Data analyst roadmap for freshers: skills and first job

Learn SQL first
Almost every fresher analyst interview tests SQL. Learn JOINs, GROUP BY, HAVING, subqueries and window functions (ROW_NUMBER, RANK, LAG). Solve 2 to 3 questions a day on LeetCode (Database) or HackerRank SQL.
```
SELECT dept, AVG(salary)
FROM employees
GROUP BY dept
HAVING AVG(salary) > 50000;
```
Excel plus one BI tool
Learn XLOOKUP, pivot tables, SUMIFS and basic charts. Then pick one dashboard tool, Power BI or Tableau (Power BI Desktop is free). Build one dashboard from a public Kaggle dataset and share a screenshot or link.
Python for analysis, not ML
Focus on pandas, NumPy and matplotlib. Practise cleaning messy data: handle nulls, remove duplicates, merge tables, group and summarise. Skip deep learning for your first job.
```
df = pd.read_csv("sales.csv")
df.isna().sum()
df.groupby("city")["revenue"].sum().sort_values(ascending=False)
```
Build 3 projects that answer a question
Each project should state a business question, clean the data, find an insight and recommend an action. Example: which product category loses most revenue to returns? Put each on GitHub with a README (question, data source, steps, findings) and add them to your resume with numbers.
Find openings and apply early
Search for Data Analyst, Junior Data Analyst, Business Analyst, MIS Analyst and Reporting Analyst. Fresher openings fill fast, so apply within a day or two. Check your resume with the free ATS checker, then see today's verified openings with official apply links.
```
hirastra.com/ats-resume-checker
hirastra.com/today
```

Skip the searching: today's verified openings are posted three times a day with official apply links, and you can check your resume against any of them with the free ATS checker.

Learn SQL first

Excel plus one BI tool

Python for analysis, not ML

Build 3 projects that answer a question

Find openings and apply early