Research skills: examples and how to improve them

No matter what career path you take, research skills will help you impress employers and support you throughout your working life.

Research skills are essential for problem-solving. Learning how to improve these skills is a great way to prepare for the workplace and see your early career fly. In our guide, you’ll find out what research skills are, how to improve them and more.

We’ll run through:

• What are research skills?
• Examples of research skills
• Jobs that require these skills
• How to improve your research skills
• How to use them at your workplace
• How to include research skills in a CV
• How to include them in a cover letter
• How to show you've got research skills at a job interview

Research skills are the soft skills that you use to understand and analyse information from a variety of sources. Effective research is about finding something out and then knowing how to use this information to answer questions and solve problems.

As research skills are transferable, they’re useful in any role or sector. And that’s why they’re highly sought after by employers.

Improving your research skills is a great way to grow in your early career. For example, if a manager asks you to analyse information for a new project, it’s your research skills you’ll need to lean on.

During your time at school and uni, you’ll have used lots of research skills to complete projects. You probably don’t realise how many skills you already have.

If you’re not sure what research skills look like in practice, here are some examples:

Data collection is the process of systematically gathering information to solve problems, answer questions and better understand a particular topic. The data that you’re collecting can be quantitative (ie. something measurable) or qualitative (ie. not numbers). So, gathering everyone’s star ratings for each movie you watch in the film society is quantitative data collection. Finding out each member’s all-time favourite film is qualitative data collection.

You’ll gather data (in both forms) in many ways, including surveys, interviews and reviewing existing materials.

Did you know that your uni reading is a form of data collection? Sometimes, you’ll need to read broadly on a topic or conduct a literature review. That’s data collection.

Critical thinking is the ability to interpret and analyse information to form a judgement. Someone who’s a great critical thinker will apply their knowledge (informed by evidence eg. from data collection) to think rationally and come to a conclusion. Critical thinking is key in the workplace as it means you evaluate things strategically. Making decisions based on evidence rather than emotions is important in business.

Detail orientation is another research skill. If you’re detail-orientated, you’ll focus on the small details.

Someone with attention to detail will notice mistakes others wouldn’t and therefore deliver high-quality error-free work.

Being detail-orientated is important in research jobs. You’ve got to extract and evaluate data accurately to make sure your research is valid. Clumsy mistakes at an early stage will take your research in the wrong direction.

Time management is the ability to organise your time.

Effective time management means you balance your workload and complete all your tasks according to a schedule. It’s an important research skill as it means you’ll know how to delegate your time between data collection, analysis and evaluation.

Employers in all sectors value research skills, but it’s extra important in some roles:

External auditors need to have great attention to detail. As an external auditor, you’ll need to research policies and regulations, analyse data and draw conclusions for reports.

A strategist in the financial sector looks at an organisation’s finances to come up with future plans. To do this job, you need great analytical skills to understand the best options for your clients.

In the role of a data scientist, you’ll need to conduct research and analyse large amounts of data to spot patterns.

Clinical scientists must carefully analyse and process data. You’ll have to have strong research skills and be detail-orientated.

There are lots of different roles in the civil service – and a chunk of these involve researching, developing and maintaining policy in the UK. Being able to inform your decisions with evidence and manage your time effectively is key.

As a student or recent grad, you’ll already have learned research skills at university but there’s always room for improvement.

Our top tips for building on your research skills (and impressing future employers) are:

Whether you’re at uni or in your early career, start learning how to balance your time effectively.

For your next project, set out the activities you need to complete, how long you need to spend on each and a timeline for each task.

You won’t be able to pull all-nighters at a day job to catch up so the sooner you get into good habits, the better.

In any research process, you’ll need to sum up your findings in a written report. Make sure to include the objective of your research, a summary of your findings and the judgements you’ve made from evidence.

If you know reports will be part of your job and you’re unsure where to start, practise by writing your own on a passion project. Try rating your favourite coffee shops and comparing blend intensity. It’s a fun excuse to study somewhere new and will help you build your report-writing skills. Plus, it’s a report your friends will keenly read.

One of the core aspects of research is the ability to get information from lots of materials. Reading more widely will improve your data collection skills and will give you experience with forming judgements from a range of sources.

So, if you’re an English student, see if somebody has analysed the book’s character in a Psychology journal or read into the real history of the time. It’ll help you hone your research skills and it’ll impress your uni professors.

Once you’ve landed a job, it’s time to put those well-practised research skills to the test. Even if you’re not given a research-specific task, you’ll benefit from these skills.

Some of the ways to use research skills at your workplace include:

Before you start a project, take a moment to plan what tasks you need to do and how long each will take. Doing this helps you understand the project timelines, which means you’ve got room to put time aside for the research phase. So, you’ll be able to get your ducks in a row rather than rushing ahead.

Whatever job you’re doing, reading about your subject area is key to understanding your field. Gaining this knowledge will help you solve problems and answer questions quickly.

Following any research or data collection, it’s a good idea to compare your findings with colleagues to ensure consistency across the team. You’ll be able to learn from your co-workers and see if they’d do things differently. Plus, it’ll lead to greater accuracy for the project. If something’s gone wrong in one person’s research, you’ll spot it – and be able to work together to fix it.

Your research is of no use to anyone if you don’t share it with others. In addition to writing reports, you’ll also need to talk about your findings.

Practising giving presentations is an essential part of developing your research skills. At the end of any research, get into the habit of presenting your findings in a written report and to your team.

Once you’ve developed your research skills, you need to make sure it’s clear in your job applications – starting with your CV.

Your CV is usually the first thing an employer sees of you, so you need to impress them from the offset. Highlighting your research skills and how you’ve used them in your experience section is a great way to do this. It will show your organisation, attention to detail and critical thinking.

You should also include your research skills in the skills section of your CV. This part is a bullet-point list that’s easy for employers to scan. Emphasise any technical and personal skills that relate to the role you’re applying for. So, if you know this job will be data-heavy, put “Data analysis” nearer the top.

When talking about your research skills, explain how you developed them. The education and experience sections are the best places to do this. For example, writing literature reviews at uni is callout-worthy. An example of how you’d phrase this would be:

“Developed effective research skills through data collection and analysis when writing literature reviews for university projects.”

Another way to show your research skills in a job application is through your cover letter.

It doesn’t need to be more than one page long and should highlight your competency for the role you’re applying for. Approach it from the angle of “What can I do for the company?” rather than “What can the company do for me?”.

Your cover letter is a great chance to showcase your transferable research skills. Stress how you’ll benefit the organisation because of your ability to collect data, think critically, organise your time, analyse information and more. Remember to relate these skills to the job description. Talk about why these skills will help you do this specific role; not just the fact you’ve got all these amazing talents (as impressive as that is).

If your CV and cover letter get the right message across, the next step is a job interview – another chance to impress employers.

Ahead of your interview, use your research skills to look into the company you’ve applied for. Get familiar with what they do, their company values and what they’re looking for in a candidate.

Prepare by practising your answers to potential research skills questions too. So, think of what you’d say if the interviewer said, “Give me an example of a time when you solved a problem using your research skills.” To answer this, identify the specific research skills you used (ie. data collection) and explain a real example of when you solved a problem using them (ie. getting a high grade in a literature review because of your wide range of sources).

Research skills are essential for success in many different roles and sectors. By learning how to improve your research skills, you’re setting yourself up to impress employers at application and become an asset to a team when you enter the workplace.

It easy to see why employers value these skills. They’re essential for developing your problem-solving abilities and are some of the key graduate career skills that recruiters look for. By adding research skills to your CV and showing you’ve got them in interviews, you’re increasing your employability and chances for success.