Whether you’re about to leave school and need to decide what to study at university or the best job to seek out, or want to embark on a radical career change but are not sure the direction to take, you might want to think about roles which specifically suit your personality type.
Best Careers for Analytical Thinkers
One common trait found in a lot of people around the world is that of being analytical. If you know you’re an analytical thinker, read on for some career ideas you can consider today.
1) Business Analyst
If you’re interested in the business world, consider becoming a business analyst. People in these kinds of roles can have many different responsibilities, but typically they use their abilities to examine issues, come up with solutions, organize things, and understand technical information to identify potential problems faced by a company, and then to create considered strategies to address them.
Business analysts may look after functions such as forecasting, trending, and developing metrics for their organization, in addition to interpreting key performance indicators to work out the past, present, and likely future performance of the company in all sorts of areas.
If you have a love of structure and systems in particular, this will come in handy as an analyst in the business world since your job will be very much about making processes more efficient through introducing and re-working them on a regular basis. You may need to perform root-cause analyses in the job too. This is done when it’s necessary to trace the line of activities completed by one or more workers in order to find the root cause for a problem.
2) Forensic Accountant
Of course, as you might expect, accounting is another field where analytical thinkers can really thrive, since it deals primarily with facts and figures, interpreting and analyzing data, and having a strong attention to detail. In particular, becoming a forensic accountant (an in-demand career right now, with growing focus on the impact of economic crime) may be a good fit for you if you’re an analytical thinker.
Forensic accountants usually focus more on specific legal issues than general accountancy tasks, and are often tasked with identifying and locating accounting errors; working out where missing funds have gone; or investigating embezzlement cases and deciphering the traces left over of these fraudulent transactions. They often have to deal with complicated, challenging work because they’re looking at financial activities perpetrators have covered-up on purpose.
These days many companies rely on outside consultants to come in and investigate potential fraud on their behalf, rather than in-house personnel. As such, there are plenty of opportunities to be an independent contractor, as well as working specifically for one firm. Since many analytical people like to work independently and to spend plenty of time poring over problems, this specialist career can be a perfect choice.
3) Logistics Manager
Another great job type for analytical people is logistics manager. When you take on this role you work with the storage and distribution of inventory, parts, and other goods on a large scale. This isn’t about ensuring a box or two of products get from point A to point B, but rather working with hundreds, thousands or even millions of items, and copious amounts of data to go along with these pieces.
Logistics managers must ensure that supply chains work effectively and efficiently at all times, and they need to use problem-solving, planning and attention-to-detail skills, while also absorbing large amounts of information and consistently coming up with new strategies to ensure goods are delivered on time and for the lowest possible price.
4) Engineer
Analytical strengths are also high on the list of skills and aptitudes needed by engineers, in every type of engineering arena. People working in this field must be able to evaluate the current needs of a project, and then design or re-work solutions for anything from computer chips and electrical systems through to roads, bridges, engines, medical devices, and even artificial body parts.
The job growth trend in software engineering is continually increasing because of the development of technology. Depending on the industry and location, a software engineer salary can expand up to $120,326 yearly.
Whether you’re interested in civil, mechanical, aerospace, biomedical, automotive, structural, or control systems engineering, you’ll need to be able to identify problems before they happen and then perform troubleshooting; locate the root causes of issues; create and then test prototypes; analyze large reams of information; evaluate test results; and much more. Lives (and of course, millions or even billions of dollars) can be on the line if engineers don’t do their jobs well, so having high-level analytical skills can make a world of difference.
