While work opportunities have multiplied, so has competition. And so, merely completing graduation isn’t enough today. You also need to develop skillsets to help you get that extra edge and make the most of your career. A Business Analyst is one such position that requires an individual to possess the right business analyst skills and know-how to succeed in their career. Find out some major professional skills needed for a business analyst in different career stages.
To make it easy, let’s divide the career of a business analyst into 3 parts:
- Beginner: This could include business analyst, senior business analyst, etc.
- Intermediate: This could include job positions such as program manager, business architect, enterprise architect, product manager, etc.
- Advanced: These include positions such as Business Director, Vice President (VP), Senior Vice President (SVP), CIO, COO, etc.
Below are a few must-have skills among all Business Analysts.
● Technical Skills
1. Programming Languages (Intermediate): If you aspire to reach mid-level roles, one of the first and foremost things you need to know is knowledge of programming languages.
A business analyst’s work involves analysing many stats and data to find key points and actions. Their task revolves around retrieving the data and using it to create predictive analysis. As such, programming languages like Python and C++ matter quite a lot.
2. Data Visualisation Skills (Beginner): Data visualisation is one of the best ways of portraying the data expressively. With sheets of data and stats often redundant when it comes to deriving a conclusion and decision-making, knowing data visualisation eases the matter quite a lot. Major data visualisation tools like Power Bi and Tableau are all part of a business analyst’s technical skills.
3. Statistical Tools and Decision-Making (Intermediate to Advanced): Statistics are part and parcel of business analytics. You go through tons of statistical data and sheets, perform analysis and retrieval and simplify the complex data as required. Always look for a good business analytics course to help build skillsets in Excel, SAS, Mathematica, and more.
● Core Skills
1. Critical Thinking (Intermediate): A business analyst has a significant role to play when it comes to decision-making. Their decisions are often key to the organisation’s growth and trajectory. It’s why a business analyst should have considerable critical thinking abilities. Most business analytics courses emphasise on the development of critical thinking.
2. Communication Skills and Team Player (Intermediate to Advanced): Communication is a massive plus point and a much-needed skill in every sector, let alone business analytics. It helps you connect with the other members and be part of the team. Team players are one of the top points of recruiters whenever they are going for a recruitment drive.
3. Problem-Solving Skill Set (Beginner to Advanced): Problem-solving skillset is vital if you want to succeed as a business analyst. Every organisation looks forward to someone who can pair technical ability and knowledge with apt problem-solving skills. NMIMS offers programs like Executive MBA in Business Analytics that helps executives learn various skills that can help them advance in their career.
A career in business analytics is quite challenging and rewarding at the same time, and the field has tremendous scope for the foreseeable future and ample growth opportunities. If you want to become a business analyst, you can learn and improve your skills with an online course in business analytics without hampering your professional life.
