What skills should I put on a data analyst resume?

SQL, Excel, one BI tool such as Tableau or Power BI, and Python or R if you use them. Add methods like A/B testing or forecasting only if you can talk through an example.

What are good keywords for a data analyst resume?

The ones in the job post, usually SQL, Excel, Tableau or Power BI, Python, data visualization, dashboards, stakeholder reporting and statistics. Use them in bullets as well as in the skills list.

How do I write a data analyst resume with no experience?

Lead with one or two real analysis projects on public data, each with a question, the tools and the finding. Follow with relevant coursework, certificates and any job where you worked with numbers or reports.

Should a data analyst resume be one page?

Yes, for most people with under ten years of experience. Recruiters skim it in under a minute, and one page forces you to keep your strongest analysis.

How to write a data analyst resume

By Mubeen Jawed, founder of ResumeForDev · Updated November 7, 2026

Short answer

A data analyst resume should show the business question, the data and tools you used, and the decision your work changed. Write bullets like “Built a Power BI churn dashboard from 4 SQL sources, used weekly by the retention team to target 1,200 at-risk accounts.” List SQL, Excel, one BI tool (Tableau or Power BI) and Python or R if you use them, link a portfolio project if you're entry level, and keep it to one page.

Key points

Each bullet: the question, the tool, and what someone did with the answer.
SQL is the one skill nearly every data analyst posting asks for. Show it in a bullet.
Name your BI tool. “Dashboards” alone isn't a keyword recruiters search for.
Entry level: one or two real analysis projects beat a long coursework list.

What a data analyst resume needs to prove

Hiring managers reading a data analyst resume want to know three things: you can get data out of a database yourself, you can turn it into something a non-analyst understands, and someone made a decision because of it. Most weak resumes stop at the first one (“wrote SQL queries”). The strong ones finish the story.

Before and after

Before:Created dashboards and reports using Tableau and SQL.

After:Built a Tableau sales dashboard on 3 years of order data (SQL, ~8M rows) that replaced 6 weekly Excel reports and is used by 25 regional managers.

The rewrite names the scale, what it replaced and who uses it.

Numbers you can use on a data analyst resume

Where data analysts find metrics for bullets
Metric	Example phrasing
Data volume	on 12M transaction rows from 4 sources
Audience	used weekly by 40 people across sales and finance
Time saved	replaced a 6-hour manual monthly report
Decision changed	led to pausing 2 underperforming ad channels
Money	identified $180k in duplicate vendor payments
Accuracy	cut forecast error from 18% to 9%

Example data analyst bullets

Wrote SQL models joining CRM and billing data to measure customer churn by cohort, which became the basis for the retention team's quarterly targets.
Automated a weekly KPI report in Python (pandas) and scheduled it in Airflow, saving the finance team about 5 hours a week.
Ran an A/B test analysis on a new onboarding flow (40k users) and showed a 4.2% lift in activation, which led to a full rollout.
Cleaned and merged 3 years of support-ticket data in Excel and Power Query to find the 5 product issues behind 60% of tickets.
Built a Power BI inventory dashboard for 14 warehouses that cut stock-out reports from weekly to near real time.

Data analyst skills and keywords

Recruiters filter data analyst resumes on a short, predictable list of tools. Group them, list only what you've used, and make sure the important ones also appear inside a bullet. See the full resume keywords by role list for related roles.

Querying: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigQuery, Snowflake)
Analysis: Excel (pivot tables, Power Query, XLOOKUP), Python (pandas, NumPy) or R
Visualization: Tableau, Power BI, Looker, matplotlib
Methods: A/B testing, cohort analysis, regression, forecasting
Other: dbt, Airflow, Git, Jira

Entry-level data analyst resume

With no analyst job yet, lead with projects. Pick a public dataset close to the industry you're applying to, ask a real question, and publish the SQL or notebook with a short write-up of what you found. One project with a clear finding is worth more than five tutorial notebooks. Put coursework and certificates (Google Data Analytics, for example) below the projects, and use the new grad resume guide for structure.

On ResumeForDev, set your target role to “Data Analyst”. Without a job post, the keyword check compares your resume against a data and ML vocabulary. Paste a job description and the keyword check uses that post's terms instead; on Pro, the writer also tailors the bullets to it. Before writing, it asks follow-up questions about the numbers above, and it removes any number or skill you never gave it. Your first resume is free.

Frequently asked questions

What skills should I put on a data analyst resume?: SQL, Excel, one BI tool such as Tableau or Power BI, and Python or R if you use them. Add methods like A/B testing or forecasting only if you can talk through an example.
What are good keywords for a data analyst resume?: The ones in the job post, usually SQL, Excel, Tableau or Power BI, Python, data visualization, dashboards, stakeholder reporting and statistics. Use them in bullets as well as in the skills list.
How do I write a data analyst resume with no experience?: Lead with one or two real analysis projects on public data, each with a question, the tools and the finding. Follow with relevant coursework, certificates and any job where you worked with numbers or reports.
Should a data analyst resume be one page?: Yes, for most people with under ten years of experience. Recruiters skim it in under a minute, and one page forces you to keep your strongest analysis.