Welcome back. Everyone out there has their own personal work history. We all started somewhere, whether part-time or full-time. What matters for your resume is how you present the work you've done. In this video, we'll hone in on work history, and how you can translate yours effectively for your data analyst resume. If you don't have a specific section for work history in your resume, that's okay. You can use the same basic ideas to adjust your skills and qualifications section. The good news is that you already have a lot of the skills that recruiters and hiring agents look for when they hire data analysts. You've probably used lots of them in previous jobs. We call these "transferable skills." Transferable skills are skills and qualities that can transfer from one job or industry to another. Think about all the positions you've held, associate, owner, team member, manager, and how they might be used as a data analyst. Let's start with the big one that we talked about before: communication. When job descriptions say they want strong communication skills for a data analyst, it usually means they want someone who can speak about what they do to people who aren't as technical or analytical. If someone who's not familiar with the analytics can understand what you're talking about when you try to explain it to them, your communication skills are usually good-to-go. You've probably had to communicate in other jobs you had, whether with employees, customers or clients, team members, or managers. You might have had to give presentations too, whether formal or informal. In your work history section, you can highlight how your effective communication skills have helped you. You can also refer to specific presentations you've made and the outcomes of those presentations, and you can even include the audience for your presentations, especially if you present it to large groups or people in senior positions. After listing job details, like the place and length of employment, you might add something like, "effectively implemented and communicated daily workflow to fellow team members, resulting in an increase in productivity." Here you'd change the details based on the work you did. Since you'll be working in the world of data, including any quantitative data would be ideal. For example, the increase in productivity might have been a 15 percent increase. As long as you have a way to back up your data, hopefully with more data, then you can put it in your resume. This example brings us to the next transferable skill. Data analysts are problem-solvers. When problems arise in a database or lines of code, data analysts need to be able to find and troubleshoot the problem. If you have no prior experience working with data, you can still talk about your problem-solving skills. That last example we shared does a great job of showing an ability to problem-solve. It's actually written as a PAR, or problem, action, results statement, which we talked about earlier. The problem is that the daily workflow procedures were not in place. The action is that you put the procedures into effect and communicated them to your team, and the result is that productivity increased by 15 percent. This makes it clear that there was a problem, and you solved it. We can also use a statement to point out teamwork as an important quality to bring to the data analyst world. While you might have plenty of work to do on your own, it'll always be for the benefit of the team. Team means not only the data team you're part of, but the whole company as well. That's a few skills you can add to your work experience and skills and qualifications sections. All of these are known as soft skills. Soft skills are non-technical traits and behaviors that relate to how you work. Being detail-oriented and demonstrating perseverance are two more examples of soft skills that anyone hiring a data analyst will look for. Companies want to know that you will do your analysis carefully and to completion, no matter what setbacks you might face along the way. If you worked at a retail job, you can talk about how your attention to detail helps you find discrepancies while handling a high volume of money, and you could add how you continue to practice customer service at a high level, despite a high turnover rate at the management level. These are just some examples to think about and apply to your work details. Take a moment and think back to your last job, or maybe it's your current job. What soft skills do you use to find success? Are you starting to understand how those are transferable to the world of data analytics? Using PAR statements and focusing on your transferable soft skills can really add to the power of your resume. Now you can keep powering on to the next step to continue learning about the data analytics field and your future job in it. See you in the next video.
