How to hire a business intelligence specialist

How to hire a business intelligence specialist, step by step

Here's a step-by-step business intelligence specialist 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 specialist job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new business intelligence specialist
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a business intelligence specialist do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   First, determine the employments status of the business intelligence specialist you need to hire. Certain business intelligence specialist 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

   You should also consider the ideal background you'd like them a business intelligence specialist to have before you start to hire. For example, what industry or field would you like them to have experience in, what level of seniority or education does the job require, and how much it'll cost to hire a business intelligence specialist that fits the bill.

   This list shows salaries for various types of business intelligence specialists.

   Type of Business Intelligence Specialist	Description	Hourly rate
   Business Intelligence Specialist		$32-58
   Analytical Data Miner	An analytical data miner specializes in providing analytical services to help organizations make decisions and optimize their daily operations. They may work in the medical, manufacturing, information technology, construction, and finance industries... Show more	$28-56
   Business Owner/Engineer	Business owners/engineers are executive professionals who work with business users to help develop business requirements. These professionals must create an approach for new financial data warehouse product development so that they can reduce complexity and mitigate implementation risk... Show more	$35-66

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Power Bi
   • Analytics
   • Tableau
   • Visualization
   • Data Analysis
   • ETL
   • Metrics
   • Data Warehouse
   • Business Intelligence Tools
   • SQL Server
   • Architecture
   • Data Warehousing
   • SSRS
   • SAS

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Coordinate and manage Cognos customers from a select group of high revenue contribution, establishing exceptional customer relationships.
   • Adapt existing Java base data load application for Netezza database thus making first generation of Netezza data warehouse operational.
   • Work on overall functionality of the projects including internal logic, data integration and internal build process development using T-SQL.
   • Used T-SQL to query sales, impression, customer, and email databases, to provide analysis for senior management.
   • Help develop the company web site using HTML5, CSS and jQuery within Joomla CMS (https: //www.webbuildercloud.com/en/).
   • Create sophisticated calculate members using MDX queries; design and create aggregations to speed up queries and improve performance in SSAS.

   More business intelligence specialist duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your business intelligence specialist job description is one of the best ways to attract top talent. A business intelligence specialist can vary based on:

   • Location. For example, business intelligence specialists' average salary in nebraska is 36% less than in district of columbia.
   • Seniority. Entry-level business intelligence specialists 44% less than senior-level business intelligence specialists.
   • Certifications. A business intelligence specialist with certifications usually earns a higher salary.
   • Company. Working for an established firm or a new start-up company can make a big difference in a business intelligence specialist's salary.

   Average business intelligence specialist salary

   $91,250yearly

   $43.87 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level business intelligence specialist salary

   $68,000 yearly salary

   Updated January 22, 2026

   Average business intelligence specialist salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	California	$118,095	$57
   2	District of Columbia	$110,981	$53
   3	Virginia	$105,634	$51
   4	New Jersey	$98,638	$47
   5	Delaware	$95,894	$46
   6	Arizona	$95,596	$46
   7	New York	$95,070	$46
   8	Georgia	$94,975	$46
   9	North Carolina	$94,240	$45
   10	Minnesota	$94,189	$45
   11	Massachusetts	$92,644	$45
   12	Texas	$90,284	$43
   13	Wisconsin	$88,469	$43
   14	Florida	$87,177	$42
   15	Michigan	$86,300	$41
   16	Indiana	$83,281	$40
   17	Illinois	$82,664	$40
   18	Arkansas	$74,657	$36
   19	Tennessee	$74,122	$36
   20	Colorado	$71,993	$35

   Average business intelligence specialist salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Fried Frank	$123,851	$59.54
   2	Silicon Valley Bank	$118,448	$56.95
   3	CooperSurgical	$116,447	$55.98
   4	SAP	$115,985	$55.76	50
   5	Northwell Health	$111,074	$53.40	10
   6	MUFG EMEA	$109,397	$52.59
   7	Amerisure Insurance	$108,038	$51.94
   8	Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA	$107,779	$51.82
   9	Kiewit	$106,181	$51.05	2
   10	W. R. Berkley	$105,687	$50.81	5
   11	Transatlantic Holdings, Inc.	$105,246	$50.60
   12	BNY Mellon	$105,045	$50.50	11
   13	Valero Energy	$104,081	$50.04
   14	ICW Group	$103,901	$49.95
   15	Mohawk Industries	$103,856	$49.93	11
   16	AlixPartners	$103,351	$49.69
   17	The Kraft Group	$102,255	$49.16
   18	Citi	$102,042	$49.06	11
   19	Ashley HomeStore	$100,885	$48.50	2
   20	Diamond Nuts	$100,842	$48.48

4. Writing a business intelligence specialist job description

   A good business intelligence specialist job description should include a few things:

   • Summary of the role
   • List of responsibilities
   • Required skills and experience

   Including a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager is also appreciated by candidates. Here's an example of a business intelligence specialist job description:

   Business intelligence specialist job description example

   The main function of the Business Intelligence (BI) Specialist is to create and manage BI and analytics solutions that turn data into knowledge. Uses knowledge of data and business analysis to provide high level support. The BI Developer must have excellent communication and analytical skills.
   
   * Responsible for the development, deployment, and support of Power Applications within the Microsoft solution. Assist in setting up the Power Platform environment
   
   * Essential to understand technical aspects as well as software development architecture to transform requirements into technical presence
   
   * Create technical designs and Power Platform and solution components, including application enhancements, custom user experience, system integrations, data conversions, custom process automation, and custom visualizations.
   
   * Build strong productive customer focused relationships with the Business, IT teams and third parties.
   
   * Review functional and design specifications to ensure full understanding of individual deliverables.
   
   * Support business users, capturing and reporting defects to the project to enable review, required remediation and re-test.
   * Provide application support for company-wide applications, such as: SAP AeroCerts Crystal Reports Job Boss * Assist with network troubleshooting and maintaining data integrity.
   * Assist in providing computer/network support relating to software and hardware problems reported by users.
   * Install new software applications or hardware on the LAN, coordinating assistance from third parties when necessary.
   * Add and maintain users on the network; assigning application access, ensuring security, and maintaining their configurations are within standards.
   * Participate in team meetings, providing input and suggestions.
   * Must maintain a high level of integrity and confidentiality.
   * Ability to travel when required. * Suggest training ideas for users based upon interaction from resolving support requests.
   * Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (written and verbal) with exceptional team player attitude as well as flexibility towards managing multiple tasks and meeting deadlines in high-pressure environment.
   * Expert in Excel spreadsheets, pivot tables, etc. Bachelor's degree in Software Engineer, computer science, information technology or a related field as well as at least 3+ years of experience preferred in Software Development/Engineering or similar. Familiarity with JavaScript, .Net, RESTful web services, Microsoft 365, Power BI are required.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   There are a few common ways to find business intelligence specialists 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.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your business intelligence specialist job on Zippia to find and attract quality business intelligence specialist candidates.
   • Use niche websites such as dice, engineering.com, stack overflow, it job pro.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Recruiting business intelligence specialists requires you to bring your A-game to the interview process. The first interview should introduce the company and the role to the candidate as much as they present their background experience and reasons for applying for the job. During later interviews, you can go into more detail about the technical details of the job and ask behavioral questions to gauge how they'd fit into your current company culture.

   Remember to include a few questions that allow candidates to expand on their strengths in their own words. Asking about their unique skills might reveal things you'd miss otherwise. At this point, good candidates can move on to the technical interview.

   Sometimes, it's not enough to interview business intelligence specialist 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 specialist

   Once you've decided on a perfect business intelligence specialist candidate, it's time to write an offer letter. In addition to salary, it should include benefits and perks available to the employee. Qualified candidates may be considered for other positions, so make sure your offer is competitive. Candidates may wish to negotiate. Once you've settled on the details, formalize your agreement with a contract.

   It's equally important to follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that the position has been filled.

   To prepare for the new business intelligence specialist first day, you should share an onboarding schedule with them that covers their first period on the job. You should also quickly complete any necessary paperwork, such as employee action forms and onboarding documents like I-9, benefits enrollment, and federal and state tax forms. Finally, Human Resources must ensure a new employee file is created for internal record keeping.

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.)

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