Tableau Certificates Near Me

Tableau is a data visualization and business intelligence application that has been an important part of the field of data analytics since its release in 2003. The tool offers users a robust collection of features, including mapping and charting functionality, simple data upload processes (across a range of different file types), and Cloud data storage. The tool has become one of the most commonly-used BI applications, and in 2019, it was acquired by Salesforce for over 15 billion dollars. As businesses and other institutions become more and more focused on leveraging data-based solutions, having the skills to communicate that data to others is essential to ensuring long-term success.

Tableau is noteworthy for the ease with which analysts can use it to create interactive, live-updating maps, charts, and graphs in virtual dashboards that they can share with others. This allows users to compare different variables, quickly isolate specific data points, and query databases in unique ways instantly. This also allows users to easily begin to analyze their datasets since, with only a few clicks, you can automatically create interactive charts and graphs that can compare single or multiple variables at once. Owing to this, Tableau can be helpful for discovering connections and correlations in your data that would not be otherwise visible, and the ease with which you can alter your queries makes it invaluable for anyone who needs to present data in a way that is understandable by an audience.

Why Become Certified in Tableau?

Every day, even small businesses generate more data from customers and regular business activities than professionals could have even conceptualized in decades prior. Owing to this, it is more important than ever that data analysts and other data professionals can access, organize, and query this data with ease. The amount of data produced every day is far too great for human beings to examine it all in detail, and Tableau’s interactive dashboards give users a tremendous amount of freedom to easily and effectively organize and query their data. Learning how to use programs like Tableau greatly increases the pace and effectiveness of any data analytics project since you can plug data into the system and immediately start examining that data in practical ways.

In addition to helping analysts query and compare data points, it is essential for anyone working with data to be able to communicate their findings and narrativize their data. It is one thing to have a large dataset to work with, and another thing to present your findings and convince stakeholders to take your reading of the data into account. Tableau’s interactive dashboards allow you to present your data in an easy-to-understand and digestible way, including the ability to alter your charts and graphs on the fly to create easy and spontaneous comparisons between data points, which can afford you even greater capacity to have your data tell the stories you want it to tell.

Being certified in Tableau will signal to employers that you understand how to leverage the tool to your advantage and that you have the training that you need to use the program in a professional capacity. This can make you significantly more competitive when applying for jobs in data-related fields, and learning Tableau will, necessarily, involve working with the program and creating practical examples of dashboards and interactive maps and charts that you can add to your professional portfolio.

What You’ll Learn While Becoming Tableau Certified

Since Tableau is a data organization and querying tool, most of the skills associated with it hinge on training you to use data effectively. While you can learn Tableau on its own, it is most often learned alongside other data-related skills.

Data Analytics

Tableau is an important tool for the process of data analytics, the act of taking raw data and, unsurprisingly, analyzing it to provide valuable insights into what would otherwise be a pile of useless numbers. Learning how to properly give context to and analyze data is an important step in the process of making sense of the data you collect, and most Tableau classes will provide you with training in subjects like statistical, quantitative, and qualitative analysis. You’ll learn how to properly query datasets to get the kinds of results that you are looking for. This training is essential to making proper use of Tableau and it is a vital professional skill for anyone who is hoping to work with data professionally.

Data Science

In addition to learning how to analyze data, it is useful to study data science, which primarily deals with how data is collected, organized, and transferred into a usable form. You may learn how to program data applications using Python, SQL, or even VBA in Excel, or you might simply learn how these tools work generally so that you understand where your data is coming from, how it is being collected, and how that could impact your results. This will also help you pair your training in Tableau with other useful data science tools (things like the applications commonly utilized in FinTech and investment-related projects) to make more complex observations using more detailed and precise datasets. Learning Data Science is also a good way to learn how complex systems for storing and organizing data operate, giving you a firmer grasp on the mechanics behind data analytic practices.

Data Visualization

Since Tableau is a data visualization tool first and foremost, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of data visualization to use the tool effectively. This means understanding how to create visually appealing and understandable charts, maps, and graphs. If it isn’t clear what your data is telling viewers, then you may as well not have created a chart in the first place. Tableau, in particular, can create complex and interactive charts and maps, meaning you’ll need even more training in how to select variables, pair datasets, and demonstrate contrasts between data points using the tools on hand. This will be the bulk of your Tableau training since it is the primary function of the tool.

Story-telling

Ultimately, the goal of any data analytics and visualization task is to understand something about a dataset and use that knowledge to create actionable insights based on the data. While this can sometimes be easy, usually it requires you to understand how to make data speak and how to get it to say the things that you want it to say. This process requires you to understand things like visual rhetoric and narrative since explaining the connections between data points and using those connections requires an understanding of how to communicate this data in a way that is convincing and honest. Learning to work with Tableau will necessarily involve learning how data can be used to tell stories.

Tableau Industries

Given that data has become such a major portion of the modern economy, there are scant few industries that aren’t utilizing applications like Tableau to make the data easier to understand and more effective as a tool. This can include everything from the financial sector using it as part of a collection of FinTech applications to commerce and retail using it to paint a picture of customer behavior and preferences to the administrative and diagnostic aspects of the healthcare industry.

Finance

The Financial sector thrives on up-to-the-second data reports from a wide range of sources and they increasingly rely upon various FinTech tools to ensure that this data is properly collected, organized, and interpreted (gone are the days of checking stock prices in the morning newspaper, you can follow them minute-by-minute with ease). Learning how to use Tableau can help you easily create interactive dashboards that you or your clients can use to make comparisons, chart long-term expectations, or look at historical trends in the data. Knowing how to convert raw financial data into easy-to-read charts and graphs can take a lot of the headache out of working in finance or investing.

Commerce

Businesses involved in retail commerce have a wide range of data analytics tools at their disposal which can significantly expand their business and help them address customer concerns more directly. However, this data can be difficult to initially parse, especially when using multiple sources of data (like Google Analytics and other SEO tools). Learning to use Tableau can help make the data easier to read and interpret, and it can help you make proposals and presentations to other invested stakeholders. The ability to easily translate user and customer data can greatly speed up the pace at which a business grows and establishes itself within the market.

Sports

No industry has publicly embraced data collection as much as pro sports, and if you are interested in working in the industry, it pays to learn how to collect and interpret data. Learning Tableau can help you create dashboards that make changes in data easy to pull up on the fly. Whether this is building a chart that tracks a hitter's change in batting average at different counts, comparing the EPA of various options for playing calls, or simply tracking your own times and running speeds using advanced biometric tracking, there are a lot of benefits to learning the art of using applications like Tableau to better understand your position in a sporting event.

Politics and Campaigning

Data has revolutionized the art of running a political campaign, and if you are hoping to find success as a member of a campaign staff (or as a campaigner yourself), you’ll want to understand the process of collecting and organizing voter data and opinion polling. In a modern campaign, data will often be used to gauge voter interest and information down to a street-by-street level. Tableau can be used to demonstrate subtle shifts in voter activity and patterns or create detailed maps that track important information.

Tableau Careers

Data Analyst

The most common career path for those with Tableau certifications is finding work as a Data Analyst. These professionals are responsible for taking a business or institution's raw data collections and making sense of that data using queries and data visualization tools like Tableau. They are tasked with using this data to produce actionable plans for growth, expansion, or changes in direction, and they will often use applications like Tableau to make their extrapolations for the data easier to understand and clearer in their implications. Data Analysts can find work in virtually every industry since data collection and analysis have become significantly more important across many sectors. In the US, the average salary of a Data Analyst falls between $74,000 and $80,000.

Machine Learning Engineer

One of the more significant shifts in the field of data science and analytics over the last few years has been the rapid expansion of machine learning technologies, like LLMs and AI chatbots. These developments have promised to radically reshape a wide range of different industries, but they still require Machine Learning Engineers to ensure that they are being taught properly and that the data they are being fed is free from issues or biases. Learning Tableau will help engineers better understand the data that they are entering into their machine learning algorithm, helping them with the learning process and making it easier to determine if the output aligns with the input. Machine Learning Engineers are in very high demand at the moment, and, on average, their yearly salaries range from $140,000 to $180,000 a year.

Data Scientist

In order for Data Analysts to make use of data, they need a way to collect, store, and organize that data. This is the purview of the Data Scientist, whose primary job is to build the architecture and applications that make the modern data-focused economy possible. While Data Scientists primarily work with coding languages like SQL and Python, knowing how to use applications like Tableau can be incredibly useful since it makes the data they are working with easier to understand and parse on the fly. This will help Data Scientists better understand how their data is being utilized and whether or not their models are correctly parsing the data. Many data scientists specialize in specific kinds of programming and development such as building machine learning algorithms or working on FinTech analysis tools.

Should You Pursue a Certificate or Certification?

You might be surprised to learn that certificates and certifications aren’t the same thing. While they are both methods of informing employers and clients of your Tableau skills, they demonstrate these skills in different ways and there are several differences between Tableau certification programs and Tableau certificate programs. Which one is the better option for you will depend on your level of existing training and your ability to commit to guided training programs.

What is the Difference?

The main difference between a certificate and a certification is how they demonstrate proficiency in the application. A certification is awarded to users who completed a proctored examination offered by a third party, while a certificate is more akin to a diploma, being awarded to students who complete a training program that covers Tableau (or possibly other subjects). Certification exams tend to be hyper-focused on the subject that they cover, so you’ll only be demonstrating your Tableau skills. On the other hand, certificate programs often cover larger subjects such as data science or data analytics training, which includes Tableau but may also cover skills like Python programming or advanced Excel training.

Which Should You Pursue?

The choice of whether to pursue a certificate or a certification will mostly come down to how much guided training you think you need to improve your Tableau skills to a professional level. Since certification exams only last a few hours (at most, many don’t take more than 90 minutes) and they don’t cost a lot of money, they are ideal for anyone who wants to quickly demonstrate their proficiency and get a certification to add to their resume. However, certification exams come with very little outside support (some will come with practice exams or study guides, for others, these come with an added fee) and there is no additional training provided. Thus, certification exams are a great way to demonstrate the skills you already have, but are very ineffective at helping you hone your career skills.

Certificate programs, on the other hand, are more immersive training programs that aim to take students with minimal prior training and get them ready for professional work. This means that they are far more intensive and time-consuming (though it is possible to spread the lessons out and it isn’t nearly as long as getting an associates’ degree or its equivalent). These classes are designed to help students who want to change careers or prepare themselves for earning a promotion rather than employees just wanting to demonstrate their existing skill proficiencies.

At the end of the day, the choice of which path to pursue is going to come down to whether or not you feel like you already have professional Tableau skills or you need additional training to be comfortable with the program. If the primary goal of becoming certified is to have an easy and official way to demonstrate your prior Tableau training, you’ll want to take a certification exam. If you need more training and want to get guided instruction in becoming proficient with Tableau, you’ll want to enroll in a certificate-granting program.

Top Tableau Certificate Programs

If you are looking for an official Tableau certification, the best place to go is to take the exam proctored by Salesforce, the current publisher of the application. This exam covers the use of Tableau in a data analytics context, and there are options for consultants, architects, server associates, and desktop specialists. These exams last for approximately two hours and the cost of signing up for the proctored exam is 250 dollars. The exam consists of a combination of multiple choice general Tableau knowledge questions and hands-on lab practicals intended to demonstrate proficiency in the application.

Students looking to pair this exam with a bit of immersive, accelerated training may want to consider a course like Noble Desktop’s Tableau Certification program. In this course, students will receive guided training in the use of Tableau as a data analytics and visualization tool and they will get private tutoring sessions that they can use to help them become more comfortable with the application in preparation for the exam. This course covers everything from basic Tableau skills to advanced use of the program’s various dashboard features, meaning that novices and experienced Tableau users alike can benefit from this training program. Students will also get private tutoring aimed at helping them overcome the challenges that they are having with Tableau. As part of the tuition, students will be registered for the Tableau data analytics professional certification exam (which they can opt out of and receive additional private tutorings).

Even if you have prior experience working with Tableau, enrolling in this program can be helpful for students looking to brush up on their skills. Since the certification exam already costs a decent amount of money, enrolling in a course such as this can help you ensure that you are confident in your ability to pass and it will minimize the likelihood that you need to take the exam again. Most certification exams only provide minimal support to help students prepare and this is often as (if not more) expensive as the exam itself. This means that if you aren’t confident that you’ll pass the exam in one try, getting live instruction, private tutoring and guided support is a good way to ensure that you aren’t wasting your time and money on the exam. Plus, you might learn things about Tableau in the process.

Noble also offers significantly more immersive, career-focused certificate-granting programs in data science and data analytics, both of which cover Tableau training as part of the curriculum. These programs are ideal for novice programmers and data analysts looking to kick-start their careers and learn marketable skills across various industries. Students will learn how to write scripts in Python, analyze data using traditional and computer-aided techniques and visualize that data using applications like Tableau. These programs provide students with hands-on, guided training exercises that use real-world examples of data analytics problems. In addition to this training, students will spend time creating their own portfolios (including Tableau dashboards) that they can take with them onto the job market, and since this is a career-focused program, students will receive one-on-one career mentoring and support.

General Assembly also offers a robust Data Analytics Immersive program for students looking to learn how to work with Tableau (and other common data science applications). In this course, students will get live, hands-on training in data analytics tasks and programs, including learning the data visualization process. Students will receive guided career support and they will get practical training in various common data analytics tasks, which will help them become more adept at professional data analytics work. Since data analytics is utilized in many fields, this program aims to teach students useful skills that can help them regardless of where they end up. Students who enroll in this program will have access to General Assembly’s career placement services, which will help them connect with employers and recruiters in a wide range of different fields across the country.

Fullstack Academy provides students with the option to enroll in a live online Data Analytics Immersive course that aims to get students career-ready (and, by extension, prepared for passing the Tableau certification exam). This course includes training in the basics of Python programming, Excel and other data science applications and, of course, Tableau for data visualization. Students will get hands-on training and guided support as they learn how to organize, analyze and present data in ways that are persuasive and effective. Students will also receive access to the career support services offered by Fullstack Academy, which includes support from career coaches and additional networking opportunities.

If you are just looking to get a refresher on the important aspects of Tableau in anticipation of taking your exam, you may want to consider a program like NYIM Training’s Tableau Bootcamp. This accelerated Tableau training program covers beginner and advanced Tableau skills and it is a great way for anyone to brush up on their data visualization knowledge in advance of their exam. This program gives students a chance to immerse themselves in Tableau for a few afternoons to get themselves up to speed on the application. Students will cover everything from basic application functions (like those you can imagine being tested on during the multiple-choice portion of the exam) and advanced practical techniques that will help exam takers pass the lab segments of the exam.