How Can Business Analyst Recruitment Agencies Help My Hiring Process?

Business analysts often shoulder the responsibility of bridging the gap between IT departments and leadership teams, holding a unique role in their company. They work with IT departments to collect and analyse products, services, software, and data, collaborating with leadership teams to communicate findings that can impact your business decisions.

As many companies increase their IT technology capabilities, it is business analysts who will play a key role in helping you make the right decisions for your company. But with a need to be able to work with a variety of people and personalities, business analysts require a specific set of hard and soft skills. Assessing these qualities can be challenging, which is where the expertise and knowledge of business analyst recruitment agencies, like VIQU, can truly help you.

What is a business analyst?

Essentially, business analysts work with data. As more of your company’s infrastructure moves online, taking on new technologies, the amount of data you receive will rise. This data could give you an advantage over competitors in your sector. Data can inform your sales decisions, and customer relationships, as well as aid in marketing campaigns. The more you know about your clients and customers, the easier it is to target potential new individuals or companies.

This means that if you want to make the most of your data, you need an employee who is data literate, like a business analyst. They can help you to keep track and understand data, as well as spot trends, then advise on changes to your systems, products, tools, and services, based on the data. This will make your company efficient and add value to your client/customer experience.

Business analysts also work with the IT team to plan and work on new projects, both in the planning and post-completion stages. The benefit of a business analyst is that they are able to work with your project manager during the lifespan of a project to analyse the project’s outcomes. Ensuring and checking that the team is working efficiently and successfully, within the parameters of budget and time.

Whilst you may already have a well-functioning IT team, business analysts are fantastic for understanding data and project management. Furthermore, they can often be an effective “translator” between the IT department leadership and other stakeholders. Business analysts will understand your company’s needs and future goals and collaborate with you to find practical routes for your IT department to take to reach them.

Day-to-day tasks for a business analyst

Although a business analyst’s role within your company will differ depending on your specific needs, their day-to-day tasks might include:

• Using SQL and Excel to analyse and track your company’s data
• Creating tables, charts, and graphs for data visualisation
• Liaising with leadership on any changes or improvements to the business with evidence from the data
• Supporting departments throughout the project lifespan from conception to completion

Core business analyst skills

Business analysts require a specific set of soft and hard skills. Therefore, if my description of a business analyst above sounds exactly like what you need, assessing both sets of skills during the interview process will be key to ascertaining the best fit for your business.

A survey of business analysts from the International Institute of Business Analysts, identified the following as important skills in their job role:

• Communication
• Organisation
• Creative thinking
• Facilitation
• Problem solving
• Leadership
• Data literacy, visualisation, and storytelling
• Statistics

With experience talking with both business analysts and the companies who hire them, business analyst recruitment agencies, like VIQU, can help to spot the candidate that has the most relevant skills needed in your company.

Project methodology type waterfall vs agile

A business analyst will perform a key role in the planning and assessing of projects, ensuring alignment with your company’s goals and vision. The waterfall or agile methodology can be used in IT projects. In a business analyst recruitment process, you will need to be able to properly assess which is the preferred method of your business analyst candidate and what will suit your team.

If you’re unsure of the differences between these methodologies and what role a business analyst plays in both, don’t worry, here is a short explanation:

• In a waterfall development method, there is often a focus on front-end planning, which usually includes the work of a project manager and business analyst. The whole project is planned out first with strict parameters and responsibilities. This is a more traditional method that works well for some companies, but others find it limiting.
• An agile method is based on much smaller sprints. A sprint is a short well-defined period of time where team works on an individual development from start to finish. Each sprint is often focused on a particular feature and often has less defined roles and responsibilities, and less initial planning. Rather, work is completed in a more collaborative way to quickly push new changes over the line. An agile business analyst continuously assesses and analyses the project throughout the sprint and communicates any potential forecasted issues.

Around 87% of BAs practice agile approaches to projects. Therefore, it’s very worthwhile getting in touch with a business analyst recruitment agency that can fully assess a candidate’s skills and experience, giving you peace of mind that they will slot into your existing team well.

Why are business analysts in demand?

Business analysts, like most tech roles, can be hard to recruit for. With 36% of UK businesses planning on launching digital transformation projects in the next 12 months and another 36% of businesses citing business intelligence positions like business analysts as the most challenging to hire for.

As companies have moved online and started collecting vast amounts of customer and client data, the need for someone to analyse that data has increased exponentially. 75% of businesses have identified data collection as a priority within their marketing and business strategies. The importance of data collection and literacy has only further risen in importance in the past few years as using social media, online shopping, and apps has meant that companies own much more data on clients and customers than ever before.

An effective and successful business analyst recruitment process can be your first step to achieving an advantage over your competitors.

How can business analyst recruitment agencies help?

Finding a suitable fit

As business analysts often work with a wide range of industries and may come from various backgrounds, you may find it harder to find one that fits well in your company. This can also mean that when you are going through the recruitment process you can have a higher number of candidates who won’t be suitable for your company, making the process much more costly and wasteful.

Business analyst recruitment agencies can handle the initial suitability assessments for you, meaning that the candidates you see at the interview stage will be a good fit for your company.

Attracting candidates

Furthermore, because business analysts are in such high demand and need quite niche skills, businesses like yours need to compete to attract the best ones.

For the past few years, business analyst salaries have been increasing as the skills shortage affects the job market. One way you can attract the best talent is through an effective recruitment campaign and Employee Value Proposition.

Business analyst recruitment agencies, like VIQU, talk with BAs every day and know what they are looking for and what your competitors are offering them.

Cost and time effective

When weighing up whether to outsource your business analyst recruitment process, you may think using a cost effective recruitment agency is an oxymoron. However, you would be surprised just how much time and money business analyst recruitment agencies could save you.

Before you switch off, rolling your eyes because of course a recruitment agency would say this, think about the effect undergoing a recruitment process might have on your business.

If you do not have a dedicated recruitment team, time consuming tasks like sifting through CVs, arranging interviews etc. will often be taken up by managers, assistants, administrators, or HR professionals. However, this takes them away from their responsibilities and can cause issues in productivity. Handing over your hiring to business analyst recruitment agencies, gives your team time to focus on what they do best.

A business analyst specialist recruitment agency, although not the cheapest option at first glance, can work out much cheaper than taking managers and other staff away from their jobs and projects.

If you’re looking for assistance with your business analyst recruitment process, you are in very safe hands. Please contact us for expert advice and support.