Source: analyticsindiamag.com

Most of the bachelor’s degree students over the years have always prioritised an MBA degree after their studies. Working professionals, too, put their jobs on hold to get an MBA degree in hopes of landing on a premier corporate job. Businesses nowadays, not only have to concentrate on strategy and finance aspects but also have to look at the massive amount of data that flows in and out. This data has to be analysed and understood to organise and come up with better business strategies. As data science has become the top choice of the majority of the people out there, it is only natural that it has also attracted interest from the MBA grads too, especially with the amount of data businesses need to analyse in today’s era.

Anyone who likes crunching numbers will instantly be interested in data science. But, having a keen interest in numbers isn’t the only thing required to have a lucrative job in the data science industry. Whether it be an engineering graduate or an MBA graduate, one needs to have a basic understanding of programming languages and statistics.

Traditionally, if one has interests in both MBA and data science streams, then the viable option would be to take up a course in analytics stream of the MBA such as business analytics; as it might be the closest intersection of data science and MBA. 

And that’s why Analytics India Magazine collated a list of job roles for MBA grades who have developed an interest in the data science industry:

Data Analytics

MBA grades in data analytics would actively be involved in converting the big data, whether it be structured, semi-structured or unstructured into useful insights. These insights help in making strategic and operational decisions across one’s business. Along with basic analytics and statistics, an MBA grad would also need to have advanced knowledge about Python or R as well as SPSS, along with an overview of visualisation tools like Tableau.

Data Science Managers

If an MBA grad has modelling solutions, automating data, mining text and a sense of what good storytelling might be in data science, then data science managerial role is one of the better options for an MBA grad. One needs to have managerial abilities along with a keen understanding of data science concepts like modelling and storytelling.

Even if the data science managerial role would be more on the side of the business, one needs to have a basic understanding of tools like R, SAS for effective communication with the rest of the team. Other skills required would be basic or intermediate understanding of SQL to run queries, statistics, data visualisation and domain knowledge.

Product Analyst

Mainly a product analyst is responsible for identifying the target markets, researching, make marketing strategies, and keeping an eye on the product for its life cycle. These analysts are supposed to analyse the market and the data about the products and develop marketing strategies. The product analyst role would involve creating dashboards, defining metrics for the whole business or the product, and measuring the performance, among other general things.

Data Science Consultant

Consultants, especially data science consultants, need to have excellent industry knowledge and excellent analytical skills. The data science consultants would need to create data science solutions for the clients and would be required to help them in being connected with data at every stage and lead them to the hypotheses they want to test out. Data science consultants need to help the client in their analytics skills, competencies, and understanding the mechanics of the business with valuable insights.

Product Management

This job role requires innovation, understanding and driving business requirements; as these are the essential functions of a product team. The data scientist in the product manager would need to find out new applications based on the insights they have gathered form the data.

These two roles are very similar, and hence an MBA degree holder can opt this one easily. Both of these job roles would require the person to communicate their decisions. They need to be technical, creative and business-oriented to talk to everyone from engineers to designers.