Today our presenters are Tess Escoto from the Employment Development Department.

Tess Escoto began her career with the Employment Development Department

after working in Human Resources in the private sector.

Tess's professional career began in training, as she developed a tutoring center for adults in Los Angeles, California.

This progressed her involvement and training and developing curriculum at every company she has worked.

Today she serves as a training officer for EDD University.

An experienced motivational speaker and singer, she has spoken and performed both regionally and nationally.

Tess has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature,

with a minor in Human Resources from the California State University Los Angeles.

Our second presenter today is Lana Fletcher from the California State Secretary of State.

Lana Fletcher's profession career spans 20 years in project and executive management,

in both the private and public sector.

Her expertise covers a wide variety of areas, including the banking industry and interior design.

Lana believes in exceptional customer service as the basis for a successful professional career.

Her journey with the State of California began as a supervising technician.

She now holds the position of training officer with the secretary of state training teams,

and bringing a breadth of knowledge from her diverse professional background.

With that, I'd like to turn it over

and begin today's webinar by turning it over to Miss Lana Fletcher.

LANA FLETCHER: Thank you very much, April.

Good morning.

Today's class is Fundamental Analytical Skills.

Thank you for inviting us here today.

My name is Lana Fletcher, and my co-presenter today will be Tess Escoto-Arcio,

and we are looking forward to a productive class.

We will have April Neilson reading our polls.

Before we get started, please be sure to download the toolkit,

as I will be referring to this throughout the presentation.

Before we get started we'd like to do a quick poll for the audience.

April.

>> APRIL NEILSON: Thanks, Lana.

Okay, before we get started, we want to really gauge our audience

and get a little information about all of you attending today's webinar.

We have 818 people joining us today from across the state, so I think that's absolutely fabulous.

So let's go ahead and find out who do we have today.

So I've just opened up poll number one, so let's see how it rolls out here.

Oh, the alternate key strokes for answering the poll,

press control tab repeatedly just until the speaker icon is not selected anymore.

Then use the tab key to select the answer.

Okay, great.

It looks like we're getting a lot of great responses.

We have 46% of you are stating that you are currently an analyst;

25% are not an analyst but are on the list and looking to become an analyst;

4% are currently the supervisor of an analyst; and 23 are none of the above.

So we have a pretty mixed audience here, Lana, so back to you.

>> LANA FLETCHER: Thank you very much, April.

Okay, we're going to wait a moment so we can all get on the same slide.

There we go, next slide, please.

There we go.

Our purpose today is to learn more about the role of the analyst within state service.

We're going to go ahead and discuss the critical competencies of successful analysts.

I'll review critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and we'll provide tools

and resources to set an analyst on a path for success.

Let's go ahead and take another poll.

I'll turn over to you, April.

>> APRIL NEILSON: Okay, great.

Thanks, Lana.

So what we want to find out from our audience today is which objective is the most important to you today.

If you are using a keyboard instead of a mouse,

press control tab repeatedly just until the speaker icon is not selected anymore,

then use the tab key to select the answer.

Great, we're getting a lot of feedback.

Thank you for all of you who have answered the poll.

It looks pretty split across the board, with maybe reviewing the core critical thinking

and problem-solving skills being the number one right now for our audience.

Lana, back to you.

>> LANA FLETCHER: Thank you, April.

All right, so we will be reviewing those core critical thinking and problem-solving skills, but before we do that,

let's just briefly go over the toolkit that you have downloaded so that everyone is familiar with the pages that we'll

be discussing throughout.

We do have an action plan; that will be your first one.

The next page is a communications strategy,

how you will actually be able to format items so that you are communicating effectively.

Then we have a time analysis for you.

We've also included setting direction and pace, and then a problem-solving matrix.

So we just wanted to make sure that you were familiar with these because we will be pulling these up as we speak.

Now I'm going to turn it over to my partner, Tess, and she will be talking to you about the roles of an analyst.

>> TESS ESCOTO: Good morning everyone.

You know, I'm an analyst as well for the State of California.

And, you know, I've always been intrigued by new subjects.

I've always been excited by the prospects of training.

And if that's you, then you're in the right place this morning to learn a little bit about your role as an analyst.

Working as an analyst, it's a great classification to gain a breadth of knowledge of state government.

There are so many areas that an analyst can work in, many opportunities to learn new things.

I remember when I started out in EDD someone was kind enough to give me a career ladder,

a little handbook that we hand out.

And that was where I really understood that there are many type of analysts in state service.

You know, I identified my strengths.

I wanted to search for that position that I could really utilize those, and that's why we're here this morning.

According to the CalHR website,

an analyst helps support the decisions made by the state government by providing clear, thorough,

and objective information.

You know, preparing to become an analyst, it means that you continuously want to learn new subjects.

You want to continually demonstrate your willingness to take on progressively more complicated

and even complex problems, because training doesn't just occur in the classroom.

Wouldn't you agree?

It can include cross training.

It includes on-the-job training.

It includes those assignments that, you know, maybe some people would hesitate to take, and you want to take them.

It includes rotation training, staff meetings, even online training, of course, like you're doing this morning,

workshops, seminar, conferences, self-directed study, and reviewing written guidelines.

So I would encourage you this morning to stay motivated if you are an analyst.

And if you are thinking of taking on that role, stay motivated as well.

You may face barriers on your path to becoming an analyst, and the everyday demands of the job, yeah,

they can take away some energy and they take away time as well, if you let them.

You may not get rewarded immediately for taking time to work on your development plan.

But remember that your long-term success depends on your professional development,

and so does your value to the organization, so don't let barriers prevent you from achieving your goals.

Remember, and this is so true, no one else will take as strong an interest in your development as you.

So as we have looked at these roles that you see on screen, look at those, see what interests you, and we'll continue.

Analysts do perform a variety of functions, and they hold many titles.

You can see some examples of analytical work here.

You know, you're a troubleshooter.

You can analyze data from a project or experiment.

All of these items that you see bulleted here involve dealing with problems or opportunities, even staff shortages.

You may be asked to take a project, where due to a change in legislation,

maybe you need to review the current procedures and possibly write new ones.

Maybe you have to justify more staffing, and then train the staff on that new procedure.

Or you may have to facilitate meetings throughout the process.

Let's go over, briefly, some of the job duties under the specific analytical classifications.

Some of you may be an associate budget analyst or maybe you've heard.

It's just one of the three examples of analysts that I want to review today.

Like I already mentioned, there are many different types analyst positions in state service,

and it's up to you to find the position that most interests you.

So you can see that the associate budget analyst covers everything that has to do with the budget.

If you want, take a pen and jot down words or phrases as I go through these next slides that interest you.

You can use this time right now to determine your strengths and your areas of interest.

So take a second or two and look at this, and we'll go on to the next slide.

As the title suggests, the associated budget analyst covers a gamut of budgetary assignments,

from information gathering to funding recommendations, and more analyzing, reviewing estimates, and even contracts.

So let's continue.

Again, maybe as an analyst, an associate personnel analyst we're looking at here,

maybe you're asked to consider things that range from technical questions to hypothetical questions,

even ethical questions, case studies.

You're looking at gathering data, you're looking at presenting data, even pay.

You're looking at class specifications.

So, again, make note of items here that interest you as we continue to look at the associate personnel analyst.

We are looking at formal business writing, you know, including, yes, knowledge of grammar

and procedures that make this type of position detailed, as with other analyst positions as well.

Formal memorandums, reports, all of these things that beyond that demands a little bit more than spell check,

which I know that we all have used and fail sometimes at using that.

But it does demand a little bit more detail to grammar and to business writing than other positions do.

So let's continue.

The third one we're going to look at this morning is the legal analyst,

and this is the last type we will consider this morning as an example.

I want you to take a moment and read these bullets for any skills that you possess

or that you are interested in attaining.

And you can see, really, how these analytical skills connect to each other; investigation and assisting, coordinating,

all of those familiar words that you, too, can succeed at.

I know you can.

And finally, a legal analyst, will, as you see here, interview witnesses, conduct historical research, and as always,

assist in the administrative proceedings.

So I'm hoping you're making some notes here, because we have another poll coming up, poll number three, April.

>> APRIL NEILSON: Great.

Thanks, Tess.

There are so many different types of analyst classifications here within the state.

Thank you for sharing those three.

So this just shows you that no matter what your interests are or what skills you currently possess,

there is an analyst job that would probably be perfect for you.

So let's go ahead and open poll number three.

Which analytical area -- and let me go ahead and open this poll --

which analytical area is the most interesting to you?

So if you are using the keyboard instead of a mouse,

press control tab repeatedly just until the speaker icon is not selected anymore,

then use the tab key to select the answer.

So some of the areas here are budgets, human resource, procurement, training, finance, and budgets, or others.

There's all sorts of things, and we just barely touched upon a few of them.

So I'll give you another minute or so to go ahead and answer.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: It's unmuting like a speaker, yeah, that's to talk.

>> APRIL NEILSON: Okay, great.

It looks like there are lots of answers.

If your phone is not muted, please mute your phone.

It looks like we have some budding analysts out there from human resources, as well as other,

which I'm assuming may be investigations or law, or other things that we currently talked about.

So we've got a lot of great skills out there that people are interested in.

So I'm going to go ahead and turn it back to Lana.

Thanks, Lana.

>> LANA FLETCHER: Thank you so much, April.

It's very interesting to see how many of you, 32%, were interested in other.

Maybe there's analysts in their program areas or that sort of thing.

So what I want to talk about now is subject matter experts.

Often an analyst is seen as a subject matter expert

or they may have to partner with what we call a "SME" in order to tackle a project.

It's important to understand what a subject matter expert is and to know why this individual is important.

So a SME is an individual who has expertise in a particular topic.

An analyst may be a SME or be required to work directly with a SME.

A SME may become an analyst because of the knowledge in their area

but may not have the competencies to make them an effective analyst.

Your job as an analyst is not to know every part of the program area but to be able to identify your resources

and how to identify when you need to consult with a SME.

For an example, you may be tasked with reviewing a production area to identify any inefficiencies in the process.