Lab -- Job Market

By Dave Eargle

Write an analytics-focused resume

Audience and Goal

Write for bots, humans, and bot-humans. Bots scan for keywords, humans look for fuzzy positive signals, and bot-humans are humans who are burned out from reading tons of resumes, so they’re looking for keywords but they also have good BS detectors. Alternatively, bot-humans are third-party triage recruiters who are no better than a bot because they have no domain experience. Getting an interview with one of these is good, but it isn’t great, because you could still get desk-rejected when your application hits the desk of someone at the company who has a better idea of what they’re looking for. Sadness.

I’m no job search savant by any means, but here are my views. Your sole goal with cold-submission resume applications is to get an interview – that’s it. Imagine that hundreds of other applicants are also submitting resumes. The search committee’s job is to narrow the pool of applicants, so they’ll start with the widest filter, and then work down.

Your job is to signal that you are business-analytics relevant.

Content

Analytics-first! Classes, projects, skills. Be honest, but also proud!

Focus first on adding all of your analytics-related feathers. Add content like the following:

  • Degree title
  • All job and educational experience to show job continuity
    • Emphasize analytics-relevant job experience
  • Specific related courses with verbose names, with high-level learning outcomes
  • If available, porfolio projects for those courses that demonstrate learning outcomes
    • link to jupyter notebooks (colab or github), blog posts, I dunno
  • Add a list of analytics-related programming languages and libraries with which you have experience. Example

As you write your resume, you may identify gaps you want to be able to fill, or portfolio pieces you wish you had. Create them! Then, come back and update your resume.

Q: How do I tailor my resume content to a specific job application?

Look for keywords in the job listing, and (with honesty!) integrate those terms and desired attributes into your resume. This is for the bots and the human-bots.

Q: What about the “security” stuff?

I predict that the majority of the jobs that you will apply for will not be related to security analytics. Therefore, emphasize business analytics first, and add security as a spice. If you find a more security-first job, write another resume tailored to that job, with “security” first, and analytics second. If you find a security-analytics-specific job, then that would be a third type.

A lot of companies are interested in the cloud. The security track gives you relevant computer networking and cloud-computing experience. Also, a lot of tech toolbelts expect some kind of container-computing skills, plus attendant command-line mastery. The security track also gives you these.

Obviously, cybersecurity is sexy, and your portfolio pieces will be security-related, which will have a high “cool!” factor. Just remember to explain the security concepts to a lay audience.

Q: Can I see some example resumes?

Past grads have been kind enough to share their resumes on the #resume-help channel on our multigenerational security analytics workspace. Ask me for an invite to that workspace if you need one.

Format

You may often need to basically copy-paste your resume into job applications. Having your resume in markdown format may help streamline that process. Considering writing your resume in markdown, and posting it as a new page on your GitHub Pages website.

Deliverable: Submit a link to your resume. Optional Deliverable: Make a markdown version of your resume. Submit a link to your website-hosted resume.

Past graduates, friends, and neighbors have been kind enough to share their job search experiences with me. I’ve included some insights and quotes from them in this section.

FAQ:

Where can I go for general industry tips and insights?

Try the /r/analytics subreddit.

How many positions should I apply for?

Probably depends on the locale to which you are applying. Colorado Denver area is an extremely high-supply (tough) analytics market right now though.

What are good search terms?

  • “data analyst”
  • “analyst”
  • “data scientist”
  • “business analytics”
  • “Business Analyst”
  • “Data Analyst”
  • “Data Scientist”,
  • “Financial Analyst”

What are good job platforms to use?

LinkedIn and BuiltIn Colorado, Handshake, Indeed, Dice, Ziprecruiter, ConnectingColorado.

See quotes below from alumn regarding platforms.

Quotes about job search experience from past student

Important context: Many of the quotes below are from applicants who were on the market during Covid-19 peak

Platforms Used

I found BuiltIn to be by FAR the worst, personally, because they seemed to always be asking for “unicorns” and people with a [ton] of experience in very, very specific areas. I very rarely saw anything I was even remotely qualified for and the one company I was qualified for (landed a 2nd interview) [toyed] me around for several weeks before getting around to rejecting me.

LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter had the benefit of “1 click apply” which I did use fairly frequently to spam some more applications out there.

LinkedIn had the best variety and was helpful when they have the “Easy Apply option”.

Handshake was really helpful mainly to see which companies were coming in to talk to us and have table sits and stuff like that.

Search Terms

“Data Scientist” (this one always got me much more technical/experienced roles)

sometimes I would just Google “SQL”, “Python”, “R”, “Regression” (any other buzzword that would help me get a dang job)

I found searches on “data analyst” or “data science” were only returning hits on job descriptions asking for 5+ years of python expertise and I never was able to get past phone screens for them.

Method

I started looking at industry specific data roles and going through companies I was interested in working for. Then I would go look on their actual career site. I used LinkedIn and built in Colorado to get a list of companies in the area.

[Eventually] I just pumped out applications and didn’t tailor mine to specific roles. I just played the numbers game and the first one that offered me a salary I was happy with I accepted.

My resume was kept the same for every app sent but my cover letter was always tailored to the role and then the specific project or coding language I used.

From someone who has been in the engineering indstury for a while:

Indeed.com is a decent place to start. Then I start looking at the companies, what they do, who their competitors are. Then check out their competitors

I also reach out to any vendors I’ve worked with in the past. A lot of times they have some good insights into what companies are hiring.

Deliverable

Deliverable: Describe what method you are using to manage your job search process.

Deliverable: Submit links to three jobs that you’re interested in.

My intention in having you describe your method to me is to make sure you actually have a method, and that you’ve actually looked at job postings.