Recently, EDUTO had the opportunity to meet and talk with many Business Analysts over the world. With many years of experience in the industry, you have opened up many practical perspectives specifically for young people just starting to enter the field of Business Analyst (BA).

Let's explore interesting information about the industry with EDUTO through the article following!

The function of a Business Analyst in an enterprise

Considering the context of the IT industry, to put it simply, Business Analyst is the bridge between customers and the software development team. A BA's job will mainly revolve around ensuring harmony between requirements (from customers) and solutions (from the internal team) through the following tasks:

• Understand customer problems and goals
• Analyze requirements and solutions (note: solutions may be available - not always making new solutions)
• Set strategy and be able to drive change 
• Supervise the collaboration process between positions in the project to take place smoothly

For young people who want to pursue a career in Business Analyst, where should they start? Which major do they study?

To equip solid foundation knowledge for today's BA profession, you can refer to majors such as Software Technology (learning about software development models such as Waterfall, SCRUM and different roles in a software project), or Information Systems Design Analysis (methods for analyzing and modeling software requirements or information). 

In case you have determined that you will become a professional consultant for famous solutions such as Oracle and SAP products, then majoring in Management Information Systems or equivalent will be a reasonable choice. This major is also recommended for those who are passionate about working with large-scale systems or ERP solutions.

However, in addition to choosing a major, for candidates to be able to compete in the market at the present time, experience is an extremely important advantage. Therefore, candidates should actively look for internship opportunities in companies early, not necessarily waiting until their final year at University. 

This not only helps you practically apply the theories you have learned, but you also acquire valuable soft skills that are only found in "real battles". Accordingly, the better your soft-skills, the more adaptable and well-integrated you will be in the new environment. This is also one of the factors that will help you develop quickly on your career path.

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The career opportunities for Business Analysts now and in the near future

With the current development trend in the information technology industry, career opportunities for BA are huge. A successful technology product launch, whether small or large scale, is the result of good coordination between many members with many different roles in the Development Team (except for full-stack companies)...

Therefore, it can be seen that, in order to ensure the project operates smoothly, the BA's function is extremely important. Depending on your career development orientation, you can work in related positions such as Product Owner, Project Manager or follow a management direction such as BA Lead Manager. 

On the other hand, EDUTO predict that the demand for Business Analysts in the market in the next few years will still be extremely potential as technology is constantly developing in the future.

What are the mistakes that new Business Analyst students often encounter and how should they deal with those mistakes?

For many Freshers, they often start looking for solutions as soon as they receive a customer's request. This is one of the mistakes that you need to fix if you don't want to lose points. In fact, the first step that you should focus on is spending time researching and analyzing customer portraits to determine the real needs behind them. By doing this, you will have enough basis to offer the most optimal solution that truly meets the customer's wishes. 

Next, BAs who are new to the profession are often afraid to ask managers or colleagues because they are afraid that they will ask too easy a question, afraid of bothering them, and afraid that the listener will think "that's it but I don't know". This unintentionally limits your ability to learn. The support person also doesn't know what difficulty you're having so they can provide timely support. Therefore, an essential requirement for the BA profession is that you must be proactive - meaning proactive in all situations.

Of course, EDUTO cannot help you but mention to you the third mistake: Not understanding the product you are making and not researching similar products on the market. Understanding the market helps BA evaluate whether the solution they offer is truly optimal or not. A good tip that EDUTO wants to share here is that in addition to Google and search engines, you can take advantage of knowledge from the BA community (for example VINABAC).

The last point that is equally important for a BA and also the weakness that many of you have the most is communication skills: 

• Weak English ability hinders the process of conveying and receiving information
• Not clearly understanding concepts and words used in specific business domains. Lack of care in the confirmation process with customers to ensure what they understand is correct and informative, making unsupported assumptions.

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The criteria that evaluation of candidate 

First and foremost are systems and problem-solving skills, because requests coming from customers are not always clear and related to the problem under discussion. As mentioned previously, candidates need to demonstrate the ability to evaluate, systematize, and analyze information received, proactively communicate to clarify unclear points, and confirm with customers to Make sure you understand the problem correctly (if necessary).

Next is the skills to analyze requirements and present solutions: Once the requirements have been clarified.

of the customer, candidates need to use appropriate methods, tools, and models to express information in an intuitive, easy-to-understand way for the development team, as well as present the solution to the customer. was finally agreed. It should be noted that we cannot always use the same language to discuss with the development team and customers, especially customers who do not have much technical knowledge.

Last but not least important criteria - Confidence and clarity when communicating: BAs will often work directly with customers, so from their perspective, your working style will be representative. represents the image of an entire company. Clear, coherent communication will help you gain the other person's trust more easily. 

In particular, presenting content in a foreign language with a confident manner will help you increase your credibility in your professionalism and expertise in the eyes of customers.

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Some advice from EDUTO’s BA work experience for Business Analyst Freshers

Below are a few things that our team members have concluded through the process of learning and working in this field:

Regarding job search, Freshers are often afraid that they do not have much knowledge about a particular field (for example insurance, banking,...) so they often hesitate to apply. In fact, this is a group of knowledge that can be learned and learned quickly. Become candidates who are 'not afraid of difficulties - not afraid to ask', ready to absorb new knowledge that they lack.

Second, when there is a problem in general (customers complain or superiors are dissatisfied with work results), at this time, what they want to receive from us is the solution, not the reason why the problem is. happened again. Therefore, we need to focus on finding solutions to handle and improve that problem (with an emphasis on improving working methods and processes) to avoid or limit similar problems in the future. .

Third, you need to practice active listening skills, which means listening and asking relevant questions to ensure you correctly understand the speaker's content, clearly understand the message, and boldly express your opinion.

The fourth thing is that you should not stop at understanding the customer's requirements, you should learn more deeply about the role, background, and corporate culture of the organization the customer is working in to be able to come up with a suitable solution. and make customers the most satisfied.

And finally, make sure solutions, requirements, and customer information are available and understood in the same way across all different roles within the development team. This helps increase work efficiency, minimize back-and-forth questions, misunderstandings, and risks. This helps provide products with the best quality to customers.

In addition, in today's market, mastering UX skills is a plus point for BA candidates in the eyes of employers. You can learn some UX tools (Figma, moqups) to help increase your competitiveness.

Epilogue

Through sincere sharing from EDUTO’s BA experts and BA from all over the world, we hopes that you will understand more about the Business Analyst career and will have appropriate career directions in the future.

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