A fresh new graduate? You could possibly be caught eyes already by a career of Business Analyst as highly paid and future embracing. The industries that are hiring most of Business Analysts are financial services, banking, manufacturing, healthcare and technology companies. From its origin, Business Analyst is a function to implement business ideas by providing tech solutions, say collaborating with developers to build software to meet business needs such as accounting, risk management, supply chain and more.
I found my first BA job in six months after my graduation from Master of Finance. From that time on, I start my career of Business Analyst by accumulating hands-on project experience in the real simulation. Back in 2016, BA is still a new option for most of the graduates. The first company that I’ve worked for, FDM Group, provides with education solutions as a package to gain basic business analytics skills such as SQL, Excel VBA, QA testing etc. They helped me land on my first job, while it takes long time for me to figure out what BAs really are. As an international student by that time, I need to talk as fluently and think as natively as other Business Analysts grown-up locally in Canada. It is not an easy thing for people like me, spending most time being educated in a different culture. Efforts that I’ve tried to manage that gap: writing a book summary of a real estate story and presenting it to the advisors in retail banking, working in a coffee shop and making friends with my coworkers to practice English, participating as much as I could for the university events to get connected with professionals. All these things help accumulates the basic points for me to find my working style being an BA.
A roadmap of my business analytics career:
What’s the competing edge for an Asian student?
As an Asian student, we are always labeled as hard-working, technical-driven, and introverted. In recent years, I am glad to see that more Asians have the willingness to step out of their comfort zone and express and present their business image to their colleagues and clients. Social media fuels the courage. But more importantly, an Asian face is given more opportunity to show our talents in a broader business world. I still think that being a traditional type of Asian is one of the most competing edge. In school, we all have struggled for higher GPAs, more society activities, and got involved in sports and artistic events. As a professional, an Asian heritage really doesn’t mean more than any other cultural background. As diligent, we should focus more on how to present ourselves and understand the business. Even though by highly chance, we might just end up earning breads and exchange talents for necessities, it is still very important to try and explore despite of how we’ve been taught and told.
Since I’ve been on a work trip to Asia last September, I have got the chance to reconnect with colleagues working in the field. If you happen to study aboard and come back Asia for job searching, I would say better you could add strategic thinking and business presentation to your skills portfolio. Retail business is rapidly growing since the reopen, and it could be an opportunity for students who would like to try BA roles but lack of software development or project experience.
How to be a qualified BA?
- Critical thinking
- Good communicator
- Programming skills
- Business acumen
Critical Thinking:
- logic is important
- rule out emotion and bias
- objective; reasonable
Good Communicator:
- what should you listen?
- emotion: try emotion check to make sure you talk in a good time
- assumption:
- expectation: what the outcome to expect from the conversation?
- acceptance: what the standards to set of the topic?
- logical cause: what brings them from A to B?
- How do you get prepared for a professional talk?
- objective (if you are emotional try to label your feelings and be aware)
- business image: what do you want other people to see you in your work?
e.g. assertive, determined, flexible, or compromised
- expected results: what do you want to achieve by this conversation?
e.g. Let my co-workers like me; show co-workers with my personalities; impress my manager of the project results; ask for help or get more resources
- recap: one or two things could remind your colleagues or clients of what you’ve discussed
Programming skills
- SQL, Python, SAS, Excel
Business Acumen
- business models; revenue drivers; business values
What kind of mindset is in need?
- understanding of business and technology
- open minded
- win-win strategy is over net-zero
- emergency dealing skills
- business oriented
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