Your career ambitions and needs will change throughout your life. While a contract position might have been best for you at one point, you may be ready to transition into a full-time role or are considering taking on a leadership position with your business analyst skills. 

The skills you developed as a freelancer will help you during your full-time transition; however, there may be some rocky parts as well. This guide will help you better understand what a transition into a full-time business analyst job looks like and how you can ease through it.

You Can Readily Find Full-Time Business Analyst Roles

Business analysts looking for full-time work are in a good position. There are plenty of BA roles available as companies invest in process improvement, data analysis and other analyst-centric strategies.

Business analytics mentor Justin H. Fong examined the job prospects of business analysts, and found that BAs have a projected 14 percent job growth from 2016 to 2026. Additionally, almost 8,000 positions were advertised in April 2019 across the United States, with hubs in New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

If you’re unable to find business analyst jobs in your area, you may reconsider the job titles and keywords you’re using in your search. Companies are changing the role of BAs to account for their agile workforce, writes Tina Joseph at digital business training provider Netmind. The discipline is still there, and the skills are still needed, but under an agile lens. In one instance, a company changed the title from BA to “technology planning analyst.” This is something we have also discussed recently when reflecting on the changing role of BAs under an agile framework.

Consider How the Role of Business Analysts is Changing

By keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry, you can better find a job that fits your experience or apply for roles within an organization that might be new to you. 

If you want to work with a specific company, consider applying for a different department or position, suggests Liz Torres at Monster. This can get your foot in the door and lead to an eventual transition to your dream job. Plus, business analysts have a place in almost every department within the organization, from marketing to human resources — and senior leadership.

You might also consider stepping out of your industry and looking for a full-time job within a new field. This can give you new experiences and hands-on training as an employee. 

Business analyst Randima Thilakarathna explains that working with a product-driven organization makes the process more holistic for business analysts. Instead of working in silos, or only seeing part of the process as a contractor, you can look at the overall picture and make bigger changes across the organization. In this way, an in-house role may help you have a bigger impact.

As the business analyst role becomes more flexible, the jobs you apply for may change. These changes can benefit your career and let you explore industries and departments that you might otherwise never have thought to work for before.

Benefits of Accepting a Full-Time Job

If you are still on the fence as to whether a full-time position is right for you, consider the various benefits of an in-house role. You may find that you can fully dedicate yourself to the work and the company that has hired you.

There are More Leadership Opportunities

Stepping into a full-time position with an organization can give BAs a chance to hone their leadership skills. 

Confidence in yourself as an analyst and a leader can help you ease the transition into a full-time role and prepare you for the leadership challenges ahead. For example, Dana McInnis, a freelance scrum master and process analyst, says she admires business analysts that aren’t afraid to ask “dumb” questions or admit what they don’t know. This shows that they are eager to learn and grow their knowledge. 

Humility and dedication to learning is key in leadership. Working with different teams in-house can give you the time and space to ask questions and show that you care about their success. 

Communicate Better With Teams

Many BAs have found that working on an in-house team has given them the ability to better communicate with teams and understand their needs. 

According to The Business Analyst Job Description website, nothing holds more importance for a business analyst than to be able to communicate clearly. Communication involves getting your point across, but also understanding what is being said. 

“Effective verbal communication is imperative in the workplace,” writes business analyst Amber Hubble. “I believe the success of mastering this skill is actually not to talk too much. You may say that is counter-intuitive, but as a business analyst, you want people talking to you. We are constantly eliciting feedback, pain points and requirements.”

Communication can be a challenge for freelancers or contractors who aren’t always invited to meetings or included on email threads. Even quick chats in the hallway can provide valuable information to help an analyst do their job. 

Connect Better With the Company Culture

Solid communication and leadership skills are often highlighted when business analysts click with the company culture. The Adaptive Solutions Group emphasizes how full-time employees are able to get a better sense of a company’s cultural style. This benefits the morale of BAs because they feel like they are part of the team and embrace the passion that comes with working to make a project happen.

This connection to the company culture can also help with productivity. It allows BAs to understand the nuances of working with different people and how to manage these relationships. 

For example, the team at DocPoint Solutions shared how they use business analysts for process improvement. Either a junior or senior BA meets with the team to review their process and document how work gets done. Then they identify ways to improve these processes and make them run smoother. If the BA already has a strong professional relationship with the teams they are sent to help, then that team is more likely to invite them in and ask for help.

“BA’s are specialists of change, as they introduce, manage, and facilitate the necessary changes to your business model,” Ben Fisher writes at BA Times. “They are the people who provide the all-important link between stakeholders and project teams by communicating information between the two.”

This means that BAs who are connected to the culture can strengthen this link and will likely be more successful in their careers.

You Can Make a Big Difference in a Newly-Formed Position

As a contractor, you have the opportunity to step into a company and make a big difference if the organization has never hired a full-time analyst before. 

“A lot of companies still operate without the business analyst function,” says Dinis Guarda, founder of IntelligentHQ. “You can never tell just how much potential value you can unlock until you experiment with an analyst.”

Additionally, you can use the outside experience that comes from working with different clients as a freelancer to offer expertise as an in-house analyst.

“Companies are compelled to hire external business analysts not only when they have reached capacity and need extra help, but also when they’re not seeing the expected results from their internal team of BAs or product managers,” writes data scientist and consultant Adriana Beal. 

In some cases, this may mean that current BAs lack the skills to perform the work and need extra training. You can take over a role as a lead business analyst and guide the current staff to where they need to be. 

Consider Transitioning in a Contract-to-Hire Role

One option to consider to ease the transition between a freelance consultant and a full-time business analyst is to look for a contract-to-hire role. 

“Contract-to-hire jobs provide the employer the opportunity to assess an employee’s technical skills, soft skills, and cultural fit within the organization prior to committing to a full-time arrangement where benefits become an added expense on top of pay,” says Lisa Frame-Jacobson, a business coach and HR consultant.

Essentially, this contract serves as a trial run to see what it would be like to have someone fully on staff, and what it would be like for that particular person to join the team. 

Many people will advocate the benefits of a contract-to-hire role, including Jamie Hichens, director at RevelOne. She shared one story of a new hire with Glassdoor: 

“We recently hired someone for a contract role of three to six months, but because she went above and beyond what was expected of her, we offered her a full-time role — even though we didn’t even have an open position for it listed on our site. She proved her value by thinking of new things to do in her role that weren’t expected of her — she redid processes and streamlined things in a way that proved to be invaluable.”

If this is the route that you want to take, remember that proving your worth if on your shoulders, and there may be factors out of your control that prevent companies from hiring you full-time.
The company you work for will play a major role in whether you have a smooth transition from freelance to full-time. If you find an organization with a strong culture and commitment to communication and transparency, then you will likely enjoy taking the next step on your career journey.