Decision-making skills: definition and examples

Employers love candidates with decision-making skills, so having them will help you get a job. Plus, being good at decision-making will make it easier to deal with problems once you’re working.

But what exactly are decision-making skills? We’ll explain what they are and how to improve them.

• What are decision-making skills?
• Examples
• Jobs that need these skills
• How to improve them
• How to use decision-making skills in the workplace
• How to include these skills in your CV
• How to include them in a cover letter
• How to answer decision-making skills questions in a job interview

Decision-making skills are the qualities that help you make confident choices based on advice, research and experience.

They’re soft skills that you use in different work settings. The fact they’re transferable is one of the reasons these skills are so valuable to employers.

Having strong decision-making skills is crucial for problem-solving. It’s even more important if you become a team leader. The decision-making process includes assessing your options and recognising the potential outcomes before choosing which path to take. Every decision you make (large and small) will have an impact (positive or negative). So, employers are keen to hire those with good decision-making skills.

To make well-informed decisions, you need to use soft skills like logical reasoning, intuition, teamwork, conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, collaboration and active listening. Every company and industry will have different decision-making processes, so the skills you’ll need for every job differ. But if you’ve got those core transferable skills, you’ll stand out.

There are lots of skills that lead to effective decision-making. We’ve put together some examples. Look through and think about how your skills compare. You’ll probably be strong in some areas but weaker in others. Check out our list below and identify those weak spots to improve your decision-making skills – and increase your employability.

The skills we’ll go through are:

• Logical reasoning
• Intuition
• Teamwork
• Conflict resolution
• Emotional intelligence
• Collaboration
• Active listening

To make an informed decision, you’ve got to consider all the facts. You need logic to assess the pros and cons of different responses. You’ve got to take any personal views out of the equation to come to the best conclusion. So, if you’re designing a menu, you wouldn’t remove the top-selling Vindaloo just because you can’t handle the heat. You’d instead analyse ingredient costs, ordering patterns and other objective factors.

Intuition is how you naturally view a situation without using procedures or tools. The decisions we make the quickest are usually made intuitively. It’s your gut feeling – but it’s not picking at random and hoping for the best. Your intuition is informed by previous knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. That’s why it’ll improve with experience.

Teamwork creates an opportunity for people to share their knowledge. It also helps everyone view a situation from differing perspectives.

When you use teamwork effectively, it reduces the time it takes to make a decision. But if it’s used badly, it’ll cause problems – the more people in a team, the more opinions and the more chances for disagreements. If you’re a team player, you’ll be able to deal with the challenges, take on different ideas and reach a decision that works for everyone.

Conflict resolution is a key skill, particularly when making decisions around highly disputed topics. Good communication is essential here. Compromising with others and accommodating varying views will reduce potential conflicts.

Being emotionally intelligent means being aware of your emotions and those of others. It’s also about knowing how to express your feelings healthily. So, when decision-making, don’t let your emotions take over. Sometimes, you’ll have a personal reason for wanting something that doesn’t match with the company’s goals. It’s tough. But understanding your emotions will stop your business decisions being influenced by personal biases.

Most decisions are made by several people, not just one. So, you’ll need to be comfortable with borrowing your colleagues’ brains. You must be able to recognise which decisions will need collaborative efforts and then adopt an effective team approach.

Communication is essential when working collaboratively (on decisions and everything else). To be a good collaborator, you’ve got to listen to others and take on board their thoughts.

Listening to others’ points of view is essential when collaborating on decisions. It involves making sure everyone’s heard. Active listening includes asking questions and making notes so you’re absorbing the information.

Confident in your decision-making skills? There are loads of sectors where you’ll get to use your skills, including:

Decision-making skills are important in all aspects of business, particularly operations and management roles. In these roles, the ability to view, understand and express the outcomes of different actions is crucial. Decision-making skills help you analyse situations quickly so that you’ll choose the option with the most positive outcome as smoothly as possible.

Sound like a bit of you? Learn more about the management and operations sector.

In the consulting sector, you need decision-making skills to guide businesses in the right direction. For example, strategy consultants advise organisations on high-level decisions in an unbiased fashion, using their industry knowledge to deliver results. Consultancy involves taking facts and opinions into consideration to get the best results.

Decision-making is a crucial skill in a law career. Lawyers have to gather facts, set the criteria to define what a successful decision is, evaluate and develop options, assess risks for those options, make a decision and follow through with it.

Whether recruiters are sourcing candidates for their own company or another business, decision-making is an essential skill. To find the right person for the job, they need to weigh up the positives and negatives of each candidate and work out who’ll be the best fit.

Love the sound of those roles but not sure that your decision-making skills are up to scratch? If you’re inspired to work on your skills, here are some steps to take:

If you know you’ve got a decision that you need to make, create a plan for your upcoming decision-making process. What do you need to know or do to make up your mind? As part of this, assess the information, team and resources you’ve got available to help you.

Not in work? Try formalising how you pick your next holiday destination or series binge-watch.

If you’ve got a job, ask a supervisor for their opinion on a work-based decision you’ve got to make. If you’re at uni, speak to your professor about deciding which route to go down with your next essay.

If you’ve got access to any experts, see if they’ll help too. Ask relevant connections for their thoughts on the decision you’ve got to make. Alternatively, ask them to explain the process they take to make decisions.

The time you spend making a decision must match its gravity. So, choosing a master’s course needs more thought than picking a takeaway dish.

If a decision is going to have a small impact either way, you don’t need to spend long thinking about it. Every decision is an opportunity to practise your techniques but use low-risk situations to speed up your decision-making process.

Set deadlines for yourself and your team. Having a cut-off date stops decision-making going on for longer than it needs to. Being disciplined with a timeline will stop the decision (or lack thereof) from jeopardising the progress of the task. If you’ve got four weeks to make a group presentation, you don’t want to spend three weeks deciding on the topic.

When you’re in a professional environment, you’ll regularly use decision-making skills.

Here are some of the ways to use decision-making skills at work:

A poll is a great way to understand people’s thoughts on a topic. If you’re in charge of a decision, it’s a good way of showing that you’re considering other people's views.

Productive brainstorming requires effective communication, active listening and compromise.

When brainstorming, expand on each other’s ideas to cover all areas. Not everyone will agree with every suggestion – but that’s OK. It’s an opportunity to use your compromising skills to come to a conclusion that suits everyone.

Bosses value proactive employees. So, taking action when something’s not working will impress them.

Being the person to make the change when something is no longer beneficial for the company also displays your confidence – another desirable skill.

So, you’ve got the skills and know how to use them. We know that. But recruiters don’t – yet. To get that decision-making job of your dreams, you need to show potential employers that you’ve got the right skills. Let’s start with how you show these qualities on your CV.

Firstly, include any decision-making skills that are in the job description. If the job ad mentions the need to work with colleagues, big up your teamwork, conflict resolution and collaboration.

You should also highlight any roles where you’ve been in charge of people. Think beyond the workplace. Call out any experience you’ve got from volunteering, sports and uni societies. It all counts.

Want to perfect your CV? Read our advice on how to write a CV.

Your cover letter is a great place to expand on your decision-making skills. Here, you’re able to explain scenarios when you’ve made decisions.

Experience where you’ve led a team shows decision-making skills. Have you been the lead on a group project at uni, the captain of a sports club or supervised shifts at your summer job? All those things are strong examples of leadership and, therefore, decision-making.

Just like with your CV, always tie your cover letter back to the job you’re applying to. So, focus on the skills and experience that’s most relevant to the role you’d like. It’s OK if you’ve never had a job like it before but play up your transferable skills and cut out anything irrelevant.

Ready to start putting it all together? Read up on our tips for how to write a good cover letter.

If you’ve impressed your potential employer with your application, the next step will be an interview. It’s another opportunity to show that you’ve got what they’re looking for.

Interviewers will often ask questions to assess a candidate’s decision-making skills. The exact questions they’ll ask will change but some of the questions to practise responses to include:

• Do you usually make better decisions on your own or in a group?
• Describe a time when you had to make a quick decision.
• In group work, do you prefer to make the decisions or take a background role and let others make them?
• Describe a time when you made a decision that wasn’t popular. What was your team’s reaction and how did you deal with it?
• How would you help your team to meet a deadline if team members were falling behind?
• When do you ask for help when making decisions?
• If you wanted your manager to upgrade a system to a more expensive one with more features, how would you propose this suggestion?

With questions like these, the interviewer wants to know how you make decisions. When it comes to giving examples, a high-quality response includes discussing the steps you took to come to a decision while mentioning any time limits and how you made the process as efficient as possible.

Decision-making skills are crucial soft skills that employers are looking for. You’ll already have some of these skills, so show them through your CV and cover letter. If those hit the mark, you’ll get another chance to prove your skills in an interview.

Even if you don’t have a job right now, there are plenty of opportunities to keep building on your decision-making skills. Volunteering, playing sports and joining societies are some of the ways to practise these skills outside of your university projects.

Feel like you’ve got your decision-making skills under control? Learn more about the key graduate career skills you need and pick an area to focus on. There’s always room for improvement – no matter how amazing you already are.