Data Analyst Resume: A Complete Guide

Companies are searching desperately for new talented data analysts. If you’re currently considering a career as a data analyst and want to land an interview, you need a great data analyst resume. But what skills do you need to list on your data analyst resume? What should you prioritize, and what’s just “good to have”?

What Is a Good Resume?

The data analyst resume is a one-page draft that summarizes the education, knowledge, key analytical abilities, and expertise of a data analyst. Data experts are in high demand right now, but you must first persuade hiring managers of your qualifications by employing a data analyst resume. A resume is a vital document that describes your credentials and job experience in an orderly manner. A professional resume will demonstrate to potential employers that you are the ideal candidate for the specific post. 

But as a data scientist, you also know that your resume is going to go through an interpreted data set before ever being seen by a human. Your soft skills won’t matter until you can get through big data analysis and data analytics yourself; a computer reads all resumes before they’re handed to a hiring agent.

If you follow this guide, you can boost your resume by rapidly and effectively presenting the expertise and education that qualifies you for data analyst employment. Dig deeper into what your skillset means for an employer and what a modern professional resume needs.

Should You Customize Your Resume for Each Job Listing?

In most cases, recruiters are not professionals in technical skills. Your resume will need to highlight both your general expertise and education, as well as the required specialized skills for the data analyst job, in order to pass beyond the standard human resources screening process. Lean heavily on the data analyst job description for insight into what the company wants. The skills section in the job description often includes a list of the skills that you will want to reference. 

While you may want to start with a standard resume, it’s a good strategy to create personalized changes for each job application. Adding little details here and there in line with the job description will undoubtedly impress the hiring staff, even if it means extra effort up front. 

This doesn’t imply you have to rewrite and revise your resume every time you apply for a position! However, at the very least, if essential keywords and skills are stated in the job offer, make sure the profile you’re submitting showcases your abilities in those domains and includes those keywords. You could also check the company’s website to understand their desirable writing tone and alter the style and aesthetics of your resume, but this is only necessary if you’re going after a high-value position.  

As an entry-level data analyst, you need a few bullet points about your relevancy as a candidate. As a senior data analyst, you should dig deeper to impress.

Using Resume Templates to Build Your Resume

Even though the resume contains information such as previous organizations, years of experience, talents, contact information, and so on, you don’t need to build your resume from scratch. There are resume templates and resume builders that can be completely customized to your experience. Save time by using free resume templates from online marketplaces like Creddle, EnhanCV, as well as the Google Doc resume template to provide you with starting point.

Remember that the kind of resume template you select is extremely vital. Go for a few graphics and unique coloring if you’re applying to organizations with a more conventional vibe (think Google, Microsoft, and Amazon). Go for something a little more modern and unconventional if you’re going for a start-up.

A column-style resume is typically preferable for those who want to fit a lot of data on a few sheets, such as job-seekers with a few years of experience. A block-style portfolio with everything in a single column can stretch information if you have little experience. Keep things basic. A recruiter may only have 30 seconds to study this paper and make a judgment.

Don’t worry too much about standing out. Remember that your resume has to be machine-readable. Your hiring manager will be mostly concerned about your skills, not the design. In data science, a data analyst resume is heavy on technical skills, which means the resume needs to be strongly written and simple — not exceptionally beautiful.

Personal Contact Details

Take a moment to confirm your personal information once you’ve chosen a resume template or decided to make one from scratch. The top of the page should always include your name as a headline and contact details.

The contact details may be at the bottom of the page in certain layouts. If that’s the case, you’ll need to reorder the items manually. If a recruiter from the hiring team contacts you employing your resume, you don’t want them to have to go through your whole resume to locate what they’re looking for. Things to keep in mind when it comes to your contact details and what to include in a resume as a data science professional include:

1. Don’t write in your complete physical address.
2. Always provide a valid contact number.
3. Present a professional-looking email address.
4. Add LinkedIn profile address.
5. Enter GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Kaggle project links for uncovering skill sets.

What if you’re trying to get a job in a city that you’re not in? Remote jobs are popular, but if you’re trying to physically remove to a job, consider getting a PO box in that region. Most people don’t want to hire someone who hasn’t already moved or may fear that you’re choosing to work from home even if the position is in-office.

Data Analytics Research and Publications

Your Research and Publications section should appear immediately after your name and personal contact details. It is important to emphasize in any analyst resume, particularly in the technology field, what you have developed.

This section comprises data analysis initiatives, ML studies, data science blogs, big data innovations, and even published research publications or coding tutorials in the realm of a data analyst job description. Recruiters would like to monitor what you can accomplish with the abilities you’ve mentioned. This is the part where you may flaunt your skills.

Demonstrate Skills

If you’re promoting collaborative projects, be as descriptive as possible when describing the soft skills, techniques, and tools you employed, how you built the product, and what uniqueness was embedded as a contribution. Indicate the programming language you used, as well as any libraries you utilized. 

Don’t worry if you feel like you’re repeating yourself regarding the talents you want to include in your skills area. Indeed, the more critical tools, technologies, and talents you can include in your resume, the better the results will be. When the recruiting team reads resumes, they often perform simple keyword hunting; therefore, they should be relevant to the abilities displayed in as many places as possible.

Crystal Clear Communication

Data analyst recruiters are hunting for someone who can communicate effectively and see the broad perspective, in addition to having the technical abilities they desire. They’re performing skill selection by targeting domain experts who can successfully use data to create ideas. Highlighting collaborative initiatives (as a team member) and presenting your successes relating to business metrics (that indicates the larger business challenges you’re working to address) are two ways to exhibit these attributes.

Another crucial technique to exhibit communication abilities on your resume is via your writing. Ensure the content is free of mistakes and that everything is written properly and simply. It’s always a smart option to have a buddy who is an editor go over your resume. Still, programs like Hemingway may also assist you in cleaning up and interpreting your material.

Domain Experience

A few factors influence how far back you can go about the expertise. You usually don’t want to go back more than five years. Yet, if you have significant professional experience that dates back farther than that, you should also mention it. Keep in mind that, although you don’t have to provide everything about your experience, you should make sure that anything you do include seems to be seamless. For hiring staff, gaps in your job experience section of more than six months are a huge red signal. Obscure these by putting in years rather than months.

Each item in this area should contain your position, the firm you worked for, the length of time you served on the board, and your achievements in that capacity. Maintain consistency in your formatting throughout your resume, but especially in this segment: when you use filled-in bullet points for one job description, ensure to utilize the same identical bullet points for all of your other work descriptions.

Educational Background

Are you primarily a data analyst or a data scientist? Although having a degree is an advantageous attribute in job selection. Many resume templates place academics first, but if you have relevant job experience and have performed industry-level research to highlight, you’ll want to put them first and schooling afterward.

Some jobs just demand a bachelor’s degree in any discipline, so be sure you’re applying for these jobs. However, if too much time has passed since you earned your degree, like more than 10 years, you may choose to add a date. In general, with specific information (such as dates), less is often better. You don’t want someone to discount you just because they think that you’re “older” than others based on your degree year (while this is illegal, biases can still remain).

Lastly, here is where you should add any applicable “micro-degrees,” virtual learning certificates, and other specialized training. This is an excellent spot to display your data science credentials. Many data scientists have certifications and bootcamps rather than conventional college experience; this is normal and should be emphasized.

Extras

If you’ve accomplished all of the above and yet have room to fill in the resume, another method to indicate that you’re ongoing to learn or develop in your preferred industry is adding an “Extras” section. This part may be called Training, Awards, Achievements, or anything else that feels suitable as a data analyst professional.

Tips for Entry Level Data Analyst Resume

One of the most effective methods is to stand out from the crowd in this area. Dealing with videos, postings, forums, and consumer reviews are examples of this. Dealing with unstructured data demonstrates that you can conduct innovative work with complex datasets rather than merely crunching statistics in clean datasets.

You should also make sure to include any quantifiable outcomes your efforts have produced wherever feasible. Contribute to Kaggle competitions and make a high-level profile over there. Moreover, GitHub is a great source of demonstration. 

Whenever you build a model or deal with an innovative dataset, just commit all the changes in your Profile. Twitter, Facebook, and Google News are the best sources to get new updates regarding technology; always use these platforms as a source of information. Try to make yourself prepare by covering new data analytics courses. Prepare yourself for Data Analyst Interview Questions so that you remain familiar with the whole approach conducted by hiring managers and data specialists in interviews.