The Analytics Niche
What's your Analytics Niche?
What's your Analytics Niche?
What comes naturally to you?
What will make you stand-out and help you advance your career with ease?
The answers to these questions is your Analytics Niche.
You should have one.
What is the Analytics Niche?
The Analytics Niche is the skill set and area of expertise that sets you apart from others in a way that fuels your career growth.
It's your specialization.
The area where your natural strengths can be applied at the highest level in a way that allows you to experience continued growth in your career.
Your niche should fit you perfectly.
If it doesn't, you've chosen the wrong one.
How to find your Analytics Niche
Finding your niche is a 3 step process:
- Understand your strengths
- Evaluate your peers
- Pick the skill set that sets you apart
Understand your strengths
You must know what comes naturally to you.
If you love technology, but step into a leadership position too early, you won't be an effective leader.
If you naturally work well with people, but try to be an AI Engineer, you'll never catch up to your technology-obsessed peers.
The basis of your niche should be fully aligned to your natural strengths.
Evaluate your peers
What do you do better than everyone you work with?
There's an edge you have over your peers. That edge likely turns into your niche. There's a reason why your peers aren't good a skill but it comes naturally to you.
It's easier to find your uniqueness when you see the gaps in others.
Pick the skill set that sets you apart
You know your strengths and you've identified the skills that your peers can't hold a light to.
Pick that skill set and work ruthlessly to improve it over time. The more effort you pour into that one skill set, the more your set yourself apart. What follows is more money, recognition, and satisfaction.
Now you have your Analytics Niche.
Examples of Analytics Niches
Here are some examples:
- AI
- Data modeling
- Machine learning
- Data engineering
- People leadership
- Data visualization
- Project management
- Product management
- Technical architecture
- Stakeholder relationships
As you read this list, certain examples will resonate with you, not because they sound interesting or because they align with the cultural hype of the moment.
They resonate because they are aligned with something inside you. An innate strength or desire that you've always felt but haven't always been able to externalize.
Pay attention to what resonates. It's a sign of the path you should be on.
Don't focus on building all your skills.
Focus on building your Analytics Niche.
What's yours?