If you find yourself in any of these situations, you should read on.
- You have got the skill, experience, and the right profile for that lucrative BA job, but unsure why you don't hear back from the recruiters.
- Got the right degree/ education and waiting for that first break in the dream BA career?
- Got trained, skilled but waiting for the next best BA opportunity without much success?
Put an end to all your frustration and lost hope; well, the reason and the culprit could be your resume and not your skills or education.
Your resume is your front face or the outfit of your professional profile. Hence it fetches or attracts eyeballs based on its appearance and how it is presented.
Here are the 5 top tips to polish your resume to bag the best business analyst jobs:
- Tailor your resume for the job
- Use your experience as pillars of the career with numbers
- Sell yourself as a beautifully packaged product
- Showcase the tools and applications of demand
- Make the resume Short, Sweet, and error-free
Tailor your resume for the job
As we said before, the resume is the outfit of the professional profile, going in the same line, one dresses up for the occasion.
One size fit all doesn't work when it comes to the right tools for the smart work of job search.
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Steps to follow to tailor the resume for the job effectively:
- Make sure that it's in alignment with your area of work and expectations
- Please go through the job description in detail and the role, its expectations
- Gather information on skills expected – Technical, Behavioral, leadership, tools knowledge, domain experience.
- Tailor your resume based on the skills expected
- Highlight the tools applications in your resume as per the job description
- Align your resume to the job description
- Use appropriate keywords in the resume as used in the job description to catch the recruiter's attention as well to get past the ATS (Applicant Tracking System)
Use your experience as pillars of the career with numbers
- Use the analysis done in the above section and grab more information on the assignments/projects completed in line with the job expectation
- Use the experience to showcase your working knowledge in the expected area
- Showcase your role in the following format, suggested having a quantitative approach (using data/number)
- Need/Problem/goal/vision -
- Solution/Action
- Results
- Achievements
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e.g., As part of the tools implementation team, we could enhance the process efficiency from 33% to a whopping 75% resulting in a saving of $7.5m per year.
- Give reference to recommendations/awards, citations, articles in this regard
Sell yourself as a beautiful packaged product
When your profile is a good fit for the role in consideration, showing skills with sufficient and concrete numbers is a great idea to sell yourself.
There are instances where the product/domain the job is asking for is relatively new, or the market is niche; hence getting there faster would give you an early mover advantage. So, there are high chances of you not having those skills, and what do you do in this case?
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Here is the suggested approach:
1. Tailor your resume to related skills
2. Present your adaptability and learning ability to upgrade to a new skill
3. Substantiate by showcasing how you have been able to pick up new skills in the past with your adaptability and learning ability.
Business analysts are at an advantage since they typically get to work in many domains, many applications/products/tools in their work history.
Showcase the tools and applications of demand
While most of the job applicants would like to showcase them as the best fit for the job and the best potential hire, the one that would stand out or win the job is the one who knows precisely what to put, how to put and in how much detail to put in the resume.
The one who knows how to use the tool and applications thoroughly, leveraged it to derive the best results, and learns to put it across well stands out among the crowd.
Validate your statement with experience from the past to how you achieved it and what kind of tools or applications was instrumental in this achievement.
Ensure to add all those tools you have used in your projects to achieve your results.
e.g., when you mention - Proficient in requirements elicitation, visual modeling, prototyping, it's essential to mention all those tools involved like MS Visio, Jira, Confluence, Balsamiq instead of staying silent on them.
e.g., Automation of workflow on email nurturing using Active Campaign and Hub spot.
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Please note not to miss mentioning the category of the applications or tools you have been using, like mentioning that confluence is a web collaboration tool to capture project requirements, manage changes and assign tasks to users etc.
This helps the recruiter to shortlist your resume or the ATS if the tool name is unfamiliar to them.
Keep your resume Short, Sweet and error free
Few ground rules for your resume:
- Keep it short, within two pages
- Describe the more recent roles in detail but keep it short for those more than five years old; mention 1- 2lines about roles that are a decade old.
- Keep it updated – latest info – email (that you check frequently), Phone number, skype id, or LinkedIn profile.
- Run a spelling and grammar checker on the resume once it's ready
Pay attention to the correct spelling of the companies you worked for and the tools you worked on since they may not be part of dictionary words always.
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Following the above tips doesn't guarantee you the dream job but definitely improves your chances of success much higher.
Check out some more cool tips and sample business analyst resume in the link below –
https://www.adaptiveus.com/blog/business-analyst-resume
Author: Ananya (Ann) Pani, Co-Founder, Adaptive US
Ananya's mission is to help business analysts to build successful professional careers. She has touched the lives of 5000+ Business Analysis professionals in their skill development journey and helped them unleash their true potential and leverage it to achieve their dream career.
She co-founded Adaptive US, a Business analysis skill development organization working with professionals from 80+ countries in skyrocketing their BA career and staying ahead of the game.
She is a strong supporter of encouraging women workforce in technology and bringing women back to work after long career breaks. 70% of Adaptive's workforce is working moms who have been brought back to work after a career break due to family and other priorities.
She is enthusiastic about fitness, a regular runner, and takes keen interest in imparting value based education to children, building a greener and healthier world.
Please write to Ann if your thoughts are in sync with hers or if they spark a thought in you.