Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a credit representative and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A credit representative has the primary role of assisting clients to make loan applications by communicating with them the requirements and the available options as well as helping them settle on the best credit options. He or she will avail all the relevant information to for the client to see and use during the loan application.

In addition, he or she performs the following responsibilities; Analyzing credit data and financial statements of individuals or firms, determining possible risks involved in extending credit or lending money to clients, preparing loan reports, resolving client credit problems and preparing reports on client credit payment status.

Core Skills Required to be a Credit Representative

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A credit representative should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Critical Thinking:

Critical Thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally while understanding the logical connection between ideas in a reflective and independent thinking.

A Credit Representative will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings do represent the entire picture while identifying, analyzing and solving problems by deducing consequences from what he knows and making use of the information gathered.

Competitiveness:

Competitiveness is the skill of being able to compete as a team or a company with other enterprises in the same line of entrepreneurship and emerging as the winner.

A Credit Representative needs creativity in setting the pace for the organization on the policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of their enterprise against their competitors leading to the growth of the business and the income.

Handling Stress:

Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.

A Credit Representative needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.

Results Orientation:

Results Orientation is knowing and focusing on outstanding results and working hard to achieve them because they are significant.

A Credit Representative must understand and make it clear to the employees how important results are and the competitive and results driven market that the company is facing while encouraging them to remain focused on the results that every project bears without fail.

Self-Discipline and Sense of Duty:

Self-Discipline and Sense of Duty is an active effort which helps in developing set ways for your thoughts, actions, and habits empowering your to stick to your decisions.

A Credit Representative needs to learn the secret of fostering the development of self-discipline amongst the employees by clearly defining the expectations, staying in sync with the work related events and propagate result yielding ideas that employees suggest.

Business Ethics:

Business Ethics is the ability to learn what is right and wrong in the world of business and choosing to do what is right at all times.

A Credit Representative must emulate good business ethic that is essential for the long-term success of an organization by implementing an ethical program that will foster a thriving entrepreneurial culture while increasing profitability and personal maturity.

Business Etiquette:

Business Etiquette is a basic framework of rules set by companies to ensure and allow you to understand the way you should conduct yourself in the professional world.

A Credit Representative must establish the tone for proper behavior in the workplace by making sure all the distinct boundaries are laid out for everyone to follow and understand the implications of defaulting.

Business Trend Awareness:

Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.

A Credit Representative should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise

Diversity Awareness:

Diversity Awareness is the understanding that people are different and unique in their particular way and respecting their uniqueness.

A Credit Representative ought to successfully identify the various types of diversity presented in his company to be able to benefit from these individual differences in the hope of improving the success of his team and encourage the team members to become aware of these qualities and use them appropriately.

Technical Skills:

Technical Skills are the abilities and knowledge mostly related to mechanical, IT, scientific and mathematical needed to perform specific tasks in the workplace.

A Credit Representative ought to hire employees with particular talents and expertise that helps them perform certain duties and jobs that other skills like soft skills cannot perform to grow both the business and the employee and bring in productivity.

Hard Skills Required to be a Credit Representative

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A credit representative should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Credit Representative: Hard skills list

Accounting Principles and Terminology
Accounts payable
Accounts receivable
Auditing
Bank Statements (reconcile)
Balance cash and receipts
Balance Invoices
Balance Sheets (maintain balance sheets)
Bill Collections
Billing statements (prepare billing statements)
Bookkeeping
Budgeting
Business Analysis
Business forms (Process Business Forms)
Cash flow analysis
Collections
Computers
Credit Control
Customer Service
Data Analysis
Design tables depicting data
Finance
Financial Modeling
Financial Reports
Financial Records (keep financial records)
Financial Risk analysis
Fiscal Data (compute and record fiscal data)
Journals
Keep record of company or organization expenses
Loan Underwriting
Microsoft Office
MS Excel
MS Word or Word Processing
Maintain ledgers or other similar account records
Mathematical principles
Process records and maintain forms and files
Reporting
Research
Risk Management/Risk Control
Tax Analysis
Writing

Related Articles