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Now that you have stacked up analysis tools in your arsenal, it's time to start building your portfolio.
A portfolio is an essential tool a data analyst/scientist uses to showcase their skills and demonstrate their competence. It is simply a collection of all projects you have worked on, well-described and documented, and ready for you to give a walk-through to anyone who might be interested in hiring your services.
You could list your projects on a public site with easy access but the choice of display type is completely yours, be it a LinkedIn page, a blog, a website, google docs or any way you find convenient.
In this post, I will be sharing some of my favorite sites to practice SQL and ultimately build a portfolio of SQL projects.
Kaggle: This is the most popular online community where data enthusiasts collaborate, find and publish datasets that can be used to practice and compete to gain expertise. It is free to signup, with access to lots of free courses to quench your budding data thirst. Here you can easily download datasets to start practicing and building. The free courses are also a great way to have a guided approach to learning.
Project Pro: This is a very good site to get inspiration and motivation to start working on projects to fill up your portfolio. It also provides a guided approach to help you start thinking about what sort of questions to ask your data and what sort of answers to expect from it.
DataQuest: Here the projects are stratified and you can easily choose a level you are comfortable with to practice along with the source code and database dumps.
Google Cloud Skillboost: This is my absolute favorite place to learn and gain great in-demand skills. The Insights from Data with BigQuery is a fantastic introduction to BigQuery and google cloud. After completing this quest, you will earn a shiny skill badge you can display on your professional profile to be visible to the companies you are interested in.
In summary, we talked about the importance of building a portfolio and also had a look at some websites to draw inspiration from. The list is not exhaustive but a great starting point.
Now go right ahead to build your awesome portfolios and while at it, let the world know what you are doing and how far you have come on your journey. It's called being visible to the right people and it keeps you accountable and committed to constantly improving.