Critical Thinking Skills: Definition and Examples

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is arranging information in a clear and organized manner to make decisions.

Critical thinking skills are important for solving problems in your daily life, such as deciding whether to buy a house or coordinating a family reunion. And critical thinking skills are also useful when looking for a job, excelling at work, and advancing in your career.

Employers value candidates who can use their robust critical thinking skills to help:

• fix problems
• make improvements
• innovate in new areas

Additionally, because critical thinkers are naturally independent thinkers, they’re valuable employees who don’t need much training or continuous supervision.

Keep reading to learn:

• How to think critically
• Critical thinking skills examples
• How to demonstrate critical thinking skills when applying for a job
• How to improve your critical thinking skills

How to think critically

Generally, successful critical thinkers use these 5 critical thinking skills to solve problems:

1. Identifying problems
2. Gathering information
3. Analyzing and evaluating
4. Reviewing assumptions
5. Communicating

Here’s how to apply these skills in the critical thinking process:

1. Identify the problem

Identifying the problem means that you determine the root of the problem, not effects of the problem or related but less important problems. It also involves defining the specifics of the problem.

For example, if you’re thinking critically about where to go for a group dinner, the specifics would include finding a restaurant that fits everybody’s budget and can handle a large group of people.

2. Gather information

Gathering information requires collecting all relevant and reliable information. Sources of information can include:

• data
• articles and books
• discussions with others (including experts in the area and people directly involved with the problem)

3. Analyze and evaluate

Analyzing involves using the information you’ve collected to come up with reasonable solutions to your problem. You evaluate each solution based on how:

• well it solves the problem
• much it would cost (in time, money, and resources) vs. its benefits
• it would affect everyone involved

4. Review assumptions

Assumptions are needed for thinking critically about any problem. For example, to design an airplane, everyone on the team must assume that gravity is real.

As a result, your aim at this critical thinking stage should be to evaluate whether your assumptions are valid — or instead based on biased or false information.

5. Communicate your thinking to others

Once you’ve made a decision, present your solution and rationale to others. Known as the protégé effect, explaining what you’ve learned to another person checks and strengthens what you understand about a situation. Additionally, other people can verify the assumptions, logic, and usability of your solution as well as give you solutions you may not have thought of.

Below is an example of the 5 critical thinking skills in action:

Critical thinking skills examples

You probably use critical thinking more than you realize. Generally, any thinking that involves processing information from multiple sources requires critical thinking.

Some specific examples of critical thinking skills in the workplace include:

How to demonstrate critical thinking skills when applying for a job

When it comes to knowing what skills to put on your resume, remember that you need a balance of soft and hard skills. Critical thinking is one of the essential soft skills you need to succeed at work. Compared to hard skills (those learned through education and training), soft skills are harder to demonstrate to employers during the hiring process.

We provide some tips with examples for how to make your critical thinking process come through on your resume, in your cover letter, and during interviews.

On your resume

When you write a resume for a role that requires critical thinking, you should first showcase this skill in your resume’s introduction and skills section. However, the best way to convince employers of your critical thinking skills is by giving examples of how you’ve used them in your resume’s work experience section.

Employers are more likely to believe and be impressed if you show what results you’ve achieved through critical thinking. So quantify your resume by using hard numbers when providing examples of critical thinking in the workplace, like the following example does:

Synthesized clothing market trends, past year sales, delivery time, and inventory levels to accurately forecast buying, resulting in a 20% decrease in incidences of stockouts and overstocks from the previous year

Also, you should use resume action verbs related to critical thinking skills. Here are examples of action verbs that emphasize your ability to think critically:

Critical Thinking Action Verbs

In your cover letter

If critical thinking and problem solving are major parts of your target role, you may want to dedicate a full paragraph to describing an example of your critical thinking in your cover letter. To do this, you can write about the critical thinking skills you described in your resume’s bullet points, adding more details and examples.

Extra details about your critical thinking skills include:

• the significance of the problem, and why it was difficult to solve
• the specific kind of critical thinking skills you used (e.g., comparing and contrasting, calculating, cost-benefit analysis, troubleshooting)
• any issues that complicated the problem-solving process
• the results of applying your solution

See how an applicant for a civil engineering position shows their ability to think critically in their cover letter. We’ve underlined the sections in colors that match the above information to show how the applicant added extra details about their critical thinking skills:

During interviews

Employers often ask behavioral interview questions to test your critical thinking ability in interviews.

For instance, an interviewer may ask you to provide an example of a time you used critical thinking in a past work experience (like “Tell me about a time you had to make a hard decision”).

Other questions will present you with a scenario and ask you to apply critical thinking to solve it.

Answer these interview questions by going through each of the 5 steps in the critical thinking process.

Here’s an example of how a restaurant manager candidate might show superior critical thinking skills in response to the question, “If multiple front-of-house staff call out sick, what would you do to ensure everything in the restaurant runs smoothly?”

How to improve your critical thinking skills

Building critical thinking skills is so valuable because thinking critically is a transferable skill — you can apply it to any type of problem in any field. While it may seem that some people are better critical thinkers than others, remember that critical thinking is a skill that can be developed with practice.

Follow the below tips to improve your critical thinking skills:

• Read widely from multiple sources
• Ask questions (especially open-ended questions that can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”)
• Take critical thinking courses
• Learn how to use critical thinking strategies (e.g., scientific method, SWOT analysis)
• Avoid common logical fallacies and thinking traps
• Practice solving puzzles