Important Professional Tools – More than Knowing How to use SPSS or SAS (see www.SueMentors.blogspot.com)
A young professional just starting out after finishing her MPH asked me a very interesting question. She said she took a lot of research courses during her MPH program. But she felt pretty unprepared in school for the key tools that are needed in the workplace. She was now interning and was applying her research skills in an interesting intern position. But she also realized that the work involved much more than just applying research skills. She asked, “What kinds of tools are important to have?” Here are the things I expect and hope your professionals to have these days – or to be ready to learn as soon as they come to work: Budgeting: you should be able to construct a basic budget in Excel, using straightforward formulas (add, subtract, multiply, divide a column of numbers). This will help you get more facile with a key aspect of project planning and implementation – matching resources to activities. Charting and Figures: you should be able to use Excel to creat