Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a senior cost analyst and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A senior cost analyst is assigned the responsibility of analyzing, monitoring and controlling all company expenses. He or she will ensure that the company operates in the right way when it comes to its revenues and expenditures thus avoiding any wastage. In addition, they will perform auditing of financial records and facilitate training of company employees on financial issues.
Besides that major responsibility, he or she will handle the following duties; perform cost-benefit analysis, assist in budget preparations, prepare company's financial statements and reports, manage pricing , inventory systems and data quality, recommend improvements, undertake financial projections, identify financial opportunities and risks, determine product costs and develop standard cost.
Core Skills Required to be a Senior Cost 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 senior cost analyst should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Writing Skills:
Written Communication involves the interaction that makes use of the written word with precision and logic making it the very common form of business communication.
A Senior Cost Analyst must necessarily learn and stay updated on effective written communication skills that involve the construction of a logical argument, note taking, editing and summarizing as well as incorporating new ways of writing presentations.
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 Senior Cost 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.
Office Politics:
Office Politics is a tool that assesses the operational capacity to balance diverse views of the interested parties of the human interactions that involve power and authority.
A Senior Cost Analyst is meant to pay attention to the organizational politics while creating the right political landscape that lubricates the organization's internal gears without focusing on personal gain rather focusing on the corporate profit that will benefit everyone.
Delegation:
Delegation is assigning responsibility or authority to another person a junior or subordinate to carry out specific activities while remaining accountable for the outcome.
A Senior Cost Analyst must be equipped with skills on how to make the delegation work correctly to save the organization time and money and to allow the subordinate make wise decisions, skills, and motivation to become better and grow the company.
Management Skills:
Management Skills are also known as leadership skills and involve planning, decision making, delegation, time management and time management to ensure optimum organization in focus and the technical of how and why of accomplishing tasks.
A Senior Cost Analyst must understand the business organization, finance, and communication as well as the market and the relevant technologies used to help manage everyone as they work together in a group.
Personal Growth:
Personal Growth is the improvement of one's awareness, identity, developing talents and potential to facilitate the growth of oneself and the position they handle at the workplace.
A Senior Cost Analyst ought to assist his employees in finding themselves by introducing or referring them to methods, programs, tools, techniques and assessment systems that support their development at the individual level in the organization.
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 Senior Cost 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.
Seeing Potential Problems:
Seeing Potential Problems is the ability to structure the current situations and identify developments that could cause problems in the future.
A Senior Cost Analyst needs to see potential problems before they occur and work to stop them early enough, he also has to stay ahead of the flow not to be caught you by upcoming issues that could be easily prevented if they were noted soon enough.
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 Senior Cost 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.
Diversity Awareness:
Diversity Awareness is the understanding that people are different and unique in their particular way and respecting their uniqueness.
A Senior Cost Analyst 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.
Hard Skills Required to be a Senior Cost 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 senior cost analyst should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.