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Eyeing the right domain-business functional area fit

ZDNet Asia reader asks how he can best take advantage of his wealth of academic qualifications and 12 years of IT experience to become a lead business analyst.
Written by Staff , Contributor
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Q. I recently graduated with a Masters of Business Systems. My other degrees are MCA Master of Computer Applications and BSc (Physics).

I have over 12 years of IT experience in planning, executing and managing information systems. My career aspiration is to be a lead business analyst.

Kindly let me know which are the application domains and business functional areas where I can utilize my experience and extended education.

Career advice from Tay Kok Choon, country manager of JobStreet Singapore:
You do come across to have a wealth of academic qualifications. From the experience angle, 12 years is a good period of time in a single industry. However, given that there are only sketchy details on the job experience that you went through, much of the response will be based on assumption.

The role of a business analyst is to analyze the business needs of clients; identify business challenges and propose solutions. Within the systems development life cycle domain, the business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of services to the enterprise.

The business analyst understands business problems and opportunities in the context of the requirements and recommends solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.

Matching candidate skills with aspiration
We see some good career progression in your intention. Having acquired a good level of technical expertise, it is timely to move on to a liaison role.

As for the application and functional domain, it very much depends on the exposure over the past 12 years. Addressing a domain that you are familiar will assist in providing a sharpen response to the issues and challenges encountered.

Treading on unfamiliar domain and functional areas will demand a period of learning and knowledge acquisition using available methodology and processes.

As such, you are strongly advised to look for opportunities from a domain that closely parallels your experience with the intent of migrating into a different role.

We wish you all the best in his future endeavor.

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