Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a staff analyst and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Staff Analyst is responsible for conducting complex research and analytical studies of a highly technical and specialized nature on critical issues or developments that have a significant impact on the policies, goals, objectives and operations of a company.
The primary duties of this position are researching, analyzing and interpreting complex information like the legislative, demographic etc., assist the management in making decisions to resolve critical problems based on analysis, developing theories and policies, formulating strategies for action on the main issues, researching information using a wide variety of local, state and federal resources, preparing and presenting comprehensive narrative and statistical report of findings, developing and preparing policy statements, making presentations before department heads and program managers.
Core Skills Required to be a Staff Analyst
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 staff analyst should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Verbal Communication:
Verbal Communication is the use of tones and language to relay a message; it aids as a vehicle for expressing ideas, concepts and it, is critical to the daily running of the business.
A Staff Analyst portrays his/her image and that of the company by the way he/she communicates; strong verbal communication skills are vital for business development and forging lasting relationships with customers, suppliers, and colleagues.
Listening Skills:
Listening Skills are a practical ability to accurately receive and interpret messages you receive during the communication process to ensure flow and accuracy are maintained.
A Staff Analyst ought to have outstanding listening skills that lead to a better understanding at the workplace between the management and the staff, customer satisfaction in return yielding greater productivity with fewer mistakes and increased sharing of information in a more creative and innovative way.
Facilitation:
Facilitation is making tasks or life easy for others while ensuring the daily running of successful meetings or workshops or business at large.
A Staff Analyst must use facilitation to process and structure a system that meets the needs of either an individual or a team to help them achieve their goals as well as add value to their lives by making sure each participates.
Supervisory Skills:
Supervisory Skills is the ability to lead and manage people effectively in a difficult and challenging atmosphere in the day to day life.
A Staff Analyst must cultivate, develop and refine management and supervisory skills to strengthen the present as well as build the future of the business by becoming competent in such roles like problem-solving, communication, managing people, time management, leadership, planning, etc.
Appraisal and Evaluation Skills:
Appraisal and Evaluation Skills are services that allow employers to assess their employees? contributions to the organization for the period they have been working with them.
A Staff Analyst must creatively develop a robust evaluation process that includes the standard evaluation form, approved performance measures, guidelines for presenting feedback and disciplinary procedures to promote staff recognition and rewarding following a fair assessment and appraisal process.
Empathy:
Empathy is the understanding of another person's condition from their perspective by placing yourself in their shoes and feeling what they are feeling.
A Staff Analyst ought to practice empathy with his staff by learning to be a good listener and understanding what his employees are going through and choosing to feel it with them through the use of imagination and accommodate them.
Self Awareness:
Self Awareness is the ability to have a sound understanding of who you are as a person and how to relate to the world in which you live by understanding your strengths and weaknesses and how to manage them in the workplace.
A Staff Analyst must creatively know how to administer the workforce diversity by understanding the culture identity, biases, and stereotypes and become more aware on how he reflects his thoughts, feelings, and behavior towards the staff.
Deadlines - On time:
Deadlines - On time is the ability to prioritize the important tasks and setting up a plan on how to work on them first to deliver within the set period.
A Staff Analyst must have the art of managing deadlines by being able to prioritize the work that is set for scheduling to the workers according to how vital the projects are and how soon they need to be executed and submitted.
Long Range Planning:
Long Range Planning is setting long-term goals and objectives for your business or project to ensure its growth and sustainability is reached by all the employees.
A Staff Analyst needs creativity in defining long-term goals that ought to be proactive, putting together a full employee focused management strategy that analyzes the major initiatives and translates them into functional goals that employees handle.
Resource Use:
Resource Use is the ability to utilize the office supplies effectively while avoiding any wastage and ensuring everything is used correctly.
A Staff Analyst needs to educate his employees on the rising threat of global warming and the business's risk of high expenses to avoid wastage of any kind from copiers, computers, old filing processes and data backing disks that are sometimes misused by the employees.
Hard Skills Required to be a Staff Analyst
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 staff analyst should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.