What Are Strategic Planner Resume Skills? (With Examples)

Updated 21 January 2023

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Strategic planners help organisations to achieve their goals, both broad and specific. They use their time management and resource allocation abilities to create achievable goals. Learning about the skills of a strategic planner can help you understand them better and excel in your career. In this article, we discuss what strategic planner resume skills are, review some examples of these skills, explore ways to improve them and share steps to highlight them on your resume and during a job interview.

What Are Strategic Planner Resume Skills?

Strategic planner resume skills are a professional's strengths and abilities to develop strategies that improve processes within an organisation. A strategic planner possesses skills that help them perform varied tasks, such as conducting research, managing projects and creating portfolios. These professionals make well-grounded and workable recommendations that enable companies to achieve their goals. They use their research and analysis skills to gain comprehensive knowledge about a company, which helps them create helpful strategies.

A strategic planner is proficient in collaborating, deductive reasoning and decision making. They combine these abilities with other skills to devise measurable goals for an organisation. These goals serve as steps the management and employees can follow to achieve business growth. Their skills also help them enhance operations, improve team focus, create priorities and facilitate collaboration. When you mention these skills in your resume, you are more likely to impress hiring managers.

Examples Of Strategic Planner Skills

Here is a list of examples of a strategic planner's skills that employers usually seek in a candidate before offering them a role:

Problem-solving

Problem-solving skills allow these professionals to solve challenges, such as improving revenue goals or enhancing a production process. They analyse the organisation's present situation and create effective plans that help it reach its goals. Decision making, confidence and creativity are some key attributes of problem-solving skills.

Critical thinking

When professionals think critically, they can better assess information and current conclusions that focus on objective judgement. They carefully evaluate facts and figures to make effective decisions. Reasoning, adaptability, collaboration, diagnostics, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis and quantitative and qualitative data management are some features of a strategic planner's critical thinking skills.

Communication

Strategic planners employ their communication skills for effective strategic and business planning. These professionals are proficient in clearly communicating their findings and plans to help an organisation reach its goals and objectives. They also possess strong active listening skills to understand the organisation's requirements. Negotiation, collaboration, presentation, persuasion and constructive criticism are aspects of communication skills.

Leadership

Many strategic planners have leadership roles where they lead teams to achieve the organisation's goals. These skills allow strategic planners to help their peers achieve common goals and support the organisation's overall objectives. Strategic planners in leadership roles supervise different strategy teams, motivating and inspiring their team members to complete tasks within deadlines.

Research

Strategic planners conduct in-depth research, collecting to help them improve an organisation's varied processes. With this data, they create efficient strategies that align with the findings. Their research abilities include other skills, such as attention to detail, collection of information and interpretation of data. These professionals also perform market and trend research to gain an advantage over the competition.

Marketing

A strategic planner's marketing skills focus on their industry and market knowledge. They understand the importance of market research, helping them determine growth strategies and devise solutions to various market-related issues. They also monitor the organisation's growth, creating strategies for eliminating congestion in the marketing process. Media research, social media and communication are attributes of marketing skills.

Technology

A strategic planner employs technology skills to collect data, compare these numbers and publish the findings. They often collaborate with the organisation's information technology department to develop plans that focus on increasing the effectiveness of the organisation's growth strategies. They are also adept at troubleshooting computer programs, using various software tools, automating processes and analysing systems for data collection.

How To Improve Your Strategic Planning Skills

Here are some steps you can review to help you improve your strategic planning skills:

1. Identify the objective

Strategic planners identify the objective of a process to make informed decisions and create effective plans. Practise evaluating different situations based on the information you have gathered. When you fully assess a situation, you can likely predict challenges. This helps you create robust strategies and eliminate risks.

2. Pursue courses

Pursue a course that focuses on the fundamentals of strategic planning, such as how to plan and execute strategies. These courses offer lessons on effective research and analysis to strengthen your strategic planning skills. These courses can also help you understand more about hypothesis testing and different approaches to strategy formulation.

3. Find a mentor

Your mentor might be an accomplished professional colleague or manager with extensive knowledge of strategic planning. A mentor can help you discover novel approaches to business planning strategies. Their feedback may also help you improve your performance by working on your areas for improvement.

4. Ask the right questions

Giving close attention to detail enables you to ask pertinent questions. The answers to such questions may help you discover facts to resolve complex problems. These responses can allow you to develop viable strategies and promote the organisation's success. Practise how to analyse different situations and develop questions to strengthen your strategic thinking abilities.

5. Listen actively

Active listening helps you identify a company's requirements. For instance, listen carefully to what team leaders and other executives discuss in meetings. You can then use this information to create successful strategies. You can improve your active listening skills by staying open-minded, accepting feedback from your managers and attentively listening when interacting with other people.

Strategic Planning Skills In The Workplace

Here are some ways to utilise your strategic planning skills in the workplace:

Identify strengths and improvement areas. Good strategy planning focuses on identifying the organisation's improvement areas and assessing what it does well. This assessment helps the organisation use its strengths and work on the areas where it may improve.
Apply communication skills. Effective strategy planning includes excellent communication between team members and different departments. Use your communication skills to create reports and conduct research, as this helps you convey your findings and strategies to stakeholders.
Prioritise objectives. Identify the organisation's key objectives before formulating strategies and prioritising them based on their importance. Keep these objectives measurable to monitor the organisation's performance and long-term goals.
Use the SMART technique. Strategic planners use the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based) technique to plan and achieve goals. This technique enables you to develop a framework for each goal, making it easier to reach organisational objectives.
Remain open-minded. Strategic planners remain open-minded to suggestions and use varied approaches to analyse different situations. This helps them recognise and eliminate their biases to better assess information objectively.
Think creatively. Creative thinking in the workplace is your ability to present multiple solutions to a problem. Creative individuals accept novel ideas, think unconventionally and take calculated risks.

Ways To Highlight Your Strategic Planning Skills

Here are some suggestions to help you highlight strategic planning skills on your resume and cover letter and discuss them during a job interview:

Strategic planning skills for your resume and cover letter

A resume has many places where you can highlight your strategic planning skills to impress hiring managers. For example, you can mention them in the document's skills or work experience sections. Select the skills that apply to the position you are applying for. To determine which skills the role requires, carefully review the job description and identify keywords. These keywords define the position's duties. Use specific examples to mention your skills, illustrating how each skill has helped you accomplish different tasks.

In your cover letter, detail your skills and the positive outcomes of applying them in the workplace. This document also lets you mention your educational qualifications. Consider including two to three skills and aligning them with your educational achievements.

Strategic planning skills during a job interview

A job interview is an excellent opportunity to discuss your skills verbally with hiring managers. These conversations often allow you to talk about instances where your strategic planning skills helped you solve problems or improve processes. Before attending a job interview, prepare some examples of how your skills helped you succeed in past roles. During the interview, you could also talk about skills that the hiring manager might omit.