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CV vs Resume:

Your CV is your total job history, all positions you’ve worked and all notable points/achievements/accomplishments that you could want to tell. This is a lengthy, generic document, almost like a professional life story. Unfortunately, that also means it’s likely bulky, and not the best tool for convincing a hiring manager of your potential.

Your resume on the other hand is a cut down version of your CV that removes some of those irrelevant notable points, so it’s a short and concise list of relevant achievements specifically targeting a particular job description/advertisement. This should be 2~ pages tailored to include key words per job application.

A suggestion: Use your LinkedIn as your CV, and your resume as your resume. Log into LinkedIn every few months, add a new project/achievement/dot point in your employment, then when it comes to job hunting you can cut and paste from it, using it as reminder of achievements. Additionally, helps you get spotted by recruiters if you’re that way inclined.

The hiring manager mindset:

To put it simply, a resume gets about 30 seconds review, and 30 seconds of notes with a tick of “suitable” or “not suitable”. The more friendly, memorable, concise and tailored you make your resume, the easier the decision to give a thumbs up is. The advice in this post is meant to be simple, practical and help you help them. As a business analyst, we work considering a lot of different perspectives and contexts, so picture their situation:

You’ve just been given a stack of 30 resumes, either printed or in a really out-dated software that just isn’t a pleasant viewing experience. You have your day job work on top of needing to review these. With some luck, they’ve been pre-reviewed by HR so you know they’re legitimate candidates rather than just another submission thrown in. Half an hour till your next meeting, you can hopefully punch through this. Time to get started.

First thing is general page feel; boring plain white page that’ll blend in with the rest, or is there a mental cue like a logo/colour/pattern/style that might help it stick in memory for when I need to discuss it with the panel.

Next up, look for the summary; hopefully it’s a sentence or 2 that sets expectation for the rest of the resume.

Experience; You check the job title, check the dates (make sure no big gaps, overlaps or less than 9 months roles), and check any dot points for key words and measurable outcomes. If they saved $500k for that company, maybe they can do the same for you?

Continuing through the experience, anything past 7~ years ago gets skipped, you’ve got about 15 seconds or so before you want to give it a thumbs up or not. Experience goes on to page 3? Skipping that, lets see education.

You get to the bottom, and find education; Great, standard tertiary degree (or maybe an interesting pivot that could be interesting to discuss in interview), and maybe a cert or 2 that could be useful, but not the deciding factor. Free certs and udemy courses, fine for a refresher but not going to be a decision maker, instantly ignored.

And you see the sign-off saying “Referees on request”. Right, yes, you know, you’ll ask for them if you progress further. Ignored with an eye-roll.

You’ve now spent 30, maybe 45 seconds scanning this resume. You take your notes, “candidate has experience in requirements elicitation, hosting facilitation workshops, but no mention of AGILE projects”, “Candidate has experience with different tools, but skills look transferable”, “Lacks domain experience, mentions interest in summary”. Cool, sounds like a suitable candidate with a stock standard resume. Tick, 1 done, and 29 more to go…

Practical advice:

Design and visual appeal

The LinkedIn profile “Save to PDF” option is a great layout and I’ve personally found the style useful to help guide your own visual design.

Some colour or a distinctive pattern/design helps make it stand out in a sea of resumes. In my hiring manager mind I think “oh yeah the purple geometric one” when preparing to pick my short list after reviewing a sea of plain black-and-white submissions.

A side-bar (similar to the LinkedIn profile “Save to PDF” option) is useful for displaying contact information, in addition to 3 word information such as a title of a degree/cert, award recipient, or critical key-word skills (Business Analysis, Requirements Elicitation, Process Improvement, etc).

Whatever design you choose, the most important visual factor is consistency, as differing styles of headings and format will give a very visceral negative reaction before someone tries to dive deeper into the content.

Page Formatting

Make sure you’re putting your experience on the same page as your heading, as seeing “Worked at XYZ” then needing to jump to page 2 to see what that role actually entailed is a TERRIBLE look and reader experience.

A degree of white-space is also important, as sections clustered together become difficult to read which paints a negative view on the application before they’ve even had a chance to speak with you. Ironically, that is an issue this post tends to have; the line spacing is too close together, but at least some extra spacing has been added to separate sections.

As mentioned earlier, more than 2 pages often won’t get read, and is difficult to justify unless you have 10+ years of experience.

If you’re putting a side bar on page 1 but not across all pages (good call), make sure subsequent pages take up the full page. Having a ton of white space with no content wastes a lot of paper and makes it more difficult to read.

Margins are important, and should exist. Now days, most people don’t print the resumes they review, but having it cut off in the event they DO print a copy puts you at a significant disservice.

Content

For your resume to be complete, it should likely align to this simple check-list;

1. Your name (fairly obvious),
2. Tag line (also known as a summary),
3. Email/phone number/contact details,
4. Skills (as small/condensed as possible because they’re generic, maximum 6 skills listed, preferably in a 2 column arrangement with 3 in a per column),
5. Employment/work history,
   • For recent roles (present to 7 years ago), include Title, Company, Month Year to Month Year, and dot points of the major projects and most importantly the outcomes you achieved (e.g. saved 100k pa)
   • For roles that are more than 7 years ago, only include Title, Company, Year to Year.
6. Education (degrees and major certificates).

Target 2 pages in length, because as mentioned above, more than that doesn’t get read.

Breaking content down

For the tag line/summary, it’s a brief intro, a 2 sentence “Experienced BA with domain knowledge in __ sector. Something else interesting here” right under your phone /email.

Under your work experience for your recent roles (anything up to 7 years ago), you should provide dot points of major projects and achievements. Make sure to end every line with a full stop. A resume with no detail beyond the title and years is basically useless. For example:

• “Lead staff on-boarding process improvement, enabling automated user access provisioning via role based access controls for 2nd level IT support team, saving ___ hours per week/$___ per year.”
• “Provided project benefits realisation to ___, with actioned recommendations securing ___ in budget funding.
• “Development of framework/methodology for ___, enabling ___.”
• “Development, vendor management, documentation, and content management of ___, with requirements gathering for further enhancements.”
• “Creation of ___ community of practice to share lessons learned and artefacts, with ___ members.”
• “Product ownership, management, and technical administration for ___ handling ____.”
• “Developed ___ process and ___ documentation for ___ , enabling ___ daily.”
• “Requirements gathering towards ___ technology.”

Don’t just tell me what you did but what were the outcomes? A big number that sounds fancy as a savings goes a huge way to proving you know the benefits you can deliver, and that you have a proven history with results.

A walk-through of the thought process in writing the outcome: I worked on a project to automate emails into tickets, saves 2 minutes per ticket, 100 tickets per day, 270~ work days a year. 200 minutes, that’s 3 hours approximately, 810 hours across 270 days. 810* minimum wage of $25 AUD, that’s just over $20,000 AUD in savings per annum. Wow! Let’s ignore that it probably took some time to develop which reduces your first year return on investment, and processes/technology change so you can’t rely on that number being the same past the first year, but sell the benefits you made by telling the outcomes.

Relevant work is more important than education. With a 2 page limit, more information on work history and the success you’ve had in the field is far more important than non-formal education like Udemy and LinkedIn. It’s not accredited, and anyone can get it (or cheat on it!). Of course, include your your bachelors degree, an MBA, or formal certifications like BCS or IIBA, but not the free ones you did online. Same with membership; your BCS or IIBA membership will not be the deciding factor between you and another candidate, at best it shows you intend to continue learning, at worst it shows you forgot to stop paying a subscription you don’t use.

Avoiding Discrimination

Do not include anything that could be used to discriminate against you. Whilst illegal in most countries, it’s difficult to avoid unconscious bias. This includes childhood email addresses, your address, photos, disability status, nationality, availability, etc.

Additionally, do not include anything that is a major assumption. For example “Committed to professional development” is an expectation not a valuable dot point. It won’t differentiate you from other people, it’s just assumed. This also includes availability; the majority of jobs will assume you can work 9-5 M-F, worst case it’s grounds for discrimination as mentioned above.

The complication and grey area between both of the above points (Discrimination & Assumptions) is Local Working Rights. Some jobs (Government for example) may require residing within the local area and having evidence of residency/legal workers rights. If you do not have residency and/or workers rights, it’s worth contacting the organisation (they normally give a number/email to ask questions) to discuss if they will sponsor or assist in obtaining, as this can be a complicating factor.

Simple, common mistakes that lower your chances

Yes, we understand references are available on request, no, you don’t need to write it in your resume. It’s already an assumption, and we’ll ask for it anyway if you’re successful. Additionally, you shouldn’t have any asterisk/condition/caveat in your resume; if you got promoted then list that as a separate job under the same business rather than an asterisk, if it was an acting role then list it as “Role (Acting)”, if it was a BA role under a different inaccurate-to-responsibilities title then say “Role Original Title (Business Analyst)”.

Finally, just a small simple reminder on grammar, spelling, and general linguistics. Save capitals for proper nouns or the start of a sentence, use punctuation, run everything via spell-check to make sure it’s all correct, don’t make too long a list like this one. Try not to include “I“, rather refer to yourself in a distant way with action verbs at the start. If you manage to land every other point but miss the items in this paragraph, it’s likely to get thrown out just as fast. Documentation is core to your job, so quality presentable writing is absolutely critical, and your resume is your first chance to demonstrate that skill!

Government specific advice

In a government job, submitting Key Selection Criteria (KSCs, a list of critical needs that get covered in the interview) separately or as part of your cover letter may be the difference between getting an interview and not. A resume with no obvious experience won’t be able to convince a reviewer as it can’t really detail a scenario, whereas good KSCs or cover letter may justify speaking more.

An unfortunate but realistic notice…

I’m sorry, I truly am, but 6 months of “Business Analyst Intern”, or just graduating from your degree, or transitioning from a radically different industry likely won’t meet the “sufficient experience” requirement for applying for a Business Analyst role earning six-figure salaries. Sorry. It’s just not gonna happen. There are likely to be lots of applications, and those that articulate where their experience meets the needs get first preference at the end of the review period. Business Analyst is a rare job that’s difficult to get into because it’s specialised and has very limited niche spot in a business (if it’s needed at all). You might need to take a moment to re-evaluate, consider roles that could more easily lead into the role, and set realistic targets with the tier of jobs you want to attain even if that means dropping down before coming back up.

Stefan Carton