Data Analyst Resume: A Complete Guide

Preface

Entering the field of Data Analytics can be challenging and a resume plays an important part in securing a job related to it. Writing your own resume can be a challenging task as identifying what makes a resume stand out can be difficult. The readers of this article can expect to have a decent level of understanding of all the important aspects one must keep in mind when creating a data analyst resume- how to write, the expectations of employers, skill set required among other things. 

Table of Contents

1. A Brief about Data Analyst Resume
2. How to Create Your Data Analyst Resume
3. Employer’s Expectation on Resume for Data Analyst
4. Must Have Skills for Data Analyst Resume
5. FAQ’s- Frequently Asked Question
6. Conclusion

1. A Brief about Data Analyst Resume

In recent times data has been found to be extremely useful for all the businesses. However, while this data can provide extremely precious insights that can hugely benefit a company, there is a specific skill that is required to gain useful information out of this data. This has led to a huge demand for Data analyst who is responsible for collecting, analyzing, finding patterns and insights in this data that can solve business problems and identify potentially profitable avenues. The increasing demand for data analysts has led a lot of freshers and working professionals to apply for this high paying job. The fallout of this is that new applicants find it highly difficult to get a shot at the interview due to extreme competition. The first step towards securing an interview is to get yourself shortlisted. This is where the role of Data Analyst resume becomes important as one needs to know how to get their resume stand out and get them shortlisted for the job.

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2. How to Create Your Data Analyst Resume

A typical and good data analyst resume follows a particular pattern which makes it easier for HR to quickly identify your profile as something worth considering. While creating a resume, you must fill in the shoes of HR and understand from their point of view how difficult their job is. An HR has to go through a ton of resumes, this makes it difficult for them to pay attention to resumes that are cluttered, have an awkward format, are not concise and has unnecessary information. Data analyst resume for freshers is particularly challenging as HR have very little information on whether to consider you or not. In addition to this, even if your profile is selected, the head of departments or manager or the concerned technical person conducting your interview do take a look at your resume before starting a conversation with you. A clear resume can make them know about your knowledge base. This makes it easier for them to conduct the interview and be on point and ask questions related to your profile. This in turn helps you as the chances of being asked questions out of the blue become relatively less. Now, let’s have a look at the structure that should be followed when creating a data analyst resume.

1. Name and Contact Information

The first thing in a resume for a data analyst or for that matter any resume is typically the name of the candidate and their contact information, this includes the contact number email id and address. In addition to this hyperlinks or URL to your GitHub repository, blog post and LinkedIn is a plus. This information should be at the beginning with the name being in a bigger and bolder font while the contact information should be immediately after the name in a relatively small font.

2. Summary

Ideally you should summarise your resume in 3-4 lines. This should explain your related skill set, experience in the field, technologies you are familiar with and other accomplishments that can help the reviewer of your profile to quickly consider you for the role.

3. Education/Academic Background

The next is to provide your academic background. This should be in chronological order. This includes the information regarding your school, year of completion, board of certification from 10th grade to 12th and eventually college. All this information should be accompanied by the percentage or GPA or similar information so that your academic performance can be easily evaluated.

Note – If you are yet to graduate then provide your expected graduation date. Also, if you do not have a lot of work experience and are fresh out of college then it is better to have this section somewhere above the work experience section.

4. Data Analyst related skills

This is one of the most important section especially for data analyst resume for entry level positions. Here you need to provide all the skills that concern an employer looking for a data analyst. More on this is discussed ahead in the article.

5. Work Experience

This is again another highly important section of the resume. Here you need to provide your experience. Ideally, it is better if the experience is related to the field of a data analyst. This is another section that is the focal point of the employers. Typically, you should provide the name of the organisation you were working with, the duration of employment, designation and the nature of the job. Additionally, you can describe what exactly you did there or the project that you undertook and the major achievement in 2-3 lines.

6.  Hobbies and Other Experience

It is always a good idea to not come up as a 1-dimensional being. To give a better impression, you should describe your other skills. These can be soft skills or other skills and more than often can help in judging your candidacy for the job. For example, having experience in school debates can point out towards you having good research and communication skills.

3. Employer’s Expectation on Resume for Data Analyst

As mentioned above, there are certain aspects of your resume that employers pay more attention to and if you ace these aspects then the chances of your profile being selected increase by a lot. Among them is the experience, achievements, skills, dealing of ATS etc.

1. Experience

The employer will be interested in knowing if you have ever worked in a job position where your responsibility was similar to that of a data analyst. If you have worked as a data analyst in a previous organization then you must provide details related to it. This can include the description of your project, the type of data you dealt with, tools used among other significant aspects. If not directly related then experience which is indirect such as a junior analyst or business analyst can also be useful. Also, if your previous experience is completely unrelated then you should try to highlight aspects of your previous job that related to the nature of the job of a data analyst. This can include dealing with structured data, creating reports, graphs, finding patterns etc. A data analyst resume for freshers where there is no previous past experience, mentions of internships or independent projects should be there. They should be related to the role of a Data Analyst. 

2. Challenges and Achievements

When explaining your experience or past projects, a good idea is to make the employer familiar with the difficult situations that you faced and how you used your skillset to overcome them. An employer needs to know what problems you have solved in your past work experience. Not only you should explain the challenges you faced to provide information on how you solved it and how it eventually benefited the organisation. This forms your achievement, however, make sure that your achievement is not generic but are quantifiable. Such as how much money you saved or how much % of the profit you increased for the organization. These things immediately increase the interest of the employer in you as this makes your profile stand out from others. Also, this can be a talking point in your interview that can move the interview away from being a generic one and more on something that you will be more in control of.

3. Skillset

As mentioned in the above section, the skill set is something you should mention in the resume and most importantly, they should be related to the field of the data analyst. This is of even more importance if the data analyst resume is for entry level positions. We will delve into the exact nitty-gritty of this aspect in detail in the next section but on an overall level, you should provide details of the tools, business acumen, reporting skills, mathematical and statistical skills among other skills.

4. ATS

Given the huge demand of data analysts and HR and employers receiving resumes in large quantities, the chances of your profile being inspected in detail are relatively slim. Nowadays HR rarely read through the complete resume and take the help of software that goes through your resume and identify if the resume is relevant to the job profile or not. Such software helps the employers in organizing, ranking and rating the resumes. This software is known as Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and it is important to make sure that your resume is considered by this software. To beat the algorithms used by such ATS software you must focus on keywords that the software is looking for and make sure you have them in your resume. This can include keywords that are comprised of Data Analytics related tools, skill sets, certificate names, other technologies etc. A number of these keywords can be placed in the Summary section of your resume.

5. Formatting

Lastly, you can use creative formatting schemes as long as they are simple and easy to read. This can include using a straightforward formatting scheme where you provide headings in bold or underline format and use simple bullet points. Make sure that you use a common font such as Calibri, New Times Roman or something similar to it. If you want to be more creative then you can use templates that use graphics to demonstrate your skillset by rating them, explaining your academic and experience timeline etc. This can leave a good impression as it indicates that you have put hard work into creating your resume.

4. Must Have Skills for Data Analyst Resume

Data analyst skills in a resume needs to be laid down and explained as this can make you a potential candidate for a job as a data analyst is the single most important thing in your resume. There are a number of skills that you can possess that relate to the role of the data analyst. Some of these skills and their descriptions are laid below-

1. Quantitative Methods

Resume for data analyst must mention knowledge of dealing with numerical data. This can include techniques to deal with questionnaires, surveys, polls, observations etc.

2. Data Warehousing

Dealing with relational databases. Having the knowledge of extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) solutions. Also, the tools used such as Microsoft SQL etc.

3. Data Mining

Extracting data to identify a pattern in them. The patterns can include anomalies, correlations and other patterns that can help in understanding what is going on in the organisation and even knowing what is going to happen to the organization’s business in the near future.

4. Business Intelligence

Data Mining is of no use if the knowledge cannot be transferred into a business solution. A Data Analyst needs to have a business acumen to use the knowledge gained from data mining and use to find avenues to increase profit, cut cost, minimize risk etc.

5. Data Structures

Knowing about the different types of data. This can include the various formats where data can exist. Broadly data can be structured, semi-structured and unstructured.

6. Statistics and Regression

Among the most common skillset data analyst possess is statistics that can help them in identifying relations in the data. Having knowledge of regression can help in identifying future events.

7. Reporting and Visualization

The analysis of a Data Analyst needs to be presented to the leadership in an easily digestible manner that should be devoid of any major jargon. Thus, having good reporting, visualization and presentations skills are important. Here the tools such as PowerBI or Tableau along with basic skills in creating PowerPoint presentations are required. 

8. Communication Skills

Along with providing reports to the leadership, more than often a data analyst needs to verbally communicate their approach, findings and recommendations. The leadership needs to have an in-depth insight into the methodology undertaken by the analyst. This is where communication skills come in handy.

9. Statistical Computing and Programming Languages

Data analysts are at an advantage if along with statistical and mathematical knowledge they know few important programming languages. This includes typical statistical computing languages such as SAS, SPSS and R. However, knowing a conventional programming language such as python can also be highly beneficial.

10. Teamwork Skills

Data Analyst needs to work in a team and having good teamwork skills is important. If you have any previous experience in working in a team then this should be mentioned.

11. Data Models

Data Models take historical data and predict the way forward. They use a regression algorithm but other algorithms that relate to the field of Machine Learning can also be used. Thus, different model-building techniques should be provided if that skill set is available.

12. Data Process Automation

One of the monotonous aspects of the job includes the extraction and preparation of dataset based on which reports are to be created. This data and these reports are often generated on a weekly basis and can be automated.

5. FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How does a data analyst resume stand out?

A Data Analyst resume can stand out by concentrating on 3 aspects- Clear format, Skill sets that are related to the profile of data analyst and lastly work experience that can demonstrate the implementation of their skillset.

Q2. What skills do you need to be a data analyst?

One should create a data analyst resume sample with at least 10 skills related to Data Analytics. While a number of skills are required to be considered for a data analyst role, there are certain obvious ones. The data analyst skills in a resume includes skills that allow you to deal with data such as knowledge of Data Structures, Types of Data sets, Data Warehousing, Database Development etc. Quantitative skills are required such as Statistics, Regression analysis, Data models. Tools such as SAS, R, Python are also required that can help in Statistical Computing, Data Mining, Data Segmentation, Pattern Identification, Data Audit etc. Reporting and Business Acumen skills are required to present your insights. Lastly, communication skills are also important to convey your insights to the leadership or clients. 

Q3. Engagement: Ask readers to post their queries & opinions in the comments below. So that we can help them out.

This article is aimed at providing the reader with an understanding of how a good Data Analyst resume can be written. If you have any opinions or queries related to this article, then feel free to post and help us in getting more insights.

6. Conclusion

Jobs for Data Analysts are growing in double digits and to secure a job, having a good resume is of paramount importance. As the demand for Data Analysts increases, so does the competition. To get yourself in the focus of potential employers, one needs to craft a nice resume that can stand your profile out. A good resume includes a clear format, information related to data analyst based skills and experience which can invoke the interest of employers in you. Going forward the readers should start with writing their own data analyst resume sample based on the insights gained from this article.