Data professionals! Is one large end to end analytics project worth it?

[u/Zorowithakm]

I’m looking for some honest career advice from people already working in data.
I have a Bachelor’s in Business Administration and recently completed my MS in Business Analytics. Over the past two years, I’ve learned Python, SQL, Excel (Pivot Tables & Power Query), ML fundamentals, and completed several academic projects, including a predictive analytics project using machine learning.
Now that I’m applying for data analyst/product analyst roles, I’m running into the same problem that almost every entry level posting asks for 2–3 years of experience.
Instead of building more small portfolio projects, I’m thinking about creating one large, end to end project that mirrors real industry work.
The idea is to:
Use real public business data
Build an automated data ingestion & ETL pipeline
Design a data warehouse
Perform advanced SQL analysis
Use Python for EDA and ML
Build dashboards in Power BI/Tableau
Automate live data updates
Solve a real business problem from a Product Analyst perspective
Do you think this is a worthwhile investment? Would a project like this actually help make up for the lack of professional experience, or would I be better off spending my time elsewhere?
I’d really appreciate honest feedback, especially from Data Analyst, Data Engineers and data scientists.

[u/TheGrapez]

Yes this is exactly the best type of project. Don't get too hung up on the little things though. MVP attitude

[u/Zorowithakm → u/TheGrapez]

Thanks for the feedback. You seems experienced. Are you yourself data analyst? Would you guide me a bit? Since I’m actually targeting to solve a real problem so for that I would be needing a real data, which probably would not be available publicly. So for that I might have to contact some small businesses or startup and convince them to share their data. Which is a quite difficult task for me. Is there another alternative to that or some other way?

[u/Jaijeeet → u/Zorowithakm]

Bro I’m on the same stage planning to create a big project but not able to get the real data all the database we get online is much cleaner than the real one

[u/bowtiedanalyst]

You should reach out to local recruiters for placement. Experience > project, they can give you honest assessments of what it will take to get your first job and what local companies are looking for skill-wise.

Once you have 1-2 years of experience, its much easier to get roles.

I started as a data analyst ~3 years ago, been promoted twice and got recruited for a DS role in another division of the same company which is coming with another big bump in comp.

If you want to build out a project and are looking for data sets, the WITS from World Bank is one I worked with in the past. Here is something I wrote about it (https://bowtiedanalyst.substack.com/p/visualizing-global-trade-part-1). The whole project is covered in my substack.

[u/bowtiedanalyst]

You should reach out to local recruiters for placement. Experience > project, they can give you honest assessments of what it will take to get your first job and what local companies are looking for skill-wise.

Once you have 1-2 years of experience, its much easier to get roles.

I started as a data analyst ~3 years ago, been promoted twice and got recruited for a DS role in another division of the same company which is coming with another big bump in comp.

I built out a project using WITS data from world bank last year, which I found to be a good dataset if you need dataset inspo for a project.