The SQL Essentials
16 commands in SQL that help you land your first data analyst job!
Ever wondered how much time it will take you to learn SQL and then start applying to jobs? I’ll answer that for you, it took me about 8 months to just start looking for jobs and taking action while following a course on Udemy. Crazy right? 8 months and even after that I got an internship.
Anyhoo, today I’ll be helping you guys on how to start your learning if you want to be a data analyst and hopefully how to land your first job if you’re just entering this field. I recently came across an article ( I dont remember the author) where the author made a roadmap of how much time will take to actually learn the skills required to be a BI developer or data analyst. The estimate was about 6 months.
However, I completely disagree. If you’re a father, a husband and you’ve got responsibilities, you dont have 6 months, do you? Sometimes you have to mold yourself into the situation you are in, which isnt always perfect. So, I’ll try to make a roadmap for you which will be limited to 1 month and during that 1 month you might also want to start applying for jobs or internships, whatever you can get.
Roadmap:
(Keep in mind this is the bare minimum for you to start applying to jobs)
Here’s how you’re going to work on this road map:
The 16 SQL Essentials — 1 Week
BI Tools — 1 Week
Start applying to jobs (Keep doing this until you land your first job)
I’ll be discussing the 16 SQL Essentials in detail here as the title says while you’ll have to explore the BI tools yourself which are again not so difficult, they’re pretty easy. You only need to learn SQL and then you’re good to go.
I personally learnt Tableau and Apache Superset in 1 week. Thats all it takes to learn the basics and after that keep experimenting as much as you can, you’ll gain expertise.
The 16 SQL Essentials will only take 1 week because they’re very easy to learn and practice, its not complicated, you just learn a few things a day and you’ll be good to go. The SQL essentials consist of statements, modifiers and functions. So without wasting any further time, these are the SQL essentials:
SQL Statements
SELECT: Retrieves data from the database.
FROM: Specifies the table or source of the data.
WHERE: Filters rows based on a condition.
HAVING: Filters rows based on a condition applied to aggregated data.
GROUP BY: Groups rows sharing a common attribute for aggregation.
ORDER BY: Specifies the order in which rows are returned.
JOINS: Combines rows from two or more tables based on related columns.
WITH: Defines a Common Table Expression (CTE) to simplify complex queries.
CASE WHEN: Conditional logic within a query (though technically part of an expression)
SQL Functions
COUNT: Returns the number of rows.
MAX/MIN: Returns the largest/smallest value in a column.
AVG: Returns the average value of a column.
SUM: Returns the sum of a numeric column.
CONCAT: Combines strings into a single string.
SQL Modifiers
LIKE: Used with ‘where’ to search for a pattern in a column.
DISTINCT: Ensures unique rows in the result set.
Statements and modifiers are pretty easy while functions may take some time, also the WITH statement may take more time as it executes a CTE (Common Table Expression) which is basically just a table in another table.
I’ll start with the statements which are pretty easy and I’ll explain them below.
So basically you have a simple sales table in your DB and you’re querying it.
This is how it will go:
I’ve tried to explain every single statement in detail but if you dont understand you’re welcome to contact me on the details given at the end of the article.
The Modifiers and functions are pretty simple and if you know basic math then functions are pretty much basic math. Max and Min are used to select low and high in a specific column and CONCAT is used to combine two strings into a single string while the rest of the functions are straight simple mathematics.
Syntax for Concat would be:
CONCAT(myfirstname, ‘ ‘, mylastname)[This would add a space between the first name and last name]
That is all you need to learn in SQL for getting your first job. If you’d like to more content on SQL specifically do let me know in the comments and I’ll try to come up with something better and more focused on gaining that first job.
The inspiration for this article came from a connection on Linkedin
He helps people land their first data jobs and you’re most welcome to follow him and learn more about it.
I’m working on Apache Superset for the last 4 months at my job and I have not used anything more than SELECT, FROM, CASE WHEN AND WHERE. So stop worrying and…
Start Querying Today!
I am an Associate BI Engineer working at a Data And AI Firm. I’m trying to help newbies in Data to land their first data job and impact as many fellow data analysts as I can. Here’s my contact info:
ajmal7809@gmail.com
bideveloper_ (Discord)