How To Improve Analytical Skill & Why They Are Important For Us
Often we come across the term ‘analytical skills’ on job advertisements. Regardless of whether you’re applying as an office assistant, clerk, middle management executive or even at senior level, the employer asks for ‘excellent analytical skills.’
Therefore, you might wonder, what are ‘analytical skills’ and
how to acquire or improve them?
Through this article, I’ll guide you about what are analytical
skills and how to improve analytical skills. And if you don’t have them, I’ll
be providing a few tips about how to acquire analytical skills.
What Are Analytical Skills?
These students, including you, could solve math problems,
riddles, and puzzles due to a high level of analytical skills.
Answering complex questions requires a keen sense of learning,
understanding what’s written or said and storing the information for future use.
That’s also due to these skills.
Actually, analytical skills are innate or inborn. That’s the
reason some people are quick to solve problems, acquire knowledge and utilize
that when necessary.
Importance
of Analytical Skills
Analytical skills are important in every sphere of life. Indeed,
these skills form one of the basis of human survival over the eons. They’re
useful for every action of our life.
Problem Solving Analytical Skills: Acquiring
knowledge and utilizing it in real-life situations as well as solving problems
are important analytical skills. They’re useful to score high marks at any
exam, create something new that’s useful for the community and resolve issues
at home, society, and work.
Earning & Managing Money: Furthermore,
analytical skills are also vital to handle money. A woman or man with superb
analytical skills generally knows how to utilize their money to get the maximum
benefit. And they’re aware of where to invest the money to make it grow.
Crises and Emergency: Analytical skills can
save lives during accidents and emergencies. Hence, medical practitioners also
require excellent analytical skills. So do Emergency Medical Service (EMS)
crew, fire brigade and rescue personnel, police and armed forces troops?
Analytical Skills in Daily Activities: The simple
act of driving or riding a bicycle requires these skills because you’ll have to
protect yourself against rash drivers and keep an eye on pedestrians.
Cooking, shopping, and even bathing require some level of
analytical skills. That’s because you’ll have to analyze the right blend of
ingredients to cook something palatable or gauge water temperature before
wetting your body.
Analytical
Skills Are Necessary
As you can see, these skills are useful everywhere. They are
inborn in every child.
There’re no empirical researches to clearly indicate that some
people are born with higher-level or analytical skills than others.
However, how we utilize them during growing years makes a lot of
difference as we grow. Therefore, developing these skills is extremely
important at an early age.
If you’re a parent, encourage your child to develop analytical skills by
giving them puzzles and riddles to solve. And if you’re a
jobseeker or adult that wishes to improve analytical skills, read my tips.
How to
Develop Analytical Skills?
Coming back to career and analytical skills, there’re some traits that employers look for
while hiring someone. Therefore, Human Resources managers look
for eight different types of analytical skills from a jobseeker.
Troubleshooting
Skills
Troubleshooting or problem-solving skills are useful everywhere.
Employers require them for various purposes such as customer care and resolving
disputes, among other functions.
If you’ve ever solved a problem at home, you have
troubleshooting skills. Therefore, you can improve these skills by learning
more about customer service and issues that clients could face.
You can also improve troubleshooting skills by solving free
crosswords that appear on newspapers and magazines, puzzles and taking quiz
contests online. They are an excellent pastime and teach you how to overcome an
issue at home or work.
Mathematical Skills
Mathematical skills are perhaps the most important type of
analytical skills. Because they involve handing personal finances as well as
your employer’s money. Generally, financial accounting and auditing jobs
require a very high level of mathematical skills.
Engineers also require superb mathematical skills. You can
improve analytical skills by solving complex math problems including Sudoku
and others.
Additionally, there’re several websites where you can match your
math skills with players from other countries in various math problem-solving
games and contests.
Research &
Development Skills
As the term implies, Research & Development Skills are
useful to create something new from existing information or available material.
These can include something like reading and researching
articles to write content. Or creating complex engineering designs that use
readily available material at the lowest price.
Research and development skills aren’t difficult to learn if you
use ingenuity. Research into a topic, take notes and try writing something
using available information. You can also use Lego to acquire some level of
Research & Development Skills.
Pedagogical Skills
Pedagogical skills, in simplest terms, are analytical skills
useful for teaching. And they’re not for teachers, lecturers or professors
only.
As a team leader or manager, you might have to teach a process
or explain a system to juniors and newcomers. Understanding something yourself
is one thing.
But explaining it to others in a manner they can comprehend is
another. It requires analyzing the mindset of your audience and teaching them
in an appropriate manner.
You can acquire Pedagogical Skills by joining a charitable
organization that conducts free educational classes for street kids and
illiterate adults.
Communication Skills
Personally, I rank Communication Skills as the foremost of these
skills. Communication itself is an innate skill. However, excellent
communication requires equally excellent analytical skills.
They’re useful for journalists delivering news, copywriters
creating advertisements, radio and TV show hosts, bloggers, sales staff, public
relations executives, restaurant crew and almost every other profession.
Though Communication Skills are inborn, most people flounder and
fail because they’re shy to use them due to fear of ridicule.
Communication skills require you to analyze how to get a message
across to the other for maximum impact. Hence, the analysis of their mindset is
important. You can develop Communication Skills by
reading books and joining debate clubs.
Data Analysis Skills
Data Analysis Skills are nothing new to humans- they exist since
centuries. In fact, ancient military generals would send spies to gather
information or data on enemy troops, analyze their inputs to create defense or
attack strategies.
However, in the Internet and ecommerce age, Data Analysis Skills
are becoming increasingly important.
Data Analysis Skills are also necessary for meteorologists to
forecast weather. Financial data analysists give credit scores to individuals and
companies. And investment analysts pore over data to create investment
offerings for clients.
Acquiring Data Analysis skills can prove tricky. It would mean
reading countless newspapers, books, forecasts, the past and current
performance of a website or a company and creating projections or marketing
strategies.
Creative Skills
Do you marvel at a superb looking dress or a wonderful painting?
Or gaze at monuments such as the Taj Mahal and wonder who made their intricate
designs? These are creations of people with Creative Skills.
And creativity also needs astute analysis. Hence, Creative
Skills are vital for fashion designers, perfumers, brew-masters, advertising
visualizers, architects, interior designers, sculptors, painters, feature
writers, and even teachers, among others.
Creativity doesn’t mean you can make or do something hoping a
lot of people will love your work. Instead, it needs a perfect analysis of how
you would express yourself through your work.
It includes analyzing how to create something that most people
would love. You can acquire creative skills by
doing something as ordinary as cooking for family, painting, photography or
playing with Lego to create intricate designs.
Emotional Analysis
Skills
Emotional Analysis Skills are the toughest to acquire. Only
those rare people that possess Emotional Intelligence will also possess
Emotional Analysis Skills.
You might wonder who uses Emotional Analysis Skills. The answer:
psychologists, psychotherapists, to some extent psychiatrists, counselors of
all types and sometimes advertisement visualizers.
Actually, nobody can acquire Emotional Analysis Skills. They’re
inborn or you don’t have them at all. That’s the reason some people are able to
gauge the emotions of others and respond accordingly.
However, you can pay close attention to your relatives and
friends, gauge their mood and try to resolve disputes, to acquire a minimal level of
Emotional Analysis skills. The process can be fairly tough.
Growing
Significance of Analytical Skills
Nowadays, having an excellent educational degree and experience
isn’t enough. Every industry, every sector is fast becoming intensely
competitive. Hence, employers prefer hiring staff that has these skills that
match their industry.
Analytical skills enable individuals and organizations to gain
an edge over others. Hence, you have to possess these skills in an excellent
way. And if you don’t, it’s imperative to develop them. Else, you might miss on promotions and excellent job opportunities.
Wrap Up
Employers often ask candidates to undergo psychometric tests
before hiring. That’s to judge their skills.
You can do analytical skills test for free from various
websites. These tips would help you develop these skills. You can sharpen them
by practice.
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