A Business Intelligence Analyst position requires a wide range of technical knowledge and problem solving skills as well as a personality that can fit well in both IT and business analytical environments. Many IT centered people prefer to keep to themselves and focus on programming. This type of personality, while valued, will likely not fit well in a BI Analyst position. On the flip side, someone with loads of personal skills who is lacking in technical comprehension will simply not fit the bill.

What you are looking for is the perfect balance between IT and business, which really can’t be judged by reading an applicant’s resume. Resumes can often be misleading. They are full of recommendations, certifications, and include a long list of skills that just so happen to match the job description exactly.

Below I have listed a few questions that might help you gauge the competency of your BI Analyst applicant, starting with basic comprehension of a BI solution.

What is a BI solution used for?

This is a good starting question that a qualified applicant should be able to easily tackle. They will have the opportunity to present their perspectives on what a BI solution actually is and their answer will reveal whether or not they see the same potential value in BI as you do. Ultimately you are listening for the key words “better decision making.”

Walk me through the flow of data in a BI solution starting with the source system.

This question will test to see if the applicant understands the data flow from the technical perspective all the way through to the presentation level. An acceptable answer can be as simple as: Source -> ETL -> Data Staging -> ETL -> Data Warehouse -> Dashboards.

How would you approach analyzing a report with bad data?

This will provide some discovery into the applicant’s thought processes and problem solving skills. You should expect to hear that the applicant would question the integrity of the report as well as the integrity of the data in the data warehouse and the source system. From there the applicant should be able to walk through his or her plan for correcting the issue.

What steps would you take when building a data warehouse?

This will be the beginning of evaluating the applicant’s technical knowledge. The applicant should understand the importance of communicating with users and gathering business requirements. The applicant should also display an understanding of how to design the data warehouse schema and plan for the structure of the upcoming fact and dimension tables.

From here you will want to move into more technical questions. The specific questions will greatly depend on the specific software that you use. You will want to ensure that there is an understanding of the different components of an ETL package. It is also important to test the applicant’s understanding of how security should best be organized and utilized in reporting services and dashboards.

It is a good idea to push the applicant to the edges of his or her knowledge. At some point you will reach a question that the applicant doesn’t know. In this case “I don’t know” is an acceptable answer. What is less appealing is when the applicant obviously doesn’t know the answer but attempts to bull shit and ramble while avoiding a direct answer. A confident and intelligent person is comfortable to admit when he doesn’t know something, so you should view this as a positive in communication skills.

I hope that this has been a valuable resource for you and that it might jump start some ideas when interviewing your BI Analyst applicant. Happy hunting!

From paper to desktops to laptops and now tablets; business intelligence is evolving. Business decisions can now be made from a plane, a bus, or while you’re lounging on the beach sipping a Mai Tai. We are no longer limited to the confines of our office when an imminent decision must be made.

Mobile BI offers us all of the advantages of our desktop applications with the added option of pulling location specific data. Are you traveling for business and you only want to view the BI data that is relevant to your location? Tablets are equipped with GPS devices that will allow your BI application to determine your coordination and pull data that is geographically relevant.

Mobile BI is not just for data extraction, but data collection too! A great example lies on the gaming floors of casinos where hosts have been armed with iPads. Gamers are able to avoid long lines by meeting directly with a host who can use the tablet to gather the customer’s information and book a hotel room, sign up for a player’s club card, or even make reservations at the casino’s sushi restaurant. This concept makes marketers ecstatic while in turn attending to customers’ needs more efficiently.

Privacy and security concerns lurk in the background as companies edge into the mobile BI sector. Is the company tracking too much information about the actions of the employee while using the tablet? What policies should be put into place about the rights of employers and employees? And the most popular concern is the idea of company data floating around outside of the company’s firewalls. These are all considerations, but certainly not road blocks when deciding to empower your company with mobile BI capabilities.

Overall, easier access to data means we can accomplish more from nearly anywhere in the world. There is less waiting and more doing as decisions are easily made on-the-go. The future will bring many more mobile solutions with features that will allow us to do much more than view data, but manipulate it as well.

Well, in my opinion, it definitely belongs somewhere. SQL is a powerful querying language that empowers tech-savvy users to create large data sets with just a few simple commands. Regardless of how robust your BI solution is, SQL querying will never go away. Many BI vendors’ major selling point is the simplicity of report creation through drag and drop interfaces. Users will never have to see the code being generated because of the wonderful and visually appealing user interface.

So, what if your analysts are already accustomed to accessing your data warehouse through SQL? It just isn’t feasible to expect them to drop this tool of empowerment and move straight into creating ad-hoc reports using only your new business intelligence software. It is obvious why, who doesn’t want to run a “select * “ statement occasionally? J

Herein lays the fear: What if the analysts never migrate to the new BI tools? What if interactive dashboards and web driven reports are never created? What happens if reports continue to be emailed as attachments? While these are all valid concerns, you will need to step back and gain some perspective (and patience).

As the BI Administrator you have likely had a large role in the development of the data warehouse. You are familiar with the tables, the joins, and the meaning of the data. By the time your BI solution goes live you are likely excited to see the true potential of the tools revealed, so a few days later you might ask: Where are all those pretty dashboards? What you have to realize is that you are way ahead of the pack on this one. (It’s lonely huh?)

Other analysts will need time to adjust to and experience the new organization of your company’s data. If they are used to querying through SQL then it is a great idea to set them up with access to the new data warehouse using a familiar tool. There will be some period of training where the analysts will learn the capabilities of the new BI tools and they will begin to make connections between the data and the possible displays that can be created.

Continue to be patient and you will likely see user adoption increasing, after all, the analysts are probably responsible for helping to realize that great ROI that was calculated before investing in a BI solution so they want to see it succeed  as much as you do!