How a potential client can estimate a level of experience of Power BI developer?

Power BI related job post on Upwork: “Please send me examples of your previous works (links, screenshots, pdf) including technologies with estimates how much time and with what rate it was developed to estimate your level of expertise”

A simple question with no simple answer.

1. Power Bi reports are usually highly confidential. No links to live reports. No PDFs with report documentation. A few censored screenshots at best.

What can you do? Do not hesitate to use open data (COVID-19 data for example) and dummy data (e.g. Contoso retail data) to build demo reports. Better to use real data. In this case your report will work not just a demo, but you will get real users. Real users => feedback. Feedback => better report.

2. A few visually simple report pages probably are based on many days of full time work: to get data from multiple sources, to transform data, to find issues in raw data, to discuss the issues with data stakeholders , to apply workarounds where required, to build a model, to write dozens of DAX measures including some really tricky ones, to build a draft, to discuss the draft with end users, to update the report to meet new requirements, to find that you had no access to some important data, to request the data, to update the model, to get performance issues, to do performance testing, to change data model and DAX measures to resolve performance issues, to format report visuals, to apply conditional formatting, captions and titles, to share the report, to get more feedback and update the report again and so on.

Can you show all this work on a screenshot? Does a statement like “I spent xx hours to build this page” make sense? You need to be a consultant, a data architect, a data analyst, a developer, a designer. A report page is just a tip of an iceberg. And your job is not to build a report. Your jobs is to convert data into insights, to help users to find issues and opportunities, to help a business to reach goals.

Power BI developer, think about it when you’ll be presenting yourself to a potential client.

A client, think about it when you’ll be looking for a (freelance) Power BI developer.