Anyone with concrete Business Analysis knowledge has an enormous competitive advantage in the job market

Let's meet Andreea!

She started her IT career 10 years ago, as a .NET programmer. After 3 years, she realized she wanted to move in a direction where her technical skills could be combined with analytical and communication skills. She decided to become a Business Analyst.

Andreea Tătar now has more than 20 large-scale projects to her name, most of them in government administration. She's connected to the Business Analysis community in Romania, likes working with people, and sees through every project she's involved in. And because seriousness, enthusiasm, and passion go hand in hand, Andreea wanted to pass on the knowledge she'd built up. So she took on the challenge of becoming a mentor.

Her experience and professionalism brought her to the Informal School of IT in Bucharest, where she provides training, mentoring, and coaching.

As a Business Analyst, you have to enjoy splitting hairs — down to the tiniest detail

1. I want to enroll in Business Analysis. How do I know if this program is right for me?

There's no secret recipe for becoming an IT professional in general, and therefore none for becoming a Business Analyst in particular. After all, IT is really just about improving life through computers. As a Business Analyst, you discover what exactly you can improve and how. And to be able to do that, it helps to be naturally curious, to want to split hairs down to the smallest detail, to enjoy communicating, and to be able to analyze and structure the information you uncover. In practice, the right profile for a Business Analyst is someone who thinks, from the big picture down to the smallest details, about how to make things better across various fields.

 

 

2. What should I expect if I've applied to the Business Analysis program?

First of all, expect a series of useful and interesting course sessions. Because more than anything, these hours are dedicated to education, and to building knowledge and skills. Then, you should also expect an experience that stimulates you outside of class hours too. A BA tries to improve the world around them. If, after this program, you start noticing ways to improve everyday life — in various situations outside of work (let's technically call them "processes") — then we've achieved our goal.

The program is designed to maximize your chances of getting hired as a business analyst

3. How prepared will I be for the job market after completing this training program?

I think that when someone applies to a program like this, they expect a "return on investment," as they say in the business world. And I think that's fair. In other words, the money invested in a training program like this should "come back" once the student gets a job and is paid based on the performance they achieve using the knowledge gained in the courses. Business Analysis is a program designed to maximize your chances of getting hired as a BA. How? By getting you familiar with the terminology and real situations from the workplace, and through hands-on practice of the knowledge you've gained. And by maximizing your chances of employment, as I said, it also secures the "return on investment."

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4. Tell us about a situation from your professional path when it would have helped you to know, right from the start, some of the things taught to students at the Informal School of IT.

When you start working in IT, you think the world revolves around programmers, with everyone else as support staff. That's not quite true. In fact, successful projects owe more to good analysts than to good programmers. A weak analysis can hardly be fixed by programmers, whereas a good analysis lets the rest of the project team implement it with high efficiency. I wish I'd known that before I started working. I would have valued the BA role at its true worth — a worth I only discovered in "real life," working as a business analyst.

Someone who shows up to an interview with solid, concrete BA knowledge has an enormous competitive advantage

5. What can you tell us about the job opportunities in this branch of IT?

In most companies that develop IT projects and products, the analyst-to-programmer ratio is roughly 1 analyst for every 2 developers. That makes sense, since the time and effort spent on analysis and on implementation in projects/products is in the same proportion. Yet the Romanian education system trains a large number of programmers, but effectively trains no BA professionals at all. In practice, companies have to develop people with these skills internally. So, someone who shows up to an interview with solid, concrete BA knowledge has an enormous competitive advantage, since, compared with other IT professions, this one is poorly covered by trained professionals.

A first piece of advice for those who want a career in this field:

If you're taking part in this program, I think the first step is already done: you'll always have new things to learn. Ongoing learning across various fields is a constant throughout a BA career; it's a challenge, but at the same time it's also the beauty of this job. Last but not least, it's important to believe you can do it. Except for a few jobs (e.g., inventor), every other career is 95% perspiration and 5% inspiration. If you take what you do seriously, the Business Analyst job will reward you in proportion to the effort you put in. Both in professional satisfaction and financially.

I WANT TO LEARN AT THE INFORMAL SCHOOL OF IT