Writing a Business Analyst CV

The idea of a CV is to display your work history and offer a hiring employer or recruiter an insight in to you as a person and a potential addition to their team. You should try to make your CV as interesting and as easy to read as possible.

As a traditional document used in job applications, your Business Analyst CV will be expected to follow a certain format and should include the following:

Profile Summary

You should start your Business Analyst CV with a short profile summary (ideally between 4 and 6 lines long) that should be a brief introduction to you and your character. You should include your aims, key characteristics (that relate to the role you are applying for) and an overview of any experience you have in Business Analysis i.e. “15 years’ experience as a Business Analyst in the IT industry.” The focus however should be on your character and the key elements that make you the ideal candidate for the role.

Education

Hiring managers and recruiters will expect to see your education after your profile summary. It is common practise to list your education in reverse chronological order as your most recent qualifications are often the most relevant to the role you are applying for and therefore the most interesting to the recruiter. You should include information such as where you studied, course title and dates for all key qualifications. If you have any industry relevant qualifications such as BCS or IIBA certifications, then these can be a huge boost to your Business Analyst CV and they should be included in this section. If you studied particular modules as part of a course or degree that were particularly relevant to the role you are applying for, then don’t be afraid of mentioning these and going in to a little more detail.

Although it might have been a few years since you left full time education, it is always a good idea to include degrees, A levels and GCSE’s if you have them.

Experience

The format of your experience section should be similar to that of your education in that positions should be listed from your most recent position backwards. Although you should try to include all your previous positions for Business Analyst Contractors or Senior Business Analysts, this may be tough and cause your CV to be very long, so it is recommended that you list just the most relevant positions and simply make note to other employment. You should only go in to detail on the positions that highlight skills or experience relevant to the role you are applying for. It is perfectly acceptable to use bullet points in this section in order to make your CV much easier to read.

When you start writing about each of your previous positions, it is a good idea to keep the job description to hand so that you can keep a focus on highlighting only relevant skills and experience.

Hobbies and Interests

Some people choose not to include this section – and it is your choice, however it is a good way of further demonstrating your personality so that a recruiter or hiring employer can determine how likely it is you will fit in well with the existing team.

If you do include this section, make sure you keep it short – no more than 2 or 3 lines.

Additional information

As it says on the tin, this section is designed to allow you to include anything else you feel may be relevant to your application that doesn’t fall under the other sections. For example, if you hold a valid driving licence.

References

Most employers will ask applicants to provide references at some point in the recruitment process. For most people providing the names of you referees is not a problem and so you can add their name, job title and contact details in this section of your Business Analyst CV. However, it is well understood that some more established professionals can have reasons for not wanting a potential employer to contact their referees until the later stages of the recruitment process. If this is the case for you, it is perfectly acceptable to simply put “References available on request” in this section.

Top tips for writing your Business Analyst CV

• First impressions count – and your Business Analyst CV is likely to be the first contact you have with the company you are applying to, so make sure it is laid out nicely and is easy to read!
• You don’t need to include a photo on your CV
• Keep your CV interesting by avoiding repetition.
• Keep your CV short – no more than 2 A4 pages! If it’s too long you will begin to lose the recruiters attention and in turn they might give up on reading.