What does a Data Analyst do?

A Data Analyst collects, cleans, and analyzes data to answer business questions. They build dashboards and reports, track key metrics, and present findings that help teams make better decisions.

What is the difference between a Data Analyst and a Data Scientist?

A Data Analyst focuses on describing and explaining what happened using SQL, dashboards, and statistics. A Data Scientist builds predictive models and applies machine learning. The boundary varies by company, so list the actual tasks in your posting.

What skills should I look for when hiring a Data Analyst?

Strong SQL, experience with a visualization tool, statistical common sense, and the communication skills to explain findings to non-technical stakeholders. Curiosity and skepticism about suspicious numbers are the traits that separate great analysts.

Do Data Analysts need to know Python?

Not always. SQL plus a BI tool covers most analyst work. Python or R becomes valuable for automation, larger datasets, and advanced analysis, so treat it as a plus unless your stack specifically requires it.

Data Analyst Job Description

This role tends to get opened after a quarter of arguments about numbers. Two teams bring different figures to the same meeting, nobody can reproduce either, and decisions get made on whoever sounds most confident. An analyst ends that. The first hire often spends as much time agreeing what a metric means as calculating it, which is unglamorous work and exactly what makes everything afterwards possible.

Below is a complete draft: a summary you can post, the duties the job actually involves, and requirements pitched at someone who works with the business rather than behind it. Decide first whether you want a reporting analyst or a decision partner. The two attract different people, ask for different skills, and command different salaries, and candidates will spot the difference immediately.

Adapt the sections to your stack, delete what you do not need, and be honest about how much of the week goes to maintaining dashboards that already exist. Then publish it on your careers site and the data communities your candidates already follow. Feed your tools and reporting setup into the generator below if you would rather start from a draft that already fits.

Written by Jasmin Erge, HR Content Specialist at Hirex. Reviewed by the Hirex Recruitment Team.
Last updated August 20, 2026.

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About the Data Analyst role

A Data Analyst turns raw data into answers. They collect and clean data, analyze it to find trends and patterns, build dashboards and reports, and help teams make decisions based on evidence rather than intuition.

The role sits between the data and the business. A strong analyst not only writes solid SQL but also asks the right questions, challenges suspicious numbers, and explains findings in language stakeholders understand. In many companies, data analysts also define metrics, maintain reporting pipelines, and support experiments such as A/B tests.

In your posting, name the tools in your stack, the teams the analyst will support, and the kinds of decisions their work will influence. Analysts want to know whether they will be building dashboards all day or genuinely shaping decisions.