How to Write a Business Analyst Resume and Land the Job

Overview

• Learn how a good business analyst resume will get you hired
• Format your resume effectively
• Put your best foot forward with work experience
• Present your credentials and education
• Review your business analyst resume before hitting send

The main job of a business analyst is to solve an organization’s problems and help it reach its goals by assessing problems, then providing fixes for them. A business analyst can be an entry-level or senior position and work in many different industries, including insurance, banking, IT, marketing, health care, software development, and telecommunications.

Business analysts can also play many different roles, implementing a wide variety of solutions. They can be systems analysts who use technology and data analysis to solve problems and enhance performance. They can also do quality assurance, requirements gathering, documentation, client support, or user acceptance testing. This type of role may focus on specializing in optimizing sales or on Scrum or Agile project management.

Business analysts usually have a bachelor’s degree or higher and often come into their role after spending time in a related job, including:

• Data Analyst
• Functional Analyst
• Systems Analyst
• Business Requirements Analyst
• Financial Analyst

While compensation can vary quite a lot according to experience, type of work, and location, the median salary for business analysts is $87,660 per year or $42.14 per hour according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which includes the group under the category “management analysts.” As a result, some senior business analysts can make well into six figures.

The same analytical thinking and problem-solving that make a good business analyst also must be used when searching for business analyst roles, especially when it comes to your resume. By putting forward a professionally polished resume designed to catch the eye and impress recruiters, you’ll soon land a new position you love.

Overwhelmed recruiters will likely only seconds looking at a resume before moving onto the next one. So, it’s important that your business analyst resume looks professional and inviting.

Choose an interesting but professional font, keeping type size to about 12 points for normal text and 14 to 16 points for headers. You should have a clean 1-inch margin on all sides of the page. And even more important, your resume should be a concise, compelling document of no more than one page. No matter how much you think you have achieved in the field, your resume will get spiked if you hand in a ponderous document.

Another key decision is the type of resume you choose. The most common — and most effective — is the reverse-chronological resume, which starts with your most recent work experience and then works backward, clearly demonstrating your career path.

Since you should be well-organized as a business analyst, your resume should show the same. Some common categories used in the reverse-chronological resume include:

• Career summary
• Work experience
• Contact information
• Skills
• Education

They will also sometimes include:

• Awards and certification
• Languages
• Interests and hobbies

You can also find more detailed help in the Joblist resume guide.

This section doesn’t need to be complicated — in fact, it should be straightforward and accurate. If you forget the correct contact information or make a mistake, your prospective employer won’t try to find you, believing you aren’t quite as organized as you claim.

Your contact information should include:

• Full name
• Title, such as “Business Analyst”
• Phone number
• Email address

If you’re applying for a job overseas, you may also want to add your location. Make sure your chosen email address reflects well on you professionally. In some cases, you might even include social media handles, such as your LinkedIn profile.

Since many hiring managers will only glance over a resume before deciding if they will read further, you need to put your best foot forward with a short business analyst summary or resume objective at the top. This could be a short, snappy summation of your work experience, or it could be an objective statement, telling what you hope to accomplish in your career and at the company you’re applying for.

Generally speaking, you would use a business analyst summary if you have a lot of good work experience and a business analyst objective statement if your accumulated skills aren’t reflected in your work history to date.

Think of the summary as your elevator pitch, highlighting your most impressive work experiences and accomplishments.

Your different job responsibilities and years of experience are usually the meat of the resume. Work experience should typically include:

• Job Title
• Company Name
• Employment Dates
• Job Description

Under the job description, it’s not enough to tell what you did and what your job responsibilities were, often done in bullet point form. You also need to convey what accomplishments you had and what benefits you brought to your employer, quantified when possible. Some applicants divide each job description into responsibilities and achievements sections.

So, to convey the benefits of process improvement, you wouldn’t want to say: “Optimized product funnel for end users with Google Analytics.” Instead, you would write something like: “Identified a gap in the product funnel using Google Analytics and offered a recommendation that boosted new client conversion rate by 20%.”

Vague job descriptions won’t help your quest for employment, but pointed ones with clear descriptions and strong metrics for deliverables and enhancements will. Also, keep in mind that your resume should be tailored to the needs of each potential employer. Study the job ad closely and, wherever you can, tweak and bring out information that addresses what the employer seeks. If workflow improvement, gap analysis, or the ability to run ecommerce site test cases are requested, make sure these keywords also are found in your resume.

Your education section should follow the job experience section, not the other way around. At the very least, it should include your degree type and major, the university name, and years studied. But to stand out, you should also consider adding information like your GPA, coursework, and even extracurricular activities where appropriate if they are pertinent to the business analysis role.

Adding a section on “Awards and Certifications” — and even another on your interests and hobbies — is another way to show you are a well-rounded professional who excels in many ways. For example, have you taken any business analyst-related courses, webinars, or seminars that have upgraded your skillset? Have you been recognized for any achievements that shine a light on new dimensions that you can bring to a business analyst role?

While relevant business analysis skills should be included throughout the resume, it’s often broken into a standalone professional skills section. The list may include some soft skills, such as creative thinking, attention to detail, communication skills, decision-making skills, but recruiters are more interested in hard analytical skills that relate to the business processes of the posted job.

Depending on the position posted, it might include hard skills (a.k.a. technical skills) and different work methodologies like:

• Advanced knowledge of SQL and relational database management systems
• A/B testing, linear regression, and logistic regression
• SWOT analysis

After spending a lot of time building a good business analyst resume, you’ll just want to hit send and get on with your life — but don’t do it quite yet! A well-crafted document can fall flat with your potential employer if it has a typo, doesn’t address a job requirement, or has formatting that’s shifted, making your one-page document one page and one line.

If you’re selling yourself for the kind of attention you pay to detail, you better demonstrate it here. Put the resume aside and deal with it in the morning. Then, read the resume again closely for grammatical errors, typos, and factual mistakes. If you have somebody you trust with a good eye, ask them to proofread it for you, too. Don’t send your resume off until you’re sure it’s the perfect resume that has been reviewed at least once or twice.

If you’re looking to find a new business analyst position, one of the best places to start is Joblist. Come to us, answer a few questions, and you’ll get a customized list of results from our database of millions of jobs. You can save promising jobs to a personalized list and make your applications at your leisure. You can also drill down to potential positions by following the easy prompts on our Joblist quiz page.

By using Joblist, you can ensure you get the best mileage from your business analyst resume!