Interview: Chris Ferguson with USAA

By: Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart

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Someone recently asked me what attributes I thought a competitive intelligence professional should have. I told them that there are three. The first is the need to be a relationship kind of a person. You can't be the type to just sit down and read stuff and answer questions when asked. That may have been the way things worked at one point, but you can't be successful in competitive intelligence with that approach.

The second attribute is intellectual curiosity. This field really demands that practitioners have a deep desire to understand the whys of whatever question they are faced with. Those who are successful are not simply order takers who answer the questions brought to them. They go a few steps further to explain what the answers mean and why they are the right answers.

The third attribute is actual experience doing CI. When I recruit, I want to see someone who was doing CI long before CI was their job. Time and time again I've seen people who did competitive intelligence types of activities and even went so far as to read up on competitive intelligence to gain that insight. These are the people who are going to shine.