With rapid advancements in the quality of business processes, the expectations of hiring managers have hit the summit. Now an employee is not only required to execute his or her tasks with precision but is also expected to deliver solutions to complex business problems. Thus, in a typical work environment, you need to evaluate, assess, and even solve the different types of technological, legal, and political changes.
To meet the organizational benchmarks and the expectations of the bosses, it is now inevitable to possess analytical skills. Their need and type might vary from organization to organization, however, there are still several analytical skills that are general in nature, and are always on the radar of the hiring managers.
Prepmycareer has selected some of the best analytical skills and has grouped them into their respective categories for easy understanding. Hence, wait no more, and put all the below listed analytical skills in your resume and LinkedIn profile.
21 Best Analytical Skills To Acquire
Input-Based Analytical Skills
A comprehensive understanding of the issues plays an important role in determining the quality of the solution. If an employee maintains a partial or incomplete understanding of the subject matter then he will never be in a position to make an appropriate decision, which will be beneficial for the organization. Hence, it is pivotal that job seekers develop the skills associated with their sensory inputs, which are:
1. Active Listening
A job seeker who has the ability of active listening is a better observer and is able to interpret the intended meaning with high accuracy. When a listener enters into a mutual understanding with the speaker, not only does he gain the confidence of the speaker but is also able to extract those additional pieces of information.
2. Information Retention
The information collected using the process of active listening must be properly stored so that tests and assessments could be run over them. Thus, a job seeker must develop the art of taking notes, and keep revising them so as to develop a thorough understanding.
3. Data Sorting
Mere listening and noting down of the business communication never suffices as it is meaningless and practically raw to use it as the basis for any decision.
This creates the need for sorting or bucketing the collected information under appropriate heads and categories. This process of categorization forms the basis for evaluations and assessments.
Evaluation and Assessment-Based Analytical Skills
After correctly bucketing the information using your ability to sort, now is the time to evaluate and examine it for preparing judgments and possible arguments. To ace this part of duty, every job seeker must develop these skills:
4. Creative Thinking
Undoubtedly, this is one of the most sought-after analytical skills, wherein you follow the approach of out-of-the-box thinking and analyze the given information from new and innovative perspectives.
This requires analysts to stretch their web of imagination and contemplate the situation from different angles.
5. Diagnostics
Just like a doctor, who tries to understand the source of illness prevailing in the patient, an analyst is required to diagnose the given business problem and identify its origin.
This helps the management of an organization to unearth the various active and forced interventions that are acting as a bottleneck.
Thus, every job seeker must strive to develop their diagnostic skills by engaging in deep research activities and planning.
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6. Critical Assessment
Critical analysis in simple words is to identify the various possibilities that were not pondered before.
For example, the accountant of an organization identified the main reason for the fall in sales of an organization to be the high selling price, high competition, and high production cost. However, a critical analyst stated it to be low motivational levels of the sales representatives of the company.
Thus, a critical analyst would always think beyond the financial statements, production manuals, and other documents presented on his table.
7. Benchmarking
It is common for almost all business organizations to establish benchmarks and standards for different purposes, such as:
- To identify the increase or decrease in the sales
- To assess the performance of the employees
- To check whether the production is cost-efficient, etc.
Benchmarking helps the business organization to calculate the variances and fix the responsibilities. This helps them to improve the quality of business processes and achieve customer satisfaction.
An analyst is always required to set the benchmarks of the company after analyzing the historical data. Hence, every job seeker must develop their benchmarking abilities by enhancing their interpretation skills.
8. Big Data Analysis
Data sets are considered to be virtual gold mines by business organizations that have the ability to better the existing processes besides opening a new stream of revenue.
The employees, no matter at what position they are employed, are always required to deal with different types of data sets, which could be unstructured, semi-structured, or structured in form. These are diverse, big and heavy, with their average size hovering in several terabytes.
Thus, it is pertinent for every job seeker to learn the advanced data analytic technique of Big data and learn the process of transforming any raw data set to “big data”.
Solution and Outcome-Based Analytical Skills
The employees of an organization, especially the ones employed in the middle level or the top level, are required to devise appropriate solutions for the different business problems.
These solutions are mostly based upon their logical surmises, reports of data analytics, and work experience. Below are the several solution-based analytical skills that every job seeker must learn to better their chances of getting a corporate job:
9. Predictive Modelling
The future is unknown, and we can only predict it. As per a general rule of business, an organization that is able to better predict the future, with high accuracy, and precision, will find itself among the industry leaders. This just does not exist in theory and many big corporates regularly predict their future.
Predictive modeling is an effective technique that is widely used to predict future business behavior and work environment after analyzing the historical and current data. Every job seeker must aim to learn this technique as this skill can really increase your selection chances.
10. Decision Making
Business organizations operate under a lot of stress, thanks to their challenging operating environment, which is dynamic and gets affected due to frequent changes in the laws, policies, and rules. This creates several business problems that need to be immediately addressed and responded to.
Thus, every hiring manager wants to hire employees who have the ability to make crucial business decisions after deliberations and deep research.
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11. Team Collaborations
Almost all business organizations now follow a team setting, wherein several employees are grouped together on the basis of their skills, education, and knowledge. Solving the business issues and problems, is now a collaborative team effort, wherein all the team members must work in tandem towards achieving a common business goal.
Hence, mentioning team player, team worker, or team collaborator in your resume, shows that you are comfortable working in such a set-up and even have the required ability.
12. Troubleshooting
It is a popular analytical skill, that aims to solve business problems, which hinders the progress of a company and prevents them from achieving their strategic goals. An employee who is aware of the process of troubleshooting transforms the obstacles into opportunities by using several leveraged tools and defined processes.
Hence, learning the technique of “troubleshooting”, should be an aim of every job seeker, as it will certainly give a competitive edge over the other candidates.
13. Prioritization
Most developed business organizations just have plenty of tasks to be executed. This forces them to burden their employees, and assign them several tasks that need to be executed within a fixed time frame. Having a tested prioritization technique in your arsenal will always help you to rank your tasks on a logical basis.
This will not only help you to complete your different analyses before the deadlines but will also enable you to maintain the quality. Hence, just look out for those prioritization techniques and adopt any of them.
Technology and Process-Based Analytical Skills
Gone are the days, when analyses were done using pieces of paper. This is a modern world, and corporate employees are required to analyze using different techniques. Each of these techniques qualifies as an important analytical skill, which every job seeker must learn and practice.
14. Quantitative Analysis
If you are planning to find a job in the finance department of an organization, you can just not miss the process of quantitative analysis in which mathematical and statistical models are used to resolve financial conundrums and investment problems.
A quantitative analyst is tasked with identifying all the possible correlations, patterns, and occurrences that exist within a data set.
15. S. W. O. T (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat) Analysis
This is by far the most popular and widely used strategic planning technique. Employees working at almost all levels of management use S. W. O. T analysis to identify solutions of business problems that fall within their job role.
| Strength | What gives you a competitive advantage? |
| Weakness | What makes your business disadvantageous in comparison to your industry peers? |
| Opportunity | What can increase your profitability? |
| Threat | What can decrease your profitability, and even put your existence in danger? |
Every job seeker must learn and be capable of performing S. W. O. T analysis. This will not only help you in your professional career but will also enable you to answer some related interview questions.
16. Qualitative Analysis
Humans made robots and processing algorithms. The end of their scope marks the beginning of human judgments and intelligence. In a complex business world, all the problems cannot be quantified into numbers or values. There always exists some issues that require the subjective judgment of humans, which is largely based on their experience and wit.
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A qualitative analysis draws its competence from the principles of philosophy and sociology wherein an employee is required to find solutions using his or her soft skills.
17. Cost Analysis
The different types of costs, such as Fixed cost, Variable cost, and Mixed Costs form a major portion of the production costs incurred by a business organization. A loosely developed cost structure not only increases the cost of production but also leads to inappropriate usage of working capital.
Hence, if you are planning to join your organization in the cost department or the accounts section, never forget to learn the concept of cost analysis.
Communication-Based Analytical Skills
Corporate employees have always been vivid thinkers, who have several innovative ideas that could bring suitable reforms into the functioning of an organization. But, these ideas can only work upon getting the management nod. Hence, learn all the skills mentioned below and increase your value in the corporate sphere.
18. Presentation Ability
You must be able to produce interactive written communications that have the ability to attract users. A renowned business coach, Ms. Karen Hadley, says that “A dull, boring, and verbose written communication not only undermines your research but also shows your lack of creativity”.
Hence, never forget to use those tables, charts, graphs, and diagrams to make your presentation attractive and engaging.
19. Oral Feedback
The use of voice in varying cadence and superior knowledge of the specific elements on which you need to stress will make you an efficient oral speaker. By this, you can always get your ideas acknowledged and earn that much-needed recognition from your peers, team members, and bosses.
20. Clarity In Both Verbal and Non-verbal Communication
Ambiguous, Vague, and Hazy communications only add to the confusion. These do not present any fact with authority and undermine the worth of quality evidence. Hence, every employee must be clear with their formal communications to generate crisp and relevant responses.
21. Business Reporting
Be it a marginal unlisted company or a listed business magnate, every organization is required to report in some form or the other. Be it the presentation of financial data, public reports, or media releases, every type of reporting has a fixed format. Considering your job type, you must be aware of the different styles that are followed to prepare business reports.
References
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1094428119836485
- https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/147608309×480172
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Sandeep Bhandari is the founder of PrepMyCareer.com website.
I am a full-time professional blogger, a digital marketer, and a trainer. I love anything related to the Web, and I try to learn new technologies every day.
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