Data Analyst CV Example

Data analysts belong to the family of data management roles, which also includes data engineers and data scientists. While data engineers prepare data for analysis and data scientists create algorithms and models to solve problems, data analysts focus on using big data to find trends and make predictions.

Since 2018, UK job postings for data analysts have risen by 231%. As a result, it’s a good time to apply for and land a data analyst job.

Data analysts are in such high demand because they have highly transferable skills. Sectors that need data analysts include:

• business intelligence
• finance
• legal
• marketing
• sales
• economics
• trading
• higher education

No matter your field, follow our four tips to write an outstanding data analyst CV:

1. Research the data analyst job

Customise your data analyst CV by first researching your target role. Tailoring your CV to a specific job shows recruiters that you fit their needs and that you care enough about working at their company to put in the effort.

The type of company you’re applying to can tell you the:

• kind of data you’ll be analysing
• hard skills you’ll need
• end goals of your analysis (e.g., help understand what marketing approaches work best)
• subject matter expertise that’s recommended (but usually not required)

Once you have this information, use it to customise the following sections of your data analyst CV:

• personal statement
• work experience
• skills

In addition to discussing relevant work experience and skills, use exact phrasing — or keywords — from the job posting to quickly show busy recruiters you match their requirements.

2. Write a compelling personal statement

Your data analyst CV’s personal statement should summarise who you are as a worker and what you bring to the company. Additionally, personal statements are especially important for convincing employers to consider your application if you have limited work experience or recently changed careers.

In your personal statement, include:

• unique CV adjectives to describe yourself
• your most job-relevant skills and experience
• the name of the target company

3. Be specific throughout your data analyst CV

Be as detailed as possible on your data analyst CV, especially in your skills and work experience sections, by both clarifying vague phrases and adding numbers.

Work experience section

Quantify your work experience to show recruiters what you’ve accomplished. As a data analyst, you can incorporate numbers like the ones below into your experience bullets:

• Data dimensions
• Outcome of your data analysis (e.g., improved product sales by 24% over the previous year)
• Time saved by implementing a new or different workflow
• Number of reports generated within a certain time period
• Number of projects managed at one time

Another way to provide detail about your work experience is to discuss your specific achievements. As a data analyst, your achievements might include:

• Kaggle competitions you participated in
• publications
• projects completed in school or in your free time (especially for those who lack work experience)

Skills section

While your skills section shouldn’t take up too much space, provide specifics for your skills to give employers a better sense of what you can do. For example, rather than writing ‘“data analysis and workflows’, you might say ‘performed A/B testing’ or ‘linear regression’ or ‘data cleaning to remove outliers and empty values’.

4. List top data analyst skills

Data analysis is a highly technical field. As a result, data analysts need a robust set of hard skills, or skills learned through education and formal training. Common hard skills to list on your data analyst CV include:

Once data analysts have examined data, they need to communicate what they’ve found to others. Doing so requires key soft skills, or personality traits that influence how people interact with others and approach work. Important soft skills for data analysts include: