Jesper Dramsch , , , read in 2 minutes contains affiliate links

In today's economy, data scientists cannot be vague on their resumes.

In today's economy, you need to write a killer resume to show off your skills. This description needs to be highly specific about your achievements, learnings, and impact on previous jobs and projects. Making that mistake will confuse recruiters and land you in the discard pile in round one.

Even worse, here are the knock-on effects:

  • Technical reviewers will dismiss your resume
  • You can't explain your projects and impact
  • Wasted effort on an application
  • Miss out on that dream job

My first resume was vague and cost me application after application!

I had a beautiful resume. The one with the buttons for skills, two columns, and excellent colour coordination. But I thought, "I'm not in sales! How should I quantify my accomplishments?!". I filled it with jargon and skills that most experts couldn't decipher. I felt smart and accomplished and just thought my expertise simply couldn't fit the little box of standard CV advice.

What a waste of time, here's how I finally got interviews:

Instead write "Action word + Thing + using Skill + by metric".

I seriously thought my old resume was good. It wasn't. I got lucky getting my PhD position with it. The new formula got me interviews at places like Amazon, Nvidia, Deliveroo, and of course, the ECMWF, where I work now. Rewriting my resume in an intuitive manner changed my life trajectory.

Here's why this works so well

  • Recruiters know the impact you made in your job
  • Technical reviewers visualize how you use tangible skills
  • Applications finally land on the "Yes!" pile
  • You gain clarity of your specific impact on projects

Applications suck the lifeblood out of me. I am so happy I have a break from that now and while data science is fun, getting paid for your skills is obviously the end goal.

I hope this tip will save you a few hundred applications it would have saved me.

Image of Atomic Essay Day 11 - The Mistake Data Scientists Make on Their Resume and How to Avoid Writing 100s of Applications

This atomic essay was part of the October 2021 #Ship30for30 cohort. A 30-day daily writing challenge by Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole. Want to join the challenge?