Business intelligence is the software, hardware, research, analysis, and processing used to better understand the corporate data.  Business Intelligence, sometimes referred to as just 'BI', helps analysts within a company glean more value out of their existing information.

As the Video above demonstrates, Business Intelligence is a very valuable initiative for a company to take on. Because of the value, and the fact that it can make your company leaner and more strategic, jobs in the business intelligence discipline are booming.

Organizations are realizing that they already have a ton of industry data and information stored inside of their databases just waiting to be explored. In times like these, companies want to be more agile but deliberate in their actions. Having strong and reliable data makes for better modeling and predictions, which helps companies make more informed decisions. So companies are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars on software, hardware, consulting, and business intelligence jobs.

Many people don’t realize that they could qualify for a job in business intelligence.  The truth is, there are probably more business intelligence job listings than there are people who have business intelligence experience.  The thing is, you don’t have to have BI experience to be able to work on a BI program.

As with most things, what is old is new again.  Business Intelligence is nothing more than forecast modeling combined with data and business analyst skills partnered with very specific and powerful software.  If you have experience as a business or data analyst, you likely have 80% of what you’ll need on a daily basis for a BI program.

The data management vendors have created extremely powerful tools that can take data from many different resources and find very valuable business oriented information.  The software is very sophisticated, but it does a lot of the work on its own once you instruct it as to where and what to look at.  The output is formatted data that you can then research, analyze, and then input into a report and receive all of the accolades.

With that said, you now need to know how to convince a recruiter and hiring manager that you can indeed do a business intelligence job.  First, you’ll want to study the job description thoroughly.  Do you really qualify?  Does it make sense?  If so, you’ll want to dissect each bullet point and sentence in the job description and make sure you speak to it in your cover letter and/or resume.  You need to first, on paper, look like the perfect candidate.

Once you do that, and you convince a recruiter that you are perfect, you’ll next need to convince a hiring manager.  This will generally happen in a face-to-face interview.  You’ll want to use many examples of how you have succeeded in the past.  Be personable, be able to relate a story of how you succeeded, but come across as human.  In my experience, they can tell pretty quickly if you can do the job or not.  The rest of the interview is to see what kind of person you are; to see if you are a good fit for the team.
So, that is the basic foundation for getting a job in Business Intelligence.  This is just an overview, and you’ll really need to familiarize yourself with the BI and Advanced Interviewing skills to really be a shining candidate.