The one thing that's hurting your resume
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Hey Reader I am going to be honest with you. Most resumes suck. I've reviewed well over 100 resumes at this point, and it still surprises me how very intelligent people really struggle to craft a decent one. No matter how good your grades are, or how many internships you had or even if you created a robot dog that can walk up walls, none of it matters if your resume is dogwater (pardon the pun). I want to tell you the one most important thing candidates don't do, but it's something recruiters and hiring managers really want to see. Are you ready for this? ADD METRICS TO EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE. I know. Mind = blown. But being serious for a second, metrics, especially financial ones, make it so clear the impact you bring. Whether you are a Principal Data Scientist, a non-technical recruiter or my childhood idol, Luke Skywalker, they all know what "with an estimated savings of $500,000 per annum" means. I bet you are gagging to see an example? Like a postman, I always deliver. This is an example statement that is pretty subpar: "Improved the accuracy of the recipe popularity forecasting model by using new features in the LightGBM model." Yawn. The issue with this is that it's so vague. Like, what does "improved" mean? What problem did you really solve? This is a revised and much better version: "Implemented a recipe popularity forecast machine learning model using LightGBM that improved the lead day 5 forecast by 33%, leading to £500,000 in annual food waste savings. The algorithm was deployed on AWS through lambdas and step functions." It obviously is just better. It describes the specific problem solved, the technical implementation, and the impact on the business. This is a framework you can follow:
Feel free to email me with your examples. I'd be happy to provide feedback! Speak soon, PS: It would mean the world if you filled out this short form to let me know which part of the data science and machine learning job process you are struggling with most. |
Dishing The Data
Weekly emails helping you land a job in data science or machine learning
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