To be a Business Analyst (BA) at Nubank, it’s essential to master a combination of analytical, communication, technical, and time management skills. This article delves into these key competencies, offering detailed insights on how each one contributes to success in the role.

Whether you’re considering a career as a BA at Nubank, or you’re already in the field and wish to enhance your skills, this guide is a great starting point to understand what’s necessary to thrive in this dynamic and challenging environment. Discover how problem-solving abilities, analytical skills, and clear communication can transform complex challenges into strategic solutions that drive growth and innovation.

Problem Solving

Understanding and solving complex problems is essential for BAs at Nubank. This skill involves breaking down problems into smaller, logical parts. Problems at Nubank can vary in maturity:

  • Known problem: situations previously encountered.
  • Unknown problem with a clear scope: new situations but well-defined.
  • Unknown and abstract problem: new and vague situations.

Key aspects to investigate include:

  • Definition: What is the problem? 
  • Context: How was it identified? 
  • Location: Where does/did it occur? 
  • Constraints: What are the limits to our actions?

Documenting the methods, results, and recommendations is vital for knowledge management and efficient problem-solving. Nubank grants creative freedom and autonomy to adopt various methods and tools, as long as they align with team objectives and Nubank’s values and best practices.

If you want to explore tools and methods that assist in problem structuring more thoroughly, here are some valuable references:

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Clear and Structured Communication

Communication skills are fundamental for the work of Business Analysts, as they enhance the quality of their deliverables and interactions. Now, let’s explore some of these skills further:

  • Assertiveness: ability to express oneself clearly and objectively. It should not be mistaken for aggressiveness, as it always involves maintaining respect and courtesy.
  • Structured Communication: ability to organize and present information in a logical and coherent manner, thereby facilitating understanding and data collection.

In the day-to-day activities of a Business Analyst, situations such as presenting results and aligning with stakeholders are common. Effective communication can expedite conflict resolution and ensure a clear understanding of the purpose of an analysis, product, or project, increasing its perceived value.

It’s important to note that these guidelines for assertiveness and structure apply not only to oral communication but also to written, visual, and even non-verbal communication, such as body language. Elements like posture, eye contact, and gestures also influence the perception of the message being conveyed.

Here are some resources that can help improve your communication skills:

Analytical sense

Analytical sense is the ability to correlate diverse pieces of information to generate insights and support strategic decisions. This competency is essential to ensure that decisions are data-driven, minimizing subjectivity and avoiding biases that can distort judgment in the decision-making process.

For Business Analysts, the breadth of information is extensive, ranging from market data (such as competitor representativeness and the size of the addressable market) to metrics related to mature policies and products (like customer retention rates). Given this diversity, it is crucial to be skilled in navigating various domains of knowledge through approaches like:

  • Continuously seeking knowledge
  • Learning quickly
  • Thinking critically
  • Formulating effective hypotheses
  • Being comfortable with numbers
  • Assessing risks accurately
  • Comfortably navigating various levels of uncertainty

Some references for you to delve deeper into the topic:

Business sense

Having a sharpened business sense, particularly concerning the sector in which Nu operates, is essential for the work of Business Analysts. This skill encompasses the ability to understand how a company works, its goals, and how it generates profit. Moreover, it is crucial to understand how decisions impact the business as a whole.

To enhance this skill, we can divide it into two main aspects:

Internal knowledge of the company

It is essential to know the products and services offered by the company and understand who its main clients or target audience are. This includes identifying key sources of revenue, areas of cost concentration, and opportunities to maximize profit. It is also important to be aware of the risks associated with business decisions.

For example, a restaurant can reduce customer acquisition costs and/or increase revenue with a loyalty program. However, for this initiative to be successful, it is necessary to understand the customer profile, choose an appropriate loyalty model, and assess the risks involved, such as potential program abuse or the complexity of its management.

Knowledge of the external market

Knowing the main competitors and market trends is essential to identify growth opportunities and attract new customers. Furthermore, it is important to recognize the threats that may impact the business, such as the approval of a new law that affects revenue or the entry of a foreign competitor into the market.

Another relevant external aspect is the seasonality of the business, which can influence performance during certain periods. For example, an ice cream shop tends to increase sales during the summer, which should be considered when analyzing results and defining company strategies.

Mastering these two topics builds a strategic vision and helps to recommend more effective actions, directly contributing to the company’s success.

Influence

Influence is a crucial skill for a Business Analyst, which improves with continuous practice. To better understand how this competency applies to the work of a BA at Nubank, let’s break it down into key topics:

  • Effective communication: Business Analysts must be able to communicate their ideas, analyses, and recommendations in a clear, concise, and persuasive manner to different audiences, including other analysts, members of other chapters, and managers. This often involves interactions with individuals who do not have the same level of context or knowledge about the subject. Therefore, it is crucial that the message is conveyed in a way that everyone can understand, regardless of their familiarity with the topic.
  • Data presentation: The ability to present data and analyses convincingly is vital for influencing decisions. This involves using visual tools, such as charts and tables, to make information more accessible and easier to understand. Additionally, it’s important to build a compelling narrative that connects the insights to the business strategy and objectives, ensuring that the audience not only understands the presentation but also feels engaged with the message.
  • Negotiation: In many cases, Business Analysts need to negotiate solutions and decisions among different stakeholders, such as deadlines, work methods, and tasks that involve more than one team. In this context, effective negotiation skills are essential to achieve positive outcomes.
  • Resilience: Business Analysts’ ideas and recommendations won’t always be well received. It is important to have resilience to deal with rejections and to adapt approaches when necessary, always keeping a focus on organizational objectives.

Technical skills

Technical skills are fundamental for a Business Analyst to perform their role with excellence. At Nubank, we believe that these competencies are easier to acquire compared to behavioral skills. Therefore, we do not require candidates to have full technical mastery during the selection process; we prefer to teach them during their first days of work. The main technical skills we value are:

  • Programming: Proficiency in programming is crucial for Nubank’s BAs to efficiently access and organize data, facilitating subsequent analysis in tables or charts. Although our main language is Scala, knowledge in SQL and/or Python is also valued.
  • Statistics: A solid knowledge of statistics is essential for developing hypothesis tests or A/B tests. Statistics provide the necessary methods to calculate indicators that evaluate the statistical significance of results, helping to determine the validity of a hypothesis. Without this foundation, there is a risk of misinterpreting results, leading to incorrect decisions.

Time and scope management

No project can succeed without efficient time and scope management. Business Analysts often assume the role of leaders, demonstrating their management skills and the ability to drive strategic initiatives. Essentially, this competency includes:

  • Project scope definition: clearly understanding the tasks and deliverables necessary to achieve the project objectives. This involves creating a detailed plan that outlines the project, avoiding the inclusion of unplanned tasks. To ensure alignment with stakeholders, it is essential to create a document that sets delivery expectations, defines what will not be addressed in the project, and presents a task execution plan.
  • Time management: establishing realistic deadlines for each stage of the project, taking into account available resources and dependencies between tasks. This includes using time management tools, such as timelines and task lists, to monitor progress and ensure project completion within the deadline. BAs have the autonomy to choose the most suitable support tool, with the Gantt chart being commonly used. It is a project management tool that illustrates the stages along a timeline, showing tasks, durations, and start and end dates. This chart provides a visual representation of the schedule, making it easier to track progress and identify potential delays.
  • Balance between time and scope: recognizing that, in some cases, adjustments to the project scope may be necessary to meet deadlines. This may involve prioritizing the most important tasks and eliminating the less essential ones, always with the goal of achieving the best result for the project.

Becoming a Business Analyst at Nubank requires a robust set of technical and behavioral skills. Mastering problem-solving abilities, clear and assertive communication, analytical sense, business sense, and influence are just some of the essential competencies to thrive in such a dynamic environment. Additionally, efficient time and scope management is crucial to ensure the delivery of projects with excellence.

If you are seeking a career that is both challenging and rewarding, the BA role at Nubank could be the ideal opportunity. With the right investment in personal and professional development, you will be prepared to transform complex challenges into strategic solutions, directly contributing to Nu’s growth and innovation.

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