Posted by: kichhudada_siraha_madar September 13, 2015
BA placement
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IT_student - I might be trolling your post because I do not have answer to your original question. Being a BA myself, I wanted to ask how are you preparing for BA Interviews. Many people in these posts have agreed that it is very difficult to get BA Jobs. I am in that boat myself, in a sense, because my current contract is coming to an end and I am looking for other BA opportunities. For full time applications to BA positions, I am not even getting short listed. Therefore opted to market myself through recruiting agencies. Since I went to desi consultancy in the beginning and made my GC, I am aware of challenges that F1 / H1b face with desi consultancies. Currently, I am not working for a desi consultancy and have no plans to do that again.

The question is about BA Jobs:
1. How are you preparing?
2. What tangible or hands on skills do you have?
3. Please don't take it otherwise, but how do you assess your English skills? Some of the BAs, including myself, that I have met do not have the fluency of business English. (Not talking about accents).
4. Are you keeping abreast about latest technologies and skills that businesses are hiring for?
5. Are you knowledgeable about system architecture, infrastructure and business resiliency, business process modeling and notation etc?

These questions are not to judge but to make an assessment of my self. Let me answer my own questions and then see what other peer BAs have to say.
1. Not so good. Only few youtube videos and pdf files here and there is not cutting it for me.
2. Requirements and ALM tools, PPM tools, hand on SQL, Cognos for dashboard reporting
3. Fair but fluent. I have accent but that is not a problem (in my 5 years of BA experience). My problem is not having sufficient advanced communication skills. E.g. Using inputs or filters in my mind to create maps for processing information. Using internal representation to perceive my world. For example, I am poor in using all faculties including visual, auditory and kinesthetic systems to perceive physical indications of what the other person is meaning. I am poor in building rapport. I am poor in using variety of linguistic choices to further my communication with another. I am drab and ordinary.
4. Yes. But that is not enough because most of the high demand BA skills around Mobile (digital), Cloud Computing and Data Analytics are something I do not have.
5. Yes.

Let me know your thoughts. I won't mind if it is Too Long and if you Didn't Read. My Job Update = nothing nailed yet.
Last edited: 13-Sep-15 10:33 AM
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