What Are Research & Analytical Skills in Job Applications?
An employer will ask you to define your related skills for a specific employment position on a job application. These skills include research and analytical skills. However, it can be difficult to identify what these skills are and how you use them in the workplace, if you are unfamiliar with each one's definitions.
Analytical skills refer to the approaches and methods you use to identify and evaluate a situation. The evaluation process includes seeing the situation from different perspectives, doing research to find more data about the situation and discussing the risks and making decisions about the situation with other people. Analytical skills also refer to the examination of results and data in hopes of finding usable information. In other words, analytical skills are tools that can help those who often act before thinking about the consequences of making a decision. Examples of analytical skills include analyzing answers from a customer questionnaire and examining the financial risks associated with purchasing a specific piece of equipment.
The term “research skills” is used to describe various techniques for gathering information. One of these techniques is analysis. The other skills are critical thinking, problem solving and dissemination. The skills used in the analysis phase of conducting research are the analytical skills previously described. It is possible that you have experience in problem solving in the workplace, but not much experience with critical thinking techniques.
Critical thinking skills are used to examine the validity or truth of something, such as a different opinion or idea. Creativity, logic and reasoning all play a role in critical thinking. Problem solving skills are used to analyze dilemmas and find potential solutions to them. Searching data for solutions and assessing the risks involved in each solution is essential to problem solving. Dissemination skills are used when communicating the scope, purpose and potential results of a project to other people. Examples of other research skills include the ability to get customer feedback from questionnaires to see if a product is appealing to them, finding a production method that elevates the product's quality, and communicating information about, or marketing, the product to the targeted customers.
Examples of analytical skills in the workplace include gathering data from the customers, analysing the information for patterns and valuable results such as sales patterns, examining any feedback from clients and making notes of any issues that must be addressed like improving products. Research skills include thinking creatively in marketing strategies, solving problems with a production flaw and using the feedback from the target customers in the dissemination phase. In this context, the market is the target customers who will be purchasing the product for end-use.