In complex careers that deal with vast quantities of numbers, such as data analysts, accountants, or data scientists, the ability to process and action large amounts of information is a skill that requires practice and patience.
By compartmentalising information and tackling it in bite-sized chunks, the information becomes less overwhelming and more manageable, allowing you to concentrate on delivering on your targets.
In this blog, we’ll look at some examples of analytical skills, why they’re important and how you can improve them so that you can progress your career to the next stages.
What are analytical skills?
The use of logic and critical thinking to solve problems is called analytical skills. These skills help someone make sense of complex data sets so that they can put a plan into place.
The first step in using analytical skills is identifying the problem you want to solve. The next step is collecting data that relates to the problem so that it can be analysed. Analysing data in this capacity allows someone to look for patterns and trends so that insights can be drawn from the data, ultimately giving you everything you need to offer solutions.
Examples of analytical skills
When using analytical skills, there are plenty of subsets of these skills that are employed to gather the data and offer viable answers to the questions posed by the data.
Problem-solving
Being able to identify a problem is only half the job. Using your knowledge of the problem, your role, and the wider company will allow you to come up with actionable solutions.
Data analysis
A good data analyst can take huge swathes of information and focus in on only the relevant points. Honing this skill will allow you to identify patterns quickly and develop solutions more effectively.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking allows you to place information on a leaderboard based on the sources’ reliability. Critical thinking leans on your expertise to prioritise information so that your solution to the problem is robust.
Research
Research helps with gaining an understanding of a topic, as well as gathering insights from other experts on the topic so that the data can be better interpreted. It may also help to develop solutions by picking someone else’s brain for ideas.
Forecasting
Forecasting is a valuable skill to possess because it allows you to predict issues before they arise. Using all the skills above can help you to avoid problems before they become big issues. If you think you’d like to improve your problem-solving skills, have a read of our blog that details exactly that!
Why are analytical skills important?
Analytical skills are an important aspect to master if you’d like to advance your career effectively.
Analytical skills allow for advanced problem-solving skills, which can allow your team and company to focus on more important issues instead of dealing with the same issues over and over.
It’s not just problem-solving that analytical skills are useful for though, they’re also incredibly useful skills to have to do your job effectively, tackling new tasks with finesse.
What are analytical skills used for?
Analytical skills are used in many aspects of a successful career, whatever the profession. Depending on your profession, analytical skills may be used to review traffic to a website and get to the bottom of why it isn’t performing as expected or they might be used to assess the issues arising in software development.
Whatever your specialism, analytical skills will allow you to become better at your job and become a more valuable member of your team.
Tips on how to improve your analytical skills
Your analytical skills are a crucial aspect towards your career progression, if you’d like to improve them, there are a few ways that you can do so by taking on board the advice we list below.
Learn how to use data analysis tools
The continued development of your data analysis skills can be enhanced by learning how to use data analysis tools to be able to drill down into the relevant data.
Ask yourself questions
When reading industry publications or listening to podcasts, it’s important to ask yourself questions such as “how can I implement this?”, which will allow you to see issues from multiple angles.
Practice problem solving
Like anything, the more you practice, the better you’ll get at it. This doesn’t mean you have to solve every problem in your workplace but try to start small and work your way up with your own workload.
Develop industry knowledge
Having a great knowledge of the industry you work in will allow you to root out problems and fix them because you’ll have a better awareness of where your analytical skills may come in useful.
Work with other teams/colleagues
Different colleagues may use their analytical skills in ways you’ve not thought of. Learning from these colleagues will allow you to expand your knowledge and skill set.
Try mind mapping
Mind mapping is a great way to turn complex information into easy-to-process information. By making use of this technique, you can learn to use more information than you may usually be able to.
Practice different research techniques
By having a range of information sources, you can be sure you have all the available information to help you make the most informed decisions possible.
Be open to feedback
Feedback from colleagues or other industry professionals is a great way to increase your knowledge around a topic. You should embrace feedback, and learn to incorporate it into your processes and hone your analytical skills.
If you’ve conducted a SWOT analysis and discovered that your analytical skills are lacking, you can incorporate this range of skills to improve it. Once your analytical skills are adept, you can continue to use and hone them so that you can progress through your career and pass your expertise on to the next generation.
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