Data Analyst Resume: A Complete Guide

 Posted bySUDESH ANAND

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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.

AnalytixLabs is the premier Data Analytics Institute that specializes in training

individuals as well as corporates to gain industry-relevant knowledge of Data
Science and its related aspects. It is led by a faculty of McKinsey, IIT, IIM, and
FMS alumni who have a great level of practical expertise. Being in the
education sector for a long enough time and also having a wide client base,
AnalytixLabs helps young aspirants greatly to have a career in the field of Data
Science. 

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.