How to write a Data CV

Called a resume in the US and a CV almost everywhere else — the same document, and these are the rules it gets judged by.

The conventions below are the ones this field actually uses. They are what the builder applies when you pick Data / Analytics / ML, and what the rating checks a finished CV against.

What it must contain

Leave any of these out and the CV reads as incomplete to someone who hires in this field:

Technical Skills
Work experience — State the decision your analysis changed, not the tool you opened.

The order to put them in

Order is not cosmetic. What sits at the top is what gets read before someone decides whether to keep reading.

Professional summary
Technical Skills
Work experience
Projects
Education
Publications
Certifications
Achievements
Languages

Section by section

Projects — Include the dataset size and the measured result - accuracy alone means little.

What to put numbers on

The single most common reason a CV in this field reads as weak is that nothing in it is measured. These are the figures that mean something here:

accuracy · AUC · RMSE · lift · revenue · churn · rows processed · runtime

Verbs that carry weight

Openers like “responsible for” and “worked on” describe a job description rather than a person. In this field these do the work instead:

Modelled · Forecast · Segmented · Automated · Reduced · Identified · Validated · Deployed

Length

1 to 2 pages is normal for this field.

Build a Data CV See a worked example

Free, no account, and nothing is uploaded — the builder runs in your browser and the CV never leaves it.

Common questions

What should a data CV include?

A data CV has to carry technical skills and work experience. The order this field expects is professional summary, technical skills, work experience and projects.

What goes first on a data CV?

The professional summary. That is where this field's convention puts it, and it is what the builder applies when you pick Data.

How long should a data CV be?

1 to 2 pages is normal for this field. Going longer does not add weight; it moves the thing being looked for further down.

Is a data CV the same as a data resume?

For applying to a job, yes - the same document under two names. Resume is the usual word in North America and CV almost everywhere else. The one real exception is the academic CV, which is long-form and lists publications.

Is there a free data CV template?

Yes. ihatejob builds one to this field’s convention for free, with no account and no upload: the section order, the section names and the rating all come from the data pack described on this page. It exports to PDF, Word and plain text.