted it to be. My company usually sold a business on building a data warehouse/data lake. For that, the business had to have clean and coherent web tracking. My part would go like this:
I audit the client's Google Analytics implementation and find opportunities for improvement.
We discuss with the client what has to be done,
I write implementation guides in basic javascript to tell client's developers what has to be changed. We go through several cycles of test and prod deployment, then everything should work well enough.
We collect data for a month or more, then proceed to compare e-ecommerce tracking data between Google Analytics and their back-end database. I would usually request a back-end data set from the client's developers, so I never had an opportunity to use SQL to export it myself.
I check if the data set is good enough to work with/request another one with some changes. If all is good, I clean the data, look for inconsistencies with Data Analytics, and, if there are any, find reasons for them.
We either go through several cycles of improving tracking and comparing the data again or finally find the numbers sufficiently close between the back-end and Data Analytics.
If everything is alright, then I pass the client over to the data engineering team. I could also be asked to create/maintain some dashboards for the client, usually in Google Data Studio.
So, I had a lot of experience cleaning data in Excel and Google Sheets as I would usually work with Google Analytics data, which wasn't always perfectly tracked, as well as exports from clients' databases, which were all sorts of strange. I didn't have an opportunity to use SQL since I didn't have access to client databases and I never specifically had to use Python, though I started learning it myself and tried to use it for some exploratory data analysis. I also had multiple client calls with C-level executives and developers during those years. My concern is that I don't think I performed enough analysis on my job. The most analytical parts required only to figure out why data is not tracked right or how to improve tracking to better suit a client. I built some dashboards in Data Studio, but those weren't many and I'm not sure Data Studio experience is even appreciated.
In 2021 I quit my job because of burnout and had to leave the country for various reasons, including political persecution. I moved to Ukraine and later fled from Ukraine because of the war. During all this time, I lived on my savings and what I made off odd jobs and crypto (please, don't judge. I'm not urging you to use it). By now, I have been out of a CV-worthy job for about 1.5 years. I need a real job to apply for a residence permit in Portugal and I don't want it to be another odd job. I have been so fed up with the job I described above that I didn't even want to consider working with data again, but lately, I've been reading about data analysis and growing interested in a real analyst role.
So my questions to readers are:
Do you think my work experience could in any way facilitate finding a job as a data analyst? I am confident that my previous employer can vouch for me and give an abundantly positive recommendation.
Could the job gap be a significant obstacle to finding a job and if so, is there any way to mitigate its effect? I could say I was doing crypto with relative success, but I'm not sure that would be an advantage. I've also been thinking of obtaining a Google Data Analyst Professional certificate to show that I at least put some effort into becoming job-ready again. But it would probably take several months or at least weeks (I heard it's rather easy, and I'm not a complete noob), so my job gap would grow even wider until I get it.
Would you say there is any hope of landing a job with my experience and some preparation (I will of course learn SQL, improve my Python, and everything else required) in the next 6 months, provided that I can study full-time? And if so, is there any chance of becoming a mid analyst from the start instead of a junior, considering that I already have some relevant experience?
Is there anything you would recommend in my specific situation? Any specific resources to study or types of companies to consider? I think I've already found everything there was in this subreddit in terms of study resources, but in case you know that some specific certification or anything else will make my journey easier, I'd appreciate your advice.
Please do not hesitate to ask for any additional information. I will be here to provide it.
I apologize for writing such a long post and appreciate the time of anyone who would read it even in part, especially of those who will provide some answers. Have a nice day!