255: Why This Data Analyst Got 0 Interviews (According to a Recruiter)

So this data analyst has gotten zero interviews in eight months of applying for jobs. So we're gonna talk about why this is the case and how they can fix it and how you can fix it if you're struggling to land interviews If you are struggling to land interviews, it's not you. You're not the problem. It's likely something that's either your LinkedIn or your resume that's not optimized, that is not actually getting you in front of hiring managers and recruiters. It's not getting you past the applicant tracking system, and it's keeping you stuck. You might think that you suck. You might think that your skills suck. You might think that you're not cut out for data analytics, but you are. You just need a good resume. And today, we're gonna be looking at a not so great resume and how we can make it better one of the easiest ways to make your resume better is just to start with a really good template with built-in good structure. So I actually have a free template for you to download and just use, and just trust me, I have been helping people land data jobs for five years. This resume really works. You can go to datacareerjumpshot.com/resume or find the link in the show notes down below to get that resume. this resume is going to do wonders for you. It's gonna save you a lot of time, and it's 100% free. So go grab it right now We'll be reacting to a video that was done by a gentleman named Headless Headhunter, that is a mouthful, uh, from a data analyst resume that he got submitted to him on his YouTube channel. I'll have a link to his channel in the description down below, and if you're listening on the audio podcast, I'm gonna try to do my best to describe what this resume looks like and what we are looking at throughout the entire process

All right, here we go

Recruiter here to review your resumes. The resume we have up first is a data analyst, and this person has been applying for eight months and has gotten zero interviews. So this is a real stinker of a resume, and I'm here to tell you why it's bad, how to fix it so that you can get a job

Just one note, just because, you know, they haven't been able to land a job in eight months doesn't exactly mean the resume is bad. That's probably one of the things it could be. But if you only applied for eight jobs in eight months, you're also not likely to get any interviews. So it also depends on, you know, how many applications you've sent out. If you sent out, you know, hundreds of applications and you have no interviews, then yes, definitely a problem. But just remember that, like, it's not just your resume, uh, that gets you interviews

Uh, that is my job as the headless headhunter. So what do we need as a data analyst? We need degree, industry, SQL

Okay, so he's going over the qualifications that a data analyst needs, needs, and he's saying degree in industry. I don't know what industry means. Uh, degree, yeah, you can argue like having a degree is helpful, but I don't know if he means a data analytics degree 'cause there's not very many of those. I don't have one of those. Um, so I'm not sure what he means there. But yes, there are m- there's not a ton of data jobs that you can land if you don't have a college degree. It's possible, but it's a lot more work

Data visualization, Tableau, Power BI, Looker. Influence stakeholders. Explain technical concepts to non-technical people and non-technical stakeholders. You absolutely need that. Your job is to convince Bob, who cannot turn on his monitor, why you have SQL in what you do with the data. That is your job, and you need to show me that in the resume

Uh, very important here that like, yes, being a clear communicator is an important job as a data analyst. Um, and you need to be able to explain, you know, complex things, numbers, uh, to non-technical people in a simple way. Um, I know he's just going this off the cuff where he's like, "You need to explain to Bob why we're using SQL." And to be honest, most of the time you'll be working at a larger company that already decided they're using SQL, and it's not really your job as like a junior or intermediate data analyst to be like, "We should switch to something else." And to be honest, what are you gonna switch to? Like everyone uses SQL. So didn't love his example here. I'm being nitpicky, but I just wanna, you know, bring up a point here that recruiters, they have to know everyone's job inside and out, and that's absolutely impossible. So like just know that recruiters kinda know what they're talking about, but not exactly, because he has to know all the details of a data analyst, of an accountant, of a financial professional. Uh, you know, maybe he does nursing, I don't know. Like rec-recruiters work for so many different roles that they have to know, you know, these different role types and they often don't a hundred percent

I wanna see how you solved a problem with data, not what the data is. This is another big one that data analysts get wrong all the time. Also, I do more than tech resumes, such as like software engineers, data analysts. I do like accountants and everything else, but the tech market is so incredibly terrible that like 50% of the resumes sent to me are tech, but I do do more than tech

So once again, he's just proving the point here that recruiters, they often do lots of different types of roles, and it's impossible for them to know, you know, the ins and outs of every role. So when you're, when you're-- when recruiters are reviewing your resume, they don't know everything, and so you have to work really hard to try to make it as easy as possible for them to know what you're talking about, and we'll, we'll get to this here in a second

But a common data analyst problem is they always tell me how they got the data when nobody cares how you got the data

I just don't think that's true. Like, how many of you guys... Let me know in the Spotify comments and the YouTube comments that, like, are you putting how you got the data on your resume? I think a lot of data analysts don't talk about how they got the data. I think they talk about how they analyze the data. A lot of the times, data analysts don't get data. Uh, like it's already in a database, so why would they, you know, list that as one of their responsibilities or one of their bullet points? And if you did get the data on your own, I think that's really impressive because getting data is really difficult. Like, if you web scraped data from the internet, you know, that's hard to do, and that deserves a bullet point, and that's useful for a lot of different industries, a lot of different companies, a lot of different jobs. Um, so I don't really get why he's saying, like, "Don't talk about, you know, where you got the data from." I don't think we are. And two, if you did get the data in a unique way, I think that's worth pointing out. So I don't, I don't get his point here

No one cares if you used a Monte Carlo simulation to flip-flop the floop flop and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All they-

I, I think if you listen carefully, he's like, "No one cares if you did a Monte Carlo simulation," which is one way to generate data. Like, if you don't have actual data, you can simulate data, you know, and run, you know, hundreds, thousands of different simulations. Monte Carlo is one, one way to do it. Um, but where he's just like flip-flop, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that's what recruiters read when they see a data analyst resume, is they see like one word they know, like Monte Carlo simulation, and then it's just like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's just like a bunch of jargon for them. So you just have to keep that in mind, that recruiters don't know all of data analytics jargon that's going on

They care about is what you did with it, not how you got it

I do think this point is really important, that what you do with the data is the most important thing. It is more important than, than how you got it. Um, and we're not just analyzing data for analyzing data's sake. We're not doing it for funsies. We're doing it for a purpose. And so it's really important to try to illustrate why you did what you did. Like, how are you helping the business in the big picture?

I need to see how you solved a problem with the data, not what the data is. I need to see MS Excel, yes, really, macros, pivot tables, VLOOKUP, Word, Python, R, multiple projects and deadlines, and nice to have is cloud AI and security clearances

So, uh, he kind of went through the qualifications a little bit more. He said Microsoft Excel, macros, pivot tables, and VLOOKUP. So I think this is really funny because number one, I don't really think a lot of people are using macros anymore. They've always kind of sucked. Um, they take a lot of effort to code, and they're very slow and not very robust. Uh, I think Python in Excel has really taken over most macros. Uh, pivot tables are still the king. We still use a lot of pivot tables. Now, notice VLOOKUP here, and all of you guys probably who are listening and, you know, have touched, you know, Excel, you're like, "Oh, I know VLOOKUP, but XLOOKUP's way better or INDEX MATCH is way better." And yes, that might be true, but my point here is, remember recruiters, they don't know the difference between VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP like you do. And if you're unfamiliar with it, it's basically the exact same thing in Excel except for XLOOKUP's a lot easier. VLOOKUP, you have to like be a little bit more specific with what, what data you're actually trying to look up. It's basically a way to search a large data set, and if you know key-- one key value, you can get its pair. Um, but my point here is like they're looking for VLO-- the recruiter's looking for VLOOKUP on your resume. Um, and maybe even an applicant tracking system, ATS is, is as well. So even though you might not use VLOOKUP and you know XLOOKUP is better, it might be worth having things like VLOOKUP on your resume. Um, also, I don't know when he's saying, uh, bullet point of Python/R, multiple projects and deadlines. I think deadlines is interesting. I don't know. He didn't really expand on that. I think that's interesting. Nice to have Cloud. Yeah, it's nice to have. It's not listed in very many, uh, data job descriptions. AI, this is in twelve percent now. Uh, security clearance, obviously, that's not something you can really just go out there and get. So, um, those are some nice to haves.

So I only have twenty seconds to find what I need to find. If I cannot find it in twenty seconds, your resume is yeeted and deleted. I wish that was not the case, but unfortunately, that is just how little time recruiters actually have to view your resume. So, uh, we'll-

I li- I like what he just said, you know, 20 seconds. I think that's even... I think a lot of people say it's like seven seconds

I be able to find that in twenty seconds? Probably not, 'cause they've been doing this for eight months and has gotten zero interviews, so I'm expecting to find nothing in this. But let's see how bad this resume is, and go. Oh, my God. Uh, cannot use anything here. Cannot use anything here. Uh, so then we go down to here is designed and built an executive reporting dashboard. Okay. Data quality, KPIs. Ha, this is irrelevant to leadership. Could assess status, analyze, informed, hot dog. Uh, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, uh-

And when he's saying hot dog here, he explains this later in the episode, it's basically not what he's looking for is what he's saying. Um, kind of a weird way of expressing it, but just, just say it's-- just think it's not good

Time. Oh boy, this is a bad one. All right, I understand why you're getting zero interviews. So there's a lot of this that's wrong, and I'm gonna go through it one by one. So first things first, your formatting is atrocious. This is the formatting you wanna use. You can find it in the link below. It's free. Use it. This is what it looks like. This is how it should be. This ain't it

So for those of you who are listening via the podcast, he's, he's showing the resume on the screen, and he's showing, you know, a template that he really likes. And I think the big thing for, for what this resume is doing wrong and what he thinks they should be doing better is essentially have more white space. Because this is like-- like the professional summary is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. It's eight lines straight of just text where you can't really scan it, and then it goes straight to core skills, uh, which is just like a bunch of keyword stuffing. Um, and then even the bullet points in the, uh, professional experience is pretty long. Like each bullet point looks to be one, two, three lines, one, two, three lines, one, two, three lines. So it's just a lot of block text going on, and it makes it really hard to scan anything in those twenty seconds. There's lots of information in there, but it's not really digestible for someone like a recruiter

This is bad. This is really, really, really bad. So first things first, your formatting is atrocious. Uh, I don't know if you graduated or not, I can't even find your degree, which is why your degree needs to be up here. Second off, um, nothing... There's a reason, like, if you look at this, you're like, "Well, hold on, Lee. What are you talking about?" Everything you want is in these two sections.

Just, just a note where he's like, "I can't even tell if you've graduated or not." Well, if you've been a data and business analyst with six-plus years translating complex operational data, you've either been-- you know, you have a, a degree, like you landed a job, uh, with a degree, or you landed a job without a degree and now you have experience. So I'm not sure why he's saying the education section's so important. I know a lot of you guys listening are career pivoters, and you have a degree, but it's not in data analytics, it's not in statistics, it's not in computer science. Um, and so I don't necessarily think you have to have it on the top of your resume. If it's helpful, sure, but like eventually, your professional experience trumps your degree, right? Like my undergraduate degree is in chemical engineering. I haven't really worked as a chemical engineer for a long time. Like should I put that on top of my resume? I don't think so

Why did you highlight all this stuff in red? This is exactly what you're looking for. And the answer to that is, "No, it's not. Uh, it's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for qualifications, not keywords." So if I was-

Now, n-notice what he's saying here. I'm looking for qualifications, not keywords. One important thing I would say is, while an applicant tracking system, a lot of the times, is just looking for keywords. So just know that your resume serves two purposes. One is convincing an applicant tracking system that you're a worthy candidate, and two is convincing a human that you're a worthy candidate, and those are two different tasks.

If I was looking for keywords, then yeah, everything here would be what I'm looking for. Power BI, Excel, Jira, SQL, R, Python, uh, Databricks, uh, AWS. If I was keyword hunting, then a skill section would be relevant. But I'm not keyword hunting, I'm qualification hunting. And what a qualification is, is a keyword plus, the plus is important, how you used it

Okay. So a, a qualification is a keyword plus how you used it

Plus where you used it, which is skills

Plus where you used it

section, professional summary, do not show. And the non-technical reason you did it to help the business. Now

Okay, so let's, let's, let's go through that one more time. So a qualification is a keyword plus where you used it, plus how you used it, and then what purpose you used it for. Um, so I think what he's trying to say is like, you know, SQL. He wants to see SQL in this role right here. A bullet point like, you know, uh, used SQL to, um, analyze four hundred thousand rows of data to make ten thousand-- save ten thousand dollars in costing. So it's the keyword and the where is this Fortune five hundred company. The how, I don't really know how. It's like there's only one way to really use SQL, I guess, like queries. Uh, and then for what purpose? To like save ten thousand dollars. I think that's what he's looking for, essentially. Essentially, he's just saying that there's just a bunch of keywords here, and he'd rather see them spread out throughout the resume and the experience section and maybe even the professional summary and maybe even the education on how you're actually using those keywords and why you're actually using them

But before you go, "Lee, there's only two parts of any job, which is make money, save money." Yeah, that, that's this high level. I need you to be here, right? I, I don't wanna ta- I don't care about this part, I care about this part. I, I wanna know why you did what you did, saved or w- uh, made the company money. What was the purpose of your job? I don't care that you conducted a deep analysis of 65 legacy pipelines, reverse engineering undocumented business rules, transformation logged data dependencies, across 9,000 processes, producing the scope assessment and gap analysis, showed executive alignment on migration strategy. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I wanna know

He's talking so fast. Do I have, uh... Oh, I do have 1.25 speed on. Sorry, guys. Uh, okay

You did that. That's, that's too technical, right? We've got why you did what you did, which is we've got your job is to make money or save money, and then we've got whatever you wrote at the bottom. I need you to meet me in the middle here. All right? That's what we're looking for in the why. Uh-

So here he's saying like, of course, like you, you know, this person did conduct deep dive analysis of sixty-five legacy ETL pipelines. You know, that's, that's what their job was. But it's too technical for this recruiter to actually understand the purpose. Plus, not only like, you know, we don't care about what you did, you care about why. So why did you do it? So they did it to produce the scope assessment and gap analysis that drove executive alignment on migration strategy. Um, and that's just like, you gotta be more specific. Like, how did that save us time or money, essentially? Um, or like, did it save, you know, hours? Did it save potential errors in the future? Try to give like a dollar sign or a number of hours or something like that right there

Um, and there's so many random numbers. This is also filled to the brim with hot dogs, which I'm about to explain

This is the part where he explains his hot dog analogy, which is a bullet point that is a cheap version of what he's trying to get. It's impressive sounding, it's technical, it's what you maybe did, but it's not the full thing. It's just like the keyword doesn't have like the where and the what and the why. Uh, the analogy fell a little bit flat with me, so I will skip this part for you.

So that is my problem here is all this stuff is re-- tangentially related to being a data analyst. This is tangentially related to what I want. It is not what I want. I want this. So when you submit a resume that looks like this and not this, what actually happens on the part is the recruiter looks and this goes, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. This doesn't matter. This doesn't matter. This doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

I want you to pay close attention to this because this is how a recruiter actually sees your resume here. Ready? Here we go

Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And then

And for our audio au- audience, he's essentially like whitening out the entire resume. He's basically saying none of the resume is helpful right now

Then they go down to here and they say, "Okay, cool. Actually, what I'm maybe looking for." And they say, "Okay, uh, I don't know what you did, I don't know how you did it, and I don't know why you did it, so this doesn't count."

Now he's scratching out, uh, the first bullet point because he feels like it doesn't say why he did it. I mean, he's saying it doesn't say where. Let's listen one more time, 'cause that makes no sense to me

And then they go down to here and they say, "Okay, cool. Actually, what I'm maybe looking for." And they say, "Okay, uh, I don't know what you did. I don't know-

Well, what you did is right here, designed and built an executive reporting dashboard tracking pipeline health

How you didn't, I don't know

Uh, how you did it. I mean, I guess y-- the-- this resume person should have said what tool they used. There's a really good w-- opportunity to keyword stuff like, where'd you build these reporting dashboards?

I know why you did it, so this doesn't count

Why you did it. Let's see. Um, analysis directly informed a decision to extend a multi-million dollar project timeline from four to six months. Um, so I mean, that is why you did it. So analysis, w-- I think, I think maybe instead of changing the timeline, it's like, well, what is that in dollar values or what is that in risk? Like, maybe th-this could have just been more succinctly said. So I would have probably said, "Designed and built an executive da-- reporting dashboard in Power BI that tracks," Let's just say KPIs That Changed a-- And I would-- Instead of doing multimillion dollar, I would just put a dollar. If you don't know what it is, it's, is it more than ten or less than ten? Uh, put seven. And, you know, if it's about twenty, put twenty. So twenty million d- twenty million dollar project, instead of saying four to six months, I would say extended by fifty percent to prevent, you know, errors or something like that. Um, that's how I think I'd make that bullet point a little bit better

Okay. Uh, I don't know what you did, I don't know how you did it, and I don't know why you did it, so this doesn't count. Then

I think that's very harsh. I don't really get... I mean, it could be a better bullet for sure, but there's, there's pieces of in there, of it in there

Look at this and go, "Okay, uh, I don't know what you did, how you did, or why you did it, so this doesn't count." And then you do this and you say, "Yep, this is filled with hotdogs. It's great that you define quality standards and SL pipelines for 300K records every ten to fifteen minutes, but I'm looking for somebody that can influence stakeholders and use Sequel. That's not that. You don't tell me how-

So I, once again, I think, I think this really shows that recruiters aren't really-- They're not trying to get you hired, right? They're, they're not giving you the benefit of the doubt. You have to be 100% prepared. This resume has to be 100% ready to go with no exceptions, no doubts, no issues at all. Because if there's anything that's suboptimal, a recruiter's just gonna find it and say it sucks, okay? Like, I hope this is giving you a glimpse to literally how a real recruiter looks at your resume

how you did it, so this doesn't count, and then this doesn't count. I think I actually missed something that did count. Uh, I, I ran out of time, so I didn't

I think I missed something that did count. See? And, and he even recognizes it here. He's like, "Wait, actually one of those bullets wasn't that bad." But the problem is, is he's already given up on this resume after those 20 seconds, and you made him work. The harder you make him work to actually find the gold in your resume, you just-- the chances just go down exponentially. So you gotta be really solid with your resume

Go past this. So when you are making your resume, I want you to make it for Bob. Bob is a senior manager at Headless Headhunters Hamburger Hut. Bob is the CEO. Bob is the one that decides if you get a job or not

I mean, why are we making, why are we making a resume for a CEO? CEOs won't be hiring you. It'll be a hiring manager, right? Like, I don't get why he's saying this. Let's, let's see if he can explain it

Bob is the hiring manager and the recruiter wrapped into one

I thought he was the CEO. Which one is he?

Bob cannot turn on their monitor. You

I mean, that's-- I think for most data analyst hiring managers, that's very rude. Like, they're very technically sound. Like, they're more technically sound than you. Maybe he's just saying this because he feels this way about, like, tech and data. Like, as a recruiter, he doesn't know a whole lot about data and tech, and so we need to write our resumes for the recruiter? 'Cause hiring managers, they're decent most of the time. They're not gonna be, you know, they're not, they're not, like, super in the weeds with, you know, tech and data and stuff like that. But most of the time, they're pretty dang good. Like, they've worked as individual contributors in that role before. It might have been 10 years ago, but they still kinda know what's going on

You need to make your resume enough that Bob can understand what you do, and he needs to find this. If you don't, you will get rejected. Is that fair? No, it's not fair. But unfortunately, neither is life. Like, if, if, if life was fair, you wouldn't come across this channel in the first place

I think that is a really good point that, like, this, this sucks. The fact that the, the recruiter looks at a resume this way sucks. The fact that it's so hard to land a job right now, it sucks. Um, and it's not fair, and it's not how it should be, but that's just the system we're in now, and you have two choices. One, you can play the game and try to actually, you know, get interviews and get hired, or two, you can get frustrated and give up. Those are your two options. Um, and be like, "This is, this isn't fair. I give up." yeah, it does suck, but giving up's not a good option either. Giving up sucks too. So choose your hard. You either have the hard of making a good resume and, and getting it in front of recruiters and hiring managers, or you have the hard of you don't get a data job and you-- maybe you don't get a job. Both of those options are hard. It's just different hard

Uh, also there is a critical error that I did notice here is never ever do this. Uh, this, never ever do this right here. Um, I'm gonna give y'all a second to figure out what's wrong with this, but this is

For our audio audience, he is circling the dates for each one of the jobs in the professional experience section, and they say twenty twenty-four to twenty twenty-five and twenty twenty-four to twenty twenty-four. So he has no dates. He or she has no dates on their resume. Um, and sorry, no months. You need to have months on your resume, um, because basically having no months can be a red flag

that, in fact, that entire thing I would remove. I wouldn't even put this on here. That's just gonna make you look like a job hopper. Like, not even counting the fact that your resume has nothing in it. Again, this is not the worst resume I've seen in my life, but it's

This resume has nothing in it, but it's not the worst resume he's seen in his life. So, uh, that feels like an oxymoron sentence right there. Um, by the way, he's currently whiting out this job that was from 2024 to 2024 because it makes this person look like a job hopper or wasn't at the job very long. Also I'm assuming the, the companies they work for, it says Fortune 500 automotive client and Fortune 500 utility provider. I'm assuming those actually have the company names in the actual resume, um, because down below it says JPMorgan Chase. If not, that's-- I mean, you gotta put the company you work for. You can't just say, "I worked for a mystery company." Like that's not good. Like I don't know if this is how he asks for, um, if, if he asks for resumes this way to be like a little bit more protected and anonymized. I don't know. But, uh, I don't think that's great

Not even counting the fact that your resume has nothing in it. Again, this is not the worst resume I've seen in my life, but it's very, very bad. Uh

It's, it's probably like a four out of 10, maybe a three out of 10. It's not that bad. It's not that bad. Um, it's just wordy, no white space, and yeah, poorly formatted

Uh, and then down here, again, that could be December twenty twenty-three to January twenty twenty-four. I don't know. You need the months. This looks bad. Always, always, always. But that's all I can do for this resume

Hopefully that gave you a good idea of how you could improve your very own resume to start to get more interviews. If you want a blank slate and you want a template that has been proven year after year, I'll have a link in the description down below, or you can go to datacareerjumpstart.com/resume and download that for absolutely free