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- 01
Asked why contract margins fell in Q3; a SQL audit of 2.1M invoices found a pricing-rule bug, and the fix recovers $340K a year
Question, method, scale and money in one line. An analytics manager can ask about any part of it in the interview.
- 02
Tested whether a $50 late-pickup fee cut dock delays; it had no effect, so ops replaced it with booked time slots and waits fell 18%
A null result that still changed a decision is the strongest kind of analyst bullet, and few resumes have one.
- 03
Compared 14 promotion types across 84 stores; leadership moved $1.1M of promo budget to the 2 that raised margin
Names who acted on the analysis and how much money moved, which is what "actionable insights" in a posting means.
- 04
Defined 9 shared KPIs with ops and finance leads, ending three conflicting versions of on-time delivery across departments
Postings ask for stakeholder work; defining shared metrics is that work, shown with its result.
What recruiters look for in a data analyst resume
- SQL named and shown in a bullet. It is in 68% of the 1,990 analyst postings we counted, and Cloudflare's called expert-level SQL mandatory
- Recommendations that changed a decision: Stripe's analyst postings ask for analyses that provide recommendations, not only reports
- One BI tool by name with what you built in it. Okta's posting names Tableau, one sales operations posting asks for Tableau or similar
- A/B tests and statistics where you used them: Okta asks for experiment analysis and design, Stripe lists strong statistics as preferred
- Modeling and version control if you did them: Okta and Cloudflare name dbt and Git
- Years in analyst roles, stated plainly. Stripe's San Francisco posting asks for a BS plus 3 years, not counting internships
- Who used your work: dashboard users, teams, decisions. Stripe asks for self-service tools that make stakeholders self-sufficient
Skills for a data analyst resume
- Query and analysis
- Structured Query Language (SQL)PythonpandasExcelGoogle SheetsStatisticsA/B testingData modeling
- BI and reporting
- TableauLookerPower BIDashboardsSelf-service reportingData storytelling
- Data stack
- dbtSnowflakeGoogle BigQueryGitApache Airflow
- Business
- Stakeholder managementKPI definitionSales funnel analysisSalesforce
Turn tool lists into decisions
Before
Analyzed billing data using SQL.
After
Asked why contract margins fell in Q3; a SQL audit of 2.1M invoices found a pricing-rule bug, and the fix recovers $340K a year
The question, the scale and the money.
Before
Created dashboards in Looker.
After
Built 14 Looker dashboards used daily by 120 ops and finance staff, replacing about 15 hours a week of spreadsheet requests
Who uses them and what they replaced.
Before
Performed promotion analysis for retail stores.
After
Compared 14 promotion types across 84 stores; leadership moved $1.1M of promo budget to the 2 that raised margin
Who acted on it and how much moved.
Before
Automated reporting with dbt.
After
Automated the Monday executive report with dbt models and scheduled queries, cutting assembly from 6 hours to 20 minutes
Hours before and after.
Action verbs for a data analyst resume
- Queried
- Modeled
- Tested
- Measured
- Forecast
- Segmented
- Audited
- Automated
- Defined
- Recommended
- Visualized
- Validated
- Joined
- Quantified
Keywords from data analyst postings
Terms that recurred in the data analyst postings we read. Use the posting's exact tool names.
- SQL
- Python
- Tableau
- Looker
- Power BI
- Excel
- dbt
- Snowflake
- Git
- A/B testing
- Statistics
- Dashboards
- Data modeling
- Data pipelines
- Stakeholders
- Recommendations
- Self-service reporting
- KPIs
Common data analyst resume mistakes
A skills section with 25 tools
List what you would be glad to be tested on. Cloudflare's posting says candidates will be assessed on window functions and CTEs, and a long list invites questions on tools you barely used.
Describing the dashboard, not the decision
Add who used it and what changed: "14 Looker dashboards used daily by 120 staff, replacing 15 hours a week of requests".
Keeping course projects after you have analyst experience
Once you have two years of analyst work, drop the class projects. Keep a project only if it shows a tool or domain the posting asks for that your jobs do not.
Percentages with no baseline
"Improved efficiency 40%" cannot be checked. Give before and after: "6 hours to 20 minutes", "$340K a year".
Who reads it: the ATS, the recruiter, the hiring manager
The applicant tracking system and the recruiter match terms: SQL, Python, the BI tool in the posting, years in analyst roles. Use the posting's exact names ("Power BI", not "BI dashboards") in your skills and in a bullet.
The hiring manager reads for judgment: did you find the real question, was the method sound, and did anyone act on it. One bullet with a question, a method and a decision does more for that reader than five lines of tools.
No analyst job yet: when projects and GitHub belong
For entry-level and career-change resumes, a Projects section with one or two analyses of public data is the experience section. Write each like a job bullet: the question, the data and its size, the answer. Link the repository and make its README state the question and the result in the first lines.
Add a GitHub link in the header only if the repositories are clean and recent. Postings that ask for Git, such as Okta's and Cloudflare's, read it as evidence; an empty profile does more harm than none.
Frequently asked questions
What skills should a data analyst resume include?+
SQL first, then Excel or Google Sheets, one BI tool (Tableau, Looker or Power BI), Python if you use it, and statistics or A/B testing. SQL is in 68% of the 1,990 postings we counted. Mirror the posting's tool names, and show each core tool in a bullet with a result.
Do I need a certification to get a data analyst job?+
Usually not. None of the postings we read required one; they asked for SQL and years of analyst work. If a posting is built on Power BI, Microsoft's Power BI Data Analyst Associate (exam PL-300) is relevant. It renews every 12 months, so list it with the year.
Should I put my GitHub on a data analyst resume?+
Only if it has finished work with clear READMEs. It matters most for entry-level and career-change candidates, and for postings that ask for Git, as Okta's and Cloudflare's did. An empty or stale profile is better left off.
Do data analysts need a degree?+
Most do. In O*NET's survey for business intelligence analysts, 68% of respondents said a bachelor's degree is required and 23% said a master's. Postings we read also accepted quantitative degrees beyond computer science, such as statistics and mathematics.
Is a data analyst CV different from a resume?+
In the US they mean the same thing for this job: a short summary of your work, usually one page at this level. Outside the US, "CV" is the common word for the same document. Use the term the posting uses.
Sources
- O*NET OnLine: Business Intelligence Analysts (15-2051.01) · read 2026-11-14
- Microsoft Learn: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (PL-300) · read 2026-11-14
- Stripe: Data Analyst, San Francisco (posting) · read 2026-11-14
- Okta: Senior Data Analyst, Auth0 (posting) · read 2026-11-14
- Cloudflare: Data Analyst, London (posting) · read 2026-11-14
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