How do you get ready for analytical skills assessments?

You must go into listening mode. Talk to your customer and explore their question rather than what they’ve asked you for. You may end up there but by taking that step backwards you will be able to get to the real issue they are grappling with. In many situations I’ve found the project had gone in a completely different direction to what we expected before those conversations.

Defining Clear Objective & Planning Lets begin with the basics 1. Feasibility 2. Understanding Market Dynamic 3. Is there a clear demand of the product/service I'm trying to bring to this market 4. Customer Persona 5. USP I'm from healthcare industry, so quoting an example of opening, say a 50 bedded super specialized hospital. Depending upon the market analysis and customer persona, I can zero in from the available options of Service delivery, they can be uniquely personalized to each patient like they do for Uncompromized Customer Pull strategy of Hospitality industry. A Maternity Center is the ideal situation to work towards Customer delight.

All relevant concepts should be broken down to clear short term goals and objectives. For example Increasing total no. of patient visits in my clinic. 1. Check process capacity 2. Identify deviations in form of TAT's 3. Highlight bottlenecks 4. How to remove those bottlenecks 5. What are the tools required 6. Can a manually driven system be automated 7. Innovative thinking It could be as basic a thought as automation of manual appointment system changed to token system for doctor visit. Integration of MIS with appointment system is the key which might not be existing

You should also consider R as it's a powerful programming language and software environment commonly used for data analysis, statistics, and data visualization. If the role or assessment involves data analysis or working with statistical data, having proficiency in R can be a significant advantage.

'What Ifs' and contingency plans are also necessary. Outliers can provide useful insights. The findings though uncommon, do not mean that they are impossible occurrences.

Data speaks for itself once properly analysed. This is a key indicator to showcase where the change should be made if needed... how should it be done is again our critical thinking and innovation.

Regardless of AI and Chatgpt, analytical skills and need for astute analysts are here to stay. It takes years of experience, judgement and analytical skills to identify hidden risks in corporate finance transactions, costing and due diligence of complex programs and projects. Always, good to exercise a dose of healthy skepticism, look for benchmarks and build your own analytical models. Ram Mathilakath [email protected]

Read books and articles that take a really hard look at data. This will train your mind to look beyond the obvious, distinguish correlation and causality, and watch out for cognitive biases. Examples are: - Freakonomics - Predictably Irrational - Thinking, fast and slow

Remember that improving analytical skills takes time and effort, so start your preparation early and consistently work on enhancing your abilities. With dedication and practice, you can significantly improve your performance in analytical skills assessments. Good luck!

In my experience, you should consider practicing with real Data Scenarios: If the role involves working with data analysis, consider using real or realistic datasets in the assessment. This approach will allow you to demonstrate your ability to work with authentic data and draw meaningful insights.