What is business acumen? - How Do I Show Business Acumen in an Interview?

How do you demonstrate that you've got good business acumen when you’re interviewing for a job? First and foremost I would argue that knowing what business acumen is a great first start. Business acumen is about understanding the fundamental money-making process of a company and then aligning your decisions to that money-making process. Well, how do you apply that then to the company you'd like to work for? Understand their industry at least at a high level. If you're going to be interviewing for a retail company - realize that retail is about having enough inventory, getting enough customers through the door, getting that inventory to turn quickly, to be smart about what that inventory should be that has the greatest amount of demand. All of those things are kind of fundamental to retail. If you're going to go work for a healthcare company - they are going to be very focused on patient outcomes, and treatments, and the science associated with driving patient outcomes in an effective sustainable way. So it's the fundamentals of a company, how it makes money, and then what does your function do that can help contribute to that? So if you can understand that at a high level, then as you get into the interview you can start to weave in how your function may contribute to how that company can succeed moving forward. In the roles that you've had before, can you quantify what kind of impact you've had? Is there any kind of margin uplift you were able to have with the decisions that you made? Were you're able to generate more revenues through X, Y and Z? Are there things that you did that put you in the top 5% of your peers because you did this, this, and this? And how does that link to the business's growth or profitability or efficiencies? Can you quantify that on your resume? It starts to demonstrate that you're not just highlighting what you've done but the impact of what you've done. So as you think about the company's money-making process, think about how you've been able to do something like that in the past. If you think about what this company's priorities are and then align your function to help contribute more effectively to the company's growth and profitability, the more you're demonstrating good business acumen. Follow Ben Cook https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-cook-4a70252/ Follow Acumen Learning https://www.linkedin.com/company/acumen-learning https://www.instagram.com/acumenlearning/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/acumenlearningllc/ ✅ Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more Business Acumen videos! ✅ For more on our business acumen training visit: https://www.acumenlearning.com/ #businessacumen #businessstrategy #learninganddevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #financial #financialstrategy #financialacumen #financialliteracy #jobinterview #interviewtips