How to increase commercial awareness

You will no doubt have noticed that more and more companies are advertising for commercial skills when hiring prospective new employees.

I can also tell you from personal experience, that it’s one of the key reasons that good candidates are rejected at interview stage – “they were really nice, but just lacked the commercial edge we were looking for.”

So what exactly is commercial awareness and knowledge, and is it something that you can learn?

First of all, yes, anyone can learn commercial awareness and knowledge. It does, however, take hard work and dedication to become good at it. It should be noted that commercial knowledge isn’t the same as general knowledge i.e. what is Donald Trump’s foreign policy (does he even know himself!?)