This Career Pays 100k

Hello and welcome to this video. Today we're going to be talking about the career that pays $100K, and I've got Laura Brandenburg here with me, and she is the CEO of Bridging the Gap, provider of the ACBA certification. She's going to talk more about that. Bridging the Gap helps you become a confident, sought-after business analyst with practical, real-world online training so that you can apply it in the the real world. Bridging the Gap has helped business analysts from over 39 countries to land a variety of different roles in different industries and be more successful in their careers. Awesome. We're going to get started.

So glad to be here, Natalie. Thanks for doing this.

Yay. I know. Last time we had a collaboration like this, it was really good. Got lots of feedback, lots of people interested in this career that pays $100K. Today we're going to go into some some notes about how people can get involved in that and what are some of the questions people might have when looking at this. First of all, in my work, I talk about the value that's provided to a company and that that should exceed the value by which they're asking to be paid. I was wondering if in terms of becoming a business analyst, how that might look for someone who is just starting and how they might look at that as far as providing value And how they can get to that $100K salary by looking at it that way. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it's like, it's such an important question. And I think, you know, you had mentioned in our prep about like the value of improving a business process, right? And like the end result. And definitely business analysts are part of teams that make massive improvements to businesses. Like an improvement in a business process might save X amount of time. Or you might be able to deliver a completely new product that generates X amount of revenue. The challenge I see when business analysts try to say that stuff is it feels like it becomes a we conversation instead of an I conversation. I've interviewed people and they're like, well, we did this amazing thing. And you're like, but what did you do? What was your contribution? When you look at the business analyst contribution within a project, They are also within that scope of that project that might be to implement XYZ cost savings or new revenue initiative. They're saving costs and maximizing value. So the way a business analyst saves costs is like they're really figuring out what is needed and what is really needed and getting people on the same page and helping avoid like those extraneous discussions where people are rediscussing the same thing over and over. They're also avoiding the scenario where, like, the business person talks to the developer directly and the developer hears one thing and goes off and builds it, and then it's the wrong thing, right? And then they have to go back and rebuild it. So, like, avoiding rework is another really important value within the project for a BA to speak to. And then in terms of extracting more value, like, helping the business side get really clear on their priorities, like, is this like little fields that you want to add that you thought would be like a 20-minute thing that turned out to be a 1-month thing, is that really still— is that really like worth it, right? And like helping people prioritize and make sure that we're getting the most out of the effort that we're putting into whatever that project is, as well as sometimes finding easier ways to do things. Like not everything has to be solved with technology. So you might really get into what problem needs to be solved and realize like a simple business process change or a role assignment solve that problem, or a current capability your organization has can solve a problem. You don't need a big new software project. So like lots of ways that you can add value at that project level too.

Yeah. Awesome. And the next question I had was, as far as where a company comes to the point of needing a business analyst, how would they kind of get to that point where they're like, oh, we need somebody to come and take a look and like improve these processes, give us a A fresh set of eyes around this?

Yeah. Well, at a more established, larger company, they have a business analyst practice. They have teams of people doing this. That scenario might be like we have more projects than we have business analysts to work on them, and so they could be hiring for that reason, or that they had turnover and need to fill open slots or things like that. But I think your question is more for that smaller company that doesn't yet have a business analyst practice. they realize that this is like, they're missing something on their team.

Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Often it's that, like, they feel like people are spending a lot of time in that rework cycle that we talked about. Like, everybody thought they were clear or, you know, people are going back and forth about things, even though they thought they were clear. There's a lot of finger pointing about, you know, you said to do this and I did that and now you don't like it, that kind of stuff. Or so it might be like there's a problem, or it might be that they're tackling something bigger than they have before, like an ERP project or a digital transformation project. And they know like the skillset of their team that kind of keeps the lights on isn't going to be the same skillset that they need for these bigger projects. And they might look for a business analyst at that point.

Okay, cool. And this wasn't on the prep sheet, but I was just wondering as a follow-up question, A lot of people that I work with tend to think that if they have less experience, like maybe they have a certification, but they don't have a ton of experience yet, that those larger companies are less likely to hire them and that they should go looking for smaller, less established companies to try to present solutions first. Would you agree with that, with what you've seen and the people that you've trained? Are they like less able to get—

I mean, people get hired right into larger companies too, especially if that larger company has more training. Sometimes a larger company has an existing practice, an existing set of templates, a way of doing business analysis. They almost don't want you to come in and be the one like, oh, wait, here's how I've done it for the last 20 years. They want to train you of like, here's how we do business analysis here. I think it can be seen as an asset either way.

Yeah. That's an example for like, we don't want you to have all these bad habits or all these things that don't align with us. We want to teach you from the beginning. That's actually good that you don't have a ton of experience. Yeah. Okay, great. Then the last thing I wanted to talk about today was for someone who hasn't had official on-paper business analysis experience, but specifically they have been doing stuff like that before. Maybe they didn't know they were, but they have a knack for it. How do you see talking to employers around that when they don't have Like they either don't have the experience, but maybe they have your certification, or they have no official on-paper experience, but they have kind of been doing it. How do you recommend coming at that in an interview?

Yeah, I think it starts in the resume and then it has to follow through in the interview. But like we actually— so part of the certification is people are building experience because they are actually doing on-the-job deliverables, even if they're not in an official business analyst role. So, like, you come out of the certification with a certain amount of experience, and that is because it's so important to employers. But when people say it's, like, not— they call it informal experience, or, like, I like that, like, it's not on-paper experience— I think it's all transferable. So, in business analysis, there's a lot of jargon, and the terminology can trip people up. So, it's like, looking at what do they mean by that term, like process model. What is that really? It's a, it's a diagram that has boxes and arrows that shows like a process from beginning to end. Like you might've called it a workflow diagram. You might've called it like just writing out the process. You might've done it in written form. And so being able to look at what you've done and then talk about it using the right jargon and then really share like it was a real experience, like only if that's true. Like you don't want to wordsmith it. Yeah. Because I think you could put it in your resume and get the interview and then You know, I'm sure you've seen people who then, but you can't interview, you can't like back it up in the interview because you start talking and you're like, well, I wasn't really doing that. Right. Like that's kind of the worst case. Exactly. Yeah. And so like a wireframe is another one. We had somebody come into our course because one of our modules is use cases and wireframes. He's like, I've never done wireframes, but like I've done, I forget the word he used. It might've been prototypes or it might've been mockups. I think it was mockups. And those are really all essentially the same thing. It's just like the visual view of what a screen is going to look like. on the software that you could hand draw and it would be considered that. He had gotten tripped up in an interview because he didn't know that term. I think it's just learning the terminology and being able to talk about your past experience as business analyst experience.

Totally. Then not being overwhelmed by it or assuming you don't know what it is because very well you could. I think I had somebody on my podcast recently and he was Saying, if you find a better, a faster route to work, you've improved your process.

We've had people do processes like that in our program. We always recommend they try to get into an organization, like even if it's volunteer, right? So like actually see how it is to work with other stakeholders. But, you know, sometimes that stakeholder might be your partner who, you know, your collaborator on how to get everybody out the door in the morning.

And that works. Yeah. And I had someone like using an example of how he figured out how to solve a technical problem with his own electric car that he could then talk about in an interview for an engineering position. And that worked, like that is better than not having anything to talk about. And he ended up getting the job.

That's awesome.

So yeah, I mean, I think it's what you said, it's like not letting yourself get tripped up or overwhelmed or assuming, you know, that you don't know as much as you thought you did. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, those are all the questions I had for you. Do you want to fill us in about the— you have this Quickstart training program that helps people get started?

Yeah, for sure. If you're interested in learning more about this business analyst career or think that you might be a business analyst, a lot of people don't really realize that they are actually business analysts because they don't have the title. A great way to just learn more about the profession, as well as how people have transitioned in, is our Quickstart to Success workshop. It's totally free, and we'd love to have you check it out.

And the link will be below in the video. So please click on that.

And it's bridgingthegap.com/quick. Yeah.

All right. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here. If you want to also get help with interviews, I have a guide that I'll put the link in the notes for, and it's called The 8 Reasons Why You're Getting Interviews But No Offers. So something is getting in the way there, and I can help you shed some light on that. So the link for both of those will be down in the show notes or the YouTube notes, whatever they're called. And thank you so much. That's the end of the video.

Yeah.