Don’t Make This Silly Mistake With Your Data Scientist Resume

Ruhhanaali
Nov 8 · 4 min read

Does your resume have all the facts and figures to help you rise to the top of the hiring pool? To be considered for top data scientist jobs, resume expert Kim Isaacs says it helps to have a comprehensive resume.

Jobs for data scientists are projected to grow by 19% (or 5,400 jobs) from 2016 through 2026, which is much faster than average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). You’ll find the highest level of employment for this job in the following states: California, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Washington.


Keep Data Science Resumes Brief

The first thing you should strive for in writing a resume is to keep it short. A good resume should only be one page long unless you have 15+ years of relevant experience for the job you’re applying to. Even then, there are recruiters out there who will toss any resume longer than one page. Recruiters/hiring managers receive a LOT of resumes every day, and they usually have about 30 seconds to look over someone’s resume and make a decision.

“Let me be honest,” says Stephen Yu, president, and chief consultant at data analytics consulting firm Willow Data Strategy. “Before I meet somebody, the time that I spend [on each resume] is less than 30 seconds. If that resume doesn’t speak to me, which only happens with one in ten resumes anyway, I’m not even going to call the candidate.”

So, although you might have dozens of data science projects you’d like to highlight, you need to prioritize. You want to boil your experience down to the most important, relevant points so it is easy to scan.

Create a great data scientist resume outline to set yourself up for success

It’s easier to start a journey when you have a map. A data scientist resume outline serves the same purpose.

Here are the sections we recommend including on every data scientist resume:

  1. Resume Summary or Objective
  2. Experience
  3. Education
  4. Certifications
  5. Skills
  6. Projects
  7. Publications

These sections will help you showcase your background, as well as the knowledge you have in relevant fields.

Including both an Experience and Projects section will give the recruiter information he’s used to seeing in reverse-chronological order — your experience — but it also allows you to highlight specific things you’re proud of working on.

Similarly, having a formal Education section and a Certifications section provides you with additional opportunities to showcase knowledge gained. And this is especially helpful in the data science field where people can come from a variety of technical or economic fields and then get niche specialization in data science. Learn more from Data Science Online Training

Finally, adding a Publications section can help you showcase articles you’ve written — and we don’t mean only publications in scientific journals. Since data scientists need to interact with a variety of audiences, it’s good to show you can explain ideas clearly and efficiently — and there’s no better proof of that than written pieces.

Still, you should use this as a general suggestion, not a rule set in stone. Both the sections, as well as the order in which these sections show up in your resume, is up to you. Data scientist interview Questions

The Best Format for a Data Scientist Resume

You’re a data scientist.

Your job is pulling golden needles from fields of haystacks.

Your data scientist’s resume must be the needle, not the haystack.

  • Pick a trusted layout like reverse-chronological.
  • It’s the best data science resume format. It puts your most recent work achievements first.
  • Use clear fonts like Cambria or Arial. Delineate them with big headings. Add white space to avoid that “drowning in data” feeling.

Last, save it as a PDF. Data scientists resume PDFs stay clean across machines. MS word resumes can corrupt in transit.

  • Come with me. We’ll sneak into the recruiter’s office. Her name’s Beth.
  • Mmm. It looks like she’s having a cheesecake factory for lunch.
  • She’s also buried in a pile of 300+ data science resumes.
  • Yours is in there somewhere, like a key fact in a spreadsheet with a billion rows.
  • Catch the recruiter’s eye with a data scientist resume summary or a resume objective.
  • A resume summary is for data scientists with petabytes of experience. It uses that experience to prove you fit the job.

A resume objective sells your skills and passion. Write one if you’re basically like Ultron: new and powerful.

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