Investigating skills in modern life

Investigating skills in modern life

Investigative skills help professionals collect relevant data and derive conclusions from the information they gather. These are important traits for professionals to possess in a variety of fields and may be important to highlight on resumes or cover letters. Developing investigative skills can help you advance in your career and emphasize your ability to both gather and analyze information to employers.

In this article, we define investigative skills and list some of these skills, and we provide tips for how to improve investigative skills.
What are investigative skills?
Investigative skills are the abilities individuals use to gather data and generate conclusions to reveal important facts. These skills also help professionals examine a topic closely and discover items of importance that may not have been clearly apparent to those who lack this skill. Some professionals who often use investigative skills include:

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  Private investigators
  
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  Forensic scientists
  
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  Anthropologists
  
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  Art historians
  
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  Investigative journalists
  
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  Police officers
  
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  Legal investigators
  
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  Detectives
  

Related: How To Become a Private Detective
12 investigative skills that are helpful for professionals to develop
Here's a list of 12 investigative skills that can help professionals perform their tasks effectively:
1. Curiosity
Having curiosity, which involves asking questions to discover the reasons why a particular event occurred, is a valuable skill when conducting investigations. This skill entails the desire to learn more about a subject matter and can help a professional persist in an investigation when its pacing slows.
2. Problem-solving
These skills help investigators compile pieces of information they gather. A majority of investigation work involves solving a case or attempting to understand an occurrence further, so it's important for these professionals to determine ways to connect series of events. Effective investigators evaluate their data to gather conclusions that guide them on how to best progress forward with a situation.