Certs + Unrelated Bachelor's Degree

[TommyTea]

Hello,

I am looking to break into the world of SAS which I know is very broad. I am preparing for the  BASE SAS 9 Certification. I am looking more towards a support role such as a SAS programmer.

All I have is a Bachelor's degree in Accounting from an AACSB accredited university which is obviously unrelated.

So how much would the SAS certifications help me if I have no related degree, or programming experience as of yet?

All advice is appreciated.

Thank you,

Tommy

[Reeza]

It helps to show your strengths and get you past HR likely. A manager will be able to tease out your skill set, but its easier to hire for subject matter expertise, programmers can be trained. 

Having an accounting background can be useful as a programmer, so it's not a skill set that will hold you back. It does make entry a touch harder, but once you're over that hurdle its more of a level playing field.

In general, the best way to show you know is to demonstrate it, either presentations at your local SAS user group, Global Forum, or even a well written blog that contains information on SAS.

This series of post doesn't fully apply since you're interested in the technical end, not the statistical end, but it may provide some information:

https://www.dataquest.io/blog/build-a-data-science-portfolio/

Pick a problem that's common in accounting and show how you could use SAS to get around this. Maybe some sample calculators for financial payments for example? And a final report - ie if I make x dollars what can I afford for housing. Based on parameters could you generate a standard report for a user, what interest rate is the highest they can afford, the largest house, and how more mortgage will affect their payment. I"m making this up as I type, so it may not be as coherent as possible, but hopefully you get the idea. 

Good Luck!

[MichelleHomes]

You may also be interested in attending or get the recording of an upcoming webinar on Feb 8th 11am ET "Getting Started with SAS Certification"

There is a FAQ session in the agenda and you could also post your specific questions during the live event.

You may find this resource useful http://blogs.sas.com/content/academic/2016/10/20/learn-sas-on-your-own-time-with-these-simple-steps/

Kind Regards,

Michelle

[ballardw]

Roles in analytics are about skill sets. Since there is a lot of accounting type data out there to analyze then I do not see any "mismatch" between the degree and the certification if that is the type of jobs you apply for. You might have less success if applying for work with medical data or other dissimilar field but we all face that to some degree.

A BA in Underwater Basket Weaving would present more of a challenge...

[Reeza]

@ballardw One of our analysts has a degree in art history and then retrained as an analyst. The latest degree is what matter most.

[TommyTea]

@Reeza how did they retrain? Did they get a relevant bachelor's or just get certs?

[Reeza]

In this case I think it was a Masters on top a bachelors.

Not sure how you get into the program or what that required 🙂

There are data analysis certificate programs that are different than say a SAS Base certified.

University of Washington has the Data Science certificate program that is highly respected.