How to hire a business intelligence analyst

How to hire a business intelligence analyst, step by step

Here's a step-by-step business intelligence analyst hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a business intelligence analyst job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new business intelligence analyst
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a business intelligence analyst do?

Post a business intelligence analyst job for free, promote it for a fee

Post free

1. Identify your hiring needs

   First, determine the employments status of the business intelligence analyst you need to hire. Certain business intelligence analyst roles might require a full-time employee, whereas others can be done by part-time workers or contractors.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   A business intelligence analyst's background is also an important factor in determining whether they'll be a good fit for the position. For example, business intelligence analysts from different industries or fields will have radically different experiences and will bring different viewpoints to the role. You also need to consider the candidate's previous level of experience to make sure they'll be comfortable with the job's level of seniority.

   Here's a comparison of business intelligence analyst salaries for various roles:

   Type of Business Intelligence Analyst	Description	Hourly rate
   Business Intelligence Analyst		$28-51
   Analyst Lead	The duties of an analyst lead depend on one's line of work or industry of employment. Typically, their responsibilities revolve around performing research and analysis, coordinating with different departments to gather leads and data, reviewing findings, and producing reports and presentations for the stakeholders and other higher-ranking officials... Show more	$35-58
   Analyst	Analysts are employees or individual contributors with a vast experience in a particular field that help the organization address challenges. They help the organization improve processes, policies, and other operations protocol by studying the current processes in place and determining the effectiveness of those processes... Show more	$25-47

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Business Intelligence
   • Analytics
   • Power Bi
   • Dashboards
   • Visualization
   • Data Analysis
   • Analyze Data
   • Data Warehouse
   • ETL
   • Data Quality
   • Strong Analytical
   • Data Models
   • HR
   • Data Warehousing

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage daily KPI and dashboard reports for upper management and various departments.
   • Utilize T-SQL and advance database skills to develop and manage client's large volume of data.
   • Gather business requirements and deliver business analytics base solutions using structured/unstructure business data to help achieve measurable business outcomes for clients.
   • Envision and construct SalesForce dashboards to return key performance indicators for products.
   • Install and configure driver for Hadoop connection.
   • Stream leader for a major CRM project base on SalesForce.com.

   More business intelligence analyst duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your business intelligence analyst job description helps attract top candidates to the position. A business intelligence analyst salary can be affected by several factors, such as geography, experience, seniority, certifications, and the prestige of the hiring company.

   For example, the average salary for a business intelligence analyst in North Dakota may be lower than in New Hampshire, and an entry-level business intelligence analyst usually earns less than a senior-level business intelligence analyst. Additionally, a business intelligence analyst with certifications may command a higher salary, and working for a well-known company or start-up may also impact an employee's pay.

   Average business intelligence analyst salary

   $80,249yearly

   $38.58 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level business intelligence analyst salary

   $59,000 yearly salary

   Updated December 24, 2025

   Average business intelligence analyst salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	California	$99,465	$48
   2	District of Columbia	$91,652	$44
   3	Washington	$87,619	$42
   4	Virginia	$86,239	$41
   5	Oregon	$84,510	$41
   6	Massachusetts	$84,443	$41
   7	New Jersey	$82,319	$40
   8	New York	$82,176	$40
   9	Pennsylvania	$81,488	$39
   10	Illinois	$78,577	$38
   11	Ohio	$78,366	$38
   12	Arizona	$77,019	$37
   13	North Carolina	$76,854	$37
   14	Texas	$76,654	$37
   15	Indiana	$75,415	$36
   16	Maine	$74,630	$36
   17	Georgia	$73,905	$36
   18	Colorado	$72,038	$35
   19	Iowa	$71,920	$35
   20	Utah	$71,537	$34

   Average business intelligence analyst salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	The Citadel	$148,787	$71.53	6
   2	Credit Karma	$127,793	$61.44
   3	Meta	$125,489	$60.33	51
   4	Apple	$124,714	$59.96	7
   5	Safeway	$124,644	$59.92
   6	PayPal	$122,510	$58.90	10
   7	Google	$122,116	$58.71	48
   8	Venable	$121,438	$58.38
   9	Square Enix	$118,062	$56.76
   10	Palo Alto Networks	$117,190	$56.34	47
   11	Flexport	$117,083	$56.29
   12	Adobe	$116,926	$56.21	17
   13	Chegg	$116,793	$56.15
   14	Workday	$116,471	$56.00
   15	Navis	$113,475	$54.56
   16	DoorDash	$113,063	$54.36	11
   17	Cegedim Inc	$112,990	$54.32
   18	Twitter	$112,801	$54.23
   19	Asana	$112,771	$54.22
   20	Applied Materials	$112,714	$54.19	11

4. Writing a business intelligence analyst job description

   A business intelligence analyst job description should include a summary of the role, required skills, and a list of responsibilities. It's also good to include a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager. To help get you started, here's an example of a business intelligence analyst job description:

   Business intelligence analyst job description example

   FTE status: 1
   
   On-call: Yes
   
   Weekends: No
   
   General Summary:
   
   Reporting to the Director Business Intelligence/Analytics, builds and supports business intelligence and analytics initiatives to enhance departmental and organizational effectiveness, efficiency and safety. Works closely with other Information Technology staff to plan and implement strategies. Writes, clarifies, and interprets specifications for reports and translates specifications into report. Investigates, analyzes, and evaluates customer desires to asses reporting needs. Designs, documents, develops, tests, implements, and maintains user reports. Recommends guidelines, standards, and methodology changes as needed.
   
   Requirements:
   A bachelor's degree in computer science or related field. 2 years of experience in one or more of the roles listed below, or four years of commensurate experience. This position requires experience with and knowledge of Crystal Report Development, SQL script development, and an operational understanding of the components of the technologies that support a hospital system. In addition, skills in Epic Clarity report development preferred. Intermediate to advanced skills are required in the functional areas above.
   Essential Functions and Responsibilities:
   Conducts analysis of departmental, organizational, and individual information needs relative to specific assignments. Analyzes system performance, data integrity and security requirements in development and resolution work. Documents all phases of project and product life cycles. Provides technical assistance in resolving developed tools issues Remains technically current in areas specifically assigned. Establishes and continues development toward personal career goals. Develops or participates in development of reports, queries, scripts, and system testing strategies. Supports and educates others in support of applications and tools developed, as well as third party applications assigned. SQL and other report development. Participates in support of applications that require scripting methodologies. Assists in any other activity as assigned
   #IT

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   There are a few common ways to find business intelligence analysts for your business:

   • Promoting internally or recruiting from your existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals from friends, family members, and current employees.
   • Attend job fairs at local colleges to meet candidates with the right educational background.
   • Use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to recruit passive job-seekers.

   To find business intelligence analyst candidates, you can consider the following options:

   • Post your job opening on Zippia or other job search websites.
   • Use niche websites that focus on engineering and technology jobs, such as dice, engineering.com, stack overflow, it job pro.
   • Post your job on free job posting websites.

6. Interview candidates

   To successfully recruit business intelligence analysts, your first interview needs to engage with candidates to learn about their interest in the role and experience in the field. You can go into more detail about the company, the role, and the responsibilities during follow-up interviews.

   It's also good to ask about candidates' unique skills and talents. You can move on to the technical interview if a candidate is good enough for the next step.

   Sometimes, it's not enough to interview business intelligence analyst candidates, so you can ask them to do a test project. If you are not a technical person and don't know what a test project should be, you can use these websites:

   • TestDome
   • CodeSignal
   • Testlify
   • BarRaiser
   • Coderbyte

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new business intelligence analyst

   Once you've found the business intelligence analyst candidate you'd like to hire, it's time to write an offer letter. This should include an explicit job offer that includes the salary and the details of any other perks. Qualified candidates might be looking at multiple positions, so your offer must be competitive if you like the candidate. Also, be prepared for a negotiation stage, as candidates may way want to tweak the details of your initial offer. Once you've settled on these details, you can draft a contract to formalize your agreement.

   You should also follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that you've filled the position.

   After that, you can create an onboarding schedule for a new business intelligence analyst. Human Resources and the hiring manager should complete Employee Action Forms. Human Resources should also ensure that onboarding paperwork is completed, including I-9s, benefits enrollment, federal and state tax forms, etc., and that new employee files are created.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

   Sign up to download full list

   Sign up

How much does it cost to hire a business intelligence analyst?