How To Write The Perfect Business Analyst Resume

The average resume reviewer spends between 5 to 7 seconds looking at a single resume, which leaves the average job applier with roughly six seconds to make a killer first impression. Thanks to this, a single typo or error on your resume can disqualify you right out of the gate.

You want to be thinking about the person on the other end of the line as much as possible while writing your resume. How much time are they going to spend looking at your resume, and what is the best possible way that you can format your resume in order to make it as readable and convincing as possible?

At Zippia, we went through over 52,000 Business Analyst resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.

Breaking Down A Business Analyst Resume By Sections

The Summary

Short and Sweet

The summary should be the first section of your resume, and it should properly introduce any reader to what they’ll be seeing on the rest of your resume. You want to be as concise as possible here; there’s no need to summarize every single section, since the resume itself likely isn’t all that long.

You just want to introduce what you believe to be the most important parts of your resume to whoever you think will be reading this section; bear in mind that anyone scanning your resume might skip past this section, so there shouldn’t be anything here you couldn’t find elsewhere, unless you want to include any Career Goals of yours that you’d like your potential employers to be aware of.

Specificity is key; a general summary tells the employer nothing and will be ignored. Think about how you can be specific about yourself, your career goals, and your job qualifications in a concise, readable way. Additionally, be sure to tailor each resume you send out for both the individual position you’re applying for as well as (if possible) the specific company you’re applying to.

In his article on ERE Media, the corporate recruiting strategist Dr. John Sullivan writes that putting your resume into a format that is not scannable can cut your odds “by a whopping sixty percent.”

This often includes simple things, like making sure the information on your resume is written clearly and that your information pops on the page. However, while examples like this can make your essay more attractive to a human reader, bear in mind that many larger corporations use Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) to filter out resumes at the lower levels.

On a related note, make sure your resume is submitted as a .doc or .docx file if you think it will be going through a machine first; if it’s submitted as a .pdf, most ATS won’t be able to scan it at all, and your submission will be instantly rejected (Sullivan).

Things To Remember

When you are creating your summary for a Business Analyst position, keep a few things in mind:

1. Introduce what you believe to be your strongest assets, such as having a particularly useful work experience, education from a well-regarded institution, or an especially relevant skillset.
2. Think about who (or what) will be scanning your resume.
1. If you’re submitting to a larger corporation, they might be using an ATS to screen out resumes before any real human being gets to see them, in which case you’re going to want to make sure you’re hitting on all the relevant keywords that company will be searching for. You don’t want to go overboard with these, as a person is going to read your resume eventually, but it’s worth it to make sure you’re at least getting your foot in the door.
2. If you’re submitting to a smaller company, odds are that a human being will see it first, so your resume’s look and its ability to quickly generate interest in a reader will be more important.
3. There is an 88% rejection rate when you include a photo with your resume (Buckland). That’s kind of high, so, you probably shouldn’t do that.
4. Overall, be short and sweet; you want this to be quickly readable and scannable. Leave out personal pronouns like “I,” and try to keep to the present tense (although whatever tense you choose, above all make sure that you keep it consistent throughout the resume).

Skills

Stuff You Can Do

Good skills to include on your resume for Business Analyst positions include those related to communication (oral and written), technical experience, analytical skills, facilitation/ability to act as a liaison, problem solving, etc.

As described on our hub page for Business Analysts, some common types of skills for Business Analysts include:

• analytical skills
• communication skills
• interpersonal skills
• problem-solving skills
• time-management skills

Specifically, here are some of the most commonly listed resume skills for Business Analysts:

• Business Process Models – Listed on over 25% of resumes
• SQL Server – Listed on over 20% of resumes
• Microsoft Visio – Listed on almost 20% of resumes
• Financial – Listed on over 15% of resumes
• Test Cases – Listed on over 15% of resumes

Things To Remember

Keep the following things in mind for your Skills section:

• This can be its own separate section, or (as demonstrated in our example) it can be rolled into a larger “Additional Information” section.

Work Experience

Stuff You Already Did

The most common work experiences of those applying to Business Analyst positions are overwhelmingly former Business Analyst positions. However, other positions can also be relevant so long as they showcase the kind of interpersonal and analytical skills that employers hiring Business Analysts are searching for.

While it’s unlikely that any employer looking for an experienced Business Analyst would accept someone who has never held a Business Analyst position before, there’s no harm in applying to a position for which you feel that your previous work experience might qualify you.

Only 50% percent of applicants are actually qualified for the jobs they’re applying for, as individuals spend an average of 76 seconds looking at the jobs they’re applying to (Sullivan). This means that there’s always the chance that whatever work experience you have–even if it seems, on the surface, slightly irrelevant to the job you’re applying for–can still make you a more attractive candidate than the others who have applied alongside you. Give it a shot!

Primary talking points for this section include describing the company that you worked for itself (what it did, how big it was; anything you can think to brag about), the name of your position within that company, and your primary responsibilities for that position.

Aside from former jobs in the same career, there is much more variation in the Work Experience section of resumes than tends to be found in the Skills section.

Here are some commonly listed former work experiences found on Business Analyst resumes:

• Business Analyst – Listed on over 25% of resumes
• Senior Business Analyst – Listed on just over 3% of resumes
• Project Manager – Listed on just over 1% of resumes
• Business Systems Senior Analyst – Listed on roughly 1% of resumes
• Consultant – Listed on less than 1% of resumes

Things To Remember

For each entry, be sure to include:

• A short description of the company you worked for.
• Your position with that company, and how long you held that position (create a new entry for each promotion or title change/responsibility shift).
• A (preferably bulleted) list of your responsibilities in said position.

Education

Where You Learned It All

List this section in reverse order, starting with your most recent level of education Do not include high school unless you have no college degree. If you have graduate degrees, include those before undergraduate degree, but still be sure to include your undergraduate degree as well.

Most Business Analysts have at least a bachelor’s degree, and getting a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) designation may also improve your chances of finding a job.

Overwhelmingly those applying to Business Analyst positions majored in Business Administration, Management and Operations, but other majors made their way in as well. Here are some of the majors that make up the top spots:

• Business Administration, Management and Operations – Listed on over 20% of resumes
• Finance and Financial Management Services – Listed on just under 6% of resumes
• Computer Science – Listed on just over 5% of resumes
• Business/Commerce – Listed on over 3% of resumes
• Accounting and Related Services – Listed on roughly 3% of resumes

Things To Remember

For each entry in this section, be sure to include:

• The name of the school you attended.
• The year you attended.
• Your major.
• Your GPA.
• The level of education you attained.
• Make a separate entry for each individual institution you attended; however, if you attended the same school for multiple levels of academic degrees, it is more economic to list all of these degrees within the same entry (being sure to still include your highest degree first, continuing after this in descending order).

Final Thoughts

Be Prepared

If a company has an online application process, or if you apply through a website like Indeed, you may not have as much control over your resume’s physical appearance as you would ordinarily. However, if you are able to submit your resume as a separate document, make sure that you think about the way that you format the information you’ll be expressing.

Make sure that you pick an easy-to-read font, and that it isn’t too distracting. Try not to use more than two or three fonts for the entire resume, and be consistent in your font usage (for example, if you use a particular font for a heading, make sure you use the same font for later headings). Different colors for fonts can also be an effective way to highlight certain information and increase readability when done well; consider using cooler, less distracting colors like greens and blues, and try not to overuse them.

Bear in mind also that one of our sample resumes belongs to someone who has been in the workforce for over 10 years and has previously held Senior Business Analyst positions. If you’re just starting out, your own resume likely won’t be this long, nor should it be. Try to keep your information to a single page if at all possible; you can even try widening the margins if necessary in order to get all of your information into as small a space as possible. Don’t sacrifice readability, but the less space your resume takes up, the easier it is for a reviewer to see if you might be a good fit for their company.

Recent college graduates have it rough in the job market; Dr. Sullivan writes that “a full 66 percent of hiring managers” view recent grads as being “unprepared” for the average workplace. A well-crafted resume can help get you exactly the sort of leg up you need to be competitive in the job market.

About Zippia

Zippia is the career expert site, where recent college graduates can study the pathways of previous graduates to learn about which career routes they want to pursue. Career job data can be found on

Zippia is the career expert site, where recent college graduates can study the pathways of previous graduates to learn about which career routes they want to pursue. Career job data can be found on https://www.zippia.com/colleges-and-majors/