Boost your employability with these data management skills

Data management is becoming more a part of the job in many careers in business. Knowing which skills are important to have and improve can help you be more successful and productive at work, or even help you land a job in your chosen field. Some of these skills seem intuitive, such as knowing how to view and analyse data, but others can seem unrelated to the field of data and database management, such as skills in communication and business intelligence.

Accounts and Files Management

The ways in which you organise, store and share your files and important account information has a big impact on how easily you and others can manage databases as well as individual datasets. This skill set includes how to send files through email as well as how to organise them on your database and how to keep track of your accounts, passwords and usernames. Passwords and encryption algorithms help ensure that only authorised personnel have access to data, but this can create a complex sign-on system and password management problems. Implementing single sign-on solutions for data integrity can increase your cybersecurity while reducing the need to remember several sets of credentials at a time.

Data Integrity

The accuracy of your data directly impacts the effectiveness of your reports and analytics, so knowing how to increase and protect the integrity of your data is an important skill to develop. This means learning the sources for your data as well as understanding any flaws or potential weaknesses in the data while working with colleagues to increase the accuracy of different datasets.

Database Planning and Design

There are several different types of databases and database designs. They can be organised around where the data is stored—online or internally—as well as how the data is related and organised—table structure or one-to-many relationships, for example. Knowing what each of these things is can help you develop skills in planning and designing future databases as well as communicate design elements to team members and organise data for analytics.

Software Navigation

Knowing how to effectively use software solutions to manage and analyse your data means understanding how to navigate each function as well as what the software capabilities are. Most solutions companies will offer software training or guides to help you learn the various tools and functions included in the package, and you can increase your navigation skills by playing around with a sample set of data and each tool at your disposal.

Data Analysis

Knowing how to look at and analyse data is one of the most important skills in data management because it can help you design a database, generate reports and configure questions to ask your AI or machine learning algorithms tasked for analytics. You can find training courses and certifications in this area to help establish a baseline of knowledge you can draw on, but the most effective way to increase your skills in this area is to practise them as often as possible.

Communication

Communicating effectively with co-workers, vendors and clients is an important part of managing data because it helps you gather the information you need, explain which solutions will be most beneficial to your work and improve the integrity of your reports. Communication skills can also make the workplace more friendly and streamlined by reducing conflicts stemming from miscommunication. Use platforms that ensure team conversations are being seen and understood, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Business Intelligence

You can more effectively manage your company’s data and reports by understanding the business intelligence questions of what information is the most useful, why you are gathering it and how it will be used to improve business. Understanding the needs of your company can help you design more effective databases and run more relevant analytics.

Learning data management skills is important for many careers in business and can help you generate better reports, read those made by others and implement changes innovated from those reports. These skills include understanding how to gather accurate data, knowing how to design and plan proper databases and learning how to handle security and communication issues around data.

If you’re looking to expand your skillset, why not try LinkedIn Learning? There are dozens of free courses available to you as a UTS student to help you broaden your opportunities and increase your employability.

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