IIT Placements & Internships: What exactly does an analyst do?

"Analyst" is a polite term for general dogsbody. You will be a low status individual doing tasks no one else wants to do. In consulting and the finance sector, these tasks largely entail: Creating PowerPoint presentations and Excel financial models Data gathering (secondary research on the internet - blah, or interviews with relevant people - sometimes fun) A good way to figure out just how dreary the role will be is to quickly scan the job description summary for specificity. Quoting from the question: XX offers a unique opportunity in India to work in the world's most exotic, liquid, and well-developed derivatives markets. This is an exciting challenge and an excellent opportunity for bright, analytical, highly motivated graduates to join a vibrant and demanding business and participate directly in today's dynamic world markets. Note that you can you remove the words "liquid", "derivatives" and "markets" and describe just about any job. (This is what the placement agency/ HR department probably did.) You can rest assured that the analyst at XX will be the lowliest of lowly dogsbodies.

It depends on what kind of analysts are you referring to. Be it ecommerce, investment banking, private equity, consulting or even CIA, all have analysts. So frankly it really depends on what field you are in.  With the information economy revolutionizing work as we see it, entry level Business Analyst positions have become ubiquitous. But it looks at an initial glance that no two BA positions are the same. So how do you differentiate between different positions and check which one is a good fit for you? Thankfully, they’re not entirely different. Most of them require you to do Fact-Based Analytical Problem Solving – Involving breaking down a problem into its principal components, and looking at every piece with the data available to you, figuring out cause-effect relationships between factors and variables potentially affecting the problem, coming up with solutions, and “Selling” the solutions  to the people who will be involved in implementing them, either using presentations or other forms of persuasive speaking and writing. This requires the candidates to be comfortable with numbers as well as to be able to write and speak effectively, and most of all, being thorough in making sure that every recommendation has its basis in fact. On the other hand, differences in terms of where you solve problems forms a major chunk of what you would find different in the multitude of BA job descriptions you see across.  You can either be deployed in a particular functional area in a company, which can range from operations where you analyse utilization of your company and how to get the most value out of your facilities per unit time, or you can be part of the sales and marketing analysis team – where you figure out whether sales presentation formats A or B result in sales of your product or service (One of the techniques to figure this out incidentally happens to be called A-B Testing) In some B2B enterprises, especially IT – a BA’s job can also be to communicate with the clients, understand their requirements, and translate those to technical specifications with the solution development or R&D departments. There are other B2B Enterprises, like Consulting, Research, and Analytics, where Analysis itself is the “Product” the company creates and sells. In these companies, BAs form the heart of the company and not a support function. These companies usually tend to assign Analysts to Domain and Functional Areas – for example, an Analyst in a Consulting firm might be working with “Marketing Practice” of Heavy Engineering companies. This is to develop expertise of intricacies related to those Industries and to nurture experts and leaders in specialised areas. BA Job Profiles come in all shapes and sizes. It is always advisable to scan the company’s website to see what products and services the company offers to its clients and customers to gage a preliminary understanding of what the job will be about if the Job Description is not clear enough. In case you have questions even after going through the website, do not hesitate to ask the company!

Analyst is a very generic term used for a fresher employee. Typically for IITs, Finance analysts learn some number crunching and a bit about finance. Consulting analysts learn some presentation skills and a bit about business. Having said that, why is there so much difference in the "quality" of the hire of the firms and their "package"? Thats because of the quality of the work. Judge a company by its cover. Judge a company by the people who work there, not by the "Job Description". That is the best metric. I chose the two companies I worked for because I could relate to the people there. I felt a "frequency" match and an "interest" match. That probably is the best way to understand the work in these companies.

Unless something has drastically changed in half a decade, the general "Analyst" designation is about putting lipstick on the pig; an ambitious attempt at marketing a job which doesn't really require very specific or well developed skills. But, those often do look "good" on the resume, specially if you aspire to do an MBA after a couple of years.

Good insights, if you haven't checked it yet: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_modeling 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_analyst 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_analysis

A business analyst is a liaison between different stakeholders in an organization. He acts as a bridge, a connector and helps the complete project team work as a tightly integrated unit. The job of a business analyst requires him to wears different hats and fulfill various duties under different spheres of the organization. His responsibilities are divided into 4 verticals, which are : Business Technical Managerial Financial A peep into what is expected from a Business Analyst: Study the systems and operations and identify the scope of the problem. Liaise with key stakeholders and conduct brainstorming sessions to get exact requirements. Analyze the problem from different angles and perform gap analysis. Document exact business needs along with both functional and non-functional requirements. Prepare  use cases, business requirements documents (BRD), system requirements  specification (SRS) documents and other functional documents. Based on system needs, create prototype, wireframes, mockups and screens. For large projects, data and process models also needs to be created. Interact with the technology team and help them understand the technical aspects of the solution. Oversee the development, conduct meetings and perform project management. Conduct usability and functional testing and recommend corrective and preventive actions. You can learn more about the Business Analyst profession and the associated roles and responsibilities at http://www.thebusinessanalystjobdescription.com