Operations Analyst Resume: Examples, Template, and Resume Tips

Business operations analyst is one of the fastest growing professions in the United States. Straddling the divide between business and technology, the role of operations analysts is to collect information about business processes, procedures, and models, use this information to identify business problems, and then come up with solutions to increase the overall efficiency and profitability of the business.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, operations analyst jobs are expected to grow by 26% between 2018 and 2028, which is a lot higher than the national average for all jobs.

The BLS puts the median wage of operations analysts at about $40.09 per hour, or about $83,390 annually.

Some of the states with the highest number of operations analyst jobs include Baltimore, Boston, California, Florida, Los Angeles, New York, New York City, Texas, Virginia, and Washington DC.

Considering that it is a fast growing profession, operations analysis can be a very competitive field, and if you want to increase your chances of getting invites to job interviews and landing your dream job, you need to start with a resume that will easily and quickly convince the recruiter that you are the best candidate for that operations analyst job.

Your resume needs to show not only your qualifications, but also what you are bringing to the table. In other words, what can you help your prospective employer to achieve?

Just like your job is to find ways to make business operations more effective and efficient, in this guide, I am going to show you how to make your operations analyst resume more effective and efficient and ensure that you have a backlog of job interview invitations.

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BRILLIANT OPERATIONS ANALYST RESUME SAMPLES

Before we get into the actual process of creating an operations analyst resume from scratch, let’s start by looking at some brilliant and outstanding operations analyst resumes to give you a better idea of what we are trying to achieve.

Highly Experienced Operations Analyst Resume Sample

Entry Level Operations Analyst Resume Sample

BEST FORMAT FOR YOUR OPERATIONS ANALYST RESUME

Your resume needs to include your name, contact details, professional summary, academic qualifications, work experience, skills, and other sections that you might consider to be relevant to the position you are applying for.

How you arrange these sections on your operations analyst resume will depend on the resume format you will opt for. You have three main resume formats to choose from when writing your operations analyst resume. These are:

• The reverse-chronological resume format: This is the most popular resume format. Like the name suggests, this format arranges your professional achievements in reverse chronological order, starting from the most recent to the earliest. This is the best format to use when you have meaningful experience in your present industry. It allows recruiters to easily gauge your current level of skill and experience. The only problem with this format is that it makes it difficult to hide your employment gaps. If you are job hunting after a long hiatus, the reverse chronological resume format might not work for you.
• The functional resume format: Instead of arranging the trajectory of your career in linear order, this resume focuses on your skills and the experiences that helped you develop these skills. Instead of mentioning the relevant work profile, you simply list your skills and your achievements under these skills. Your work experiences then show instances where you applied the skills. Since it does not use a linear trajectory of your career, the functional resume is good if you happen to have some employment gaps. However, there are two major drawbacks with the functional resume. First, it is not very friendly to Applicant Tracking Systems, and therefore, your resume might be getting rejected before it gets to a human recruiter. Second, many recruiters know how to read between the lines, and using a functional resume might be a signal that you are trying to hide something from them.
• The hybrid (combination) resume format: As you can probably guess from the name, this resume format is a combination of the other two. There are two types of hybrid resumes. The first one groups skills under the “Professional Experience Section,” with your work experience listed in reverse chronological order, but instead of focusing on your duties and responsibilities under each work profile, you focus on the skills that you gained in that tenure. The second type of hybrid resume groups skills in its own section near the top of the resume. Your then use your previous work profiles to show how you applied those skills.

NAILING THE PERSONAL INFORMATION SECTION OF YOUR OPERATIONS ANALYST RESUME

Most people do not pay much attention to this section. After all, it’s just writing your name and contact details, right?

Well, I’ll tell you why you need to start paying more attention to the personal info section of your operations analyst resume.

Ever since resumes became the standard tool for job hunting, some norms and standards have sprung up to guide the writing of resumes. Automated recruitment tools such as ATS software are also governed by these standards.

What this means is that if your resume does not conform to these standards, it will probably get rejected by an ATS.

Imagine spending your time crafting a stellar operations analyst resume, only for the resume to get rejected by an ATS because you bungled something small in the personal information section of your resume.

To avoid this, below are some things you need to keep in mind when writing the personal information section of your resume:

• Use your official names as they appear on your driving license or other official identification document.
• Keep your email address professional. The firstnamelastname@provider.com format works perfectly well. Avoid using nicknames in your email address. When job searching, you should also avoid email addresses affiliated with a previous employer or an academic institution you attended.
• You don’t have to write your complete physical address. If you have to include your address, simply mentioning the area is enough.
• Only include links to your online profiles (such as LinkedIn, Twitter, or GitHub) if they look professional and will increase your chances of getting hired. If you have an unprofessional looking Twitter, an empty GitHub profile, or a LinkedIn profile that was last updated eons ago, don’t include the link, since it will only hurt your chances of getting hired.
• There’s no point in mentioning things like your marital status, sex, race, country of origin, or any other personal information that might lead to biased decision making.

Below is an example of the right way to write the personal info section of your operations analyst resume:

CAPTURE THE RECRUITER’S ATTENTION WITH A WELL WRITTEN PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY/OBJECTIVE

Very often, a lot of job seekers use a canned career objective with phrases like “looking for a challenging environment,” “a team player,” or “an excellent communicator.”

Considering that recruiters go through thousands of resumes, how many times do you think they have seen resumes with such a career objective?

If you want your operations analyst resume to stand out, drop this cliché and start thinking about what you are bringing to the table. What are you offering your prospective employer?

Mention how your past experiences are relevant to what the employer is looking for, or how you can leverage your skills to help company reach its goals.

Consider the following professional summary:

Now compare it to this other one:

You cannot expect the first candidate to get an invitation to a job interview when there are candidates with summaries like the second one.

If you want to gain an edge over your competitors, you need a summary like the second one, which immediately hooks the recruiter and shows why you are the best person for the job.

If you do not have much experience, you should use a career objective instead of a professional summary. Still, you should focus on your skills and how they align with what the employer is looking for.

Simply find out what the employer’s greatest problem is, and show them how your skills can help them solve this problem.

USING YOUR SKILLS TO GIVE YOUR OPERATIONS ANALYST RESUME AN EDGE

Employers aren’t looking for just anyone to fill the open operations analyst position. They want someone with specific skills. If you can show that you have these skills, you will greatly increase your chances of getting the job.

When it comes to listing your skills, go through the job description and identify the skills that the employer is looking for, and then tailor the skills on your resume to what the employer is looking for.

However, any other candidate can do this. You want to go a step further and demonstrate your ability to apply these skills in the professional experience section. This way, the recruiter will be certain that you have these skills and did not just copy paste them from the job description.

When listing your skills, it is advisable to use bullet points. This will make it easier for the recruiter to compare your skills to the list of skills they are looking for.

You should also use the same keywords used on the job description in order to increase your chances with the ATS.

Finally, for an operations analyst position, you should prioritize hard skills over soft skills. While the soft skills are also important, they are not as important as the professional skills.

Technical Skills

If you want your operations analyst resume to pop even more, you should separate your technical skills from the other skills.

This is because operations analysis is a highly technical field, and you want to give the recruiter a good idea of the technical skills you possess in addition to the other professional and soft skills.

When it comes to technical skills, you should also tailor them to suit what the employer is looking for. However, unlike the other professional skills, you can also include any other technical skills you possess, even when the employer has not expressly mentioned that they are looking for these skills.

The best way to list your technical skills is to group them into sub-categories that will make it easier for a recruiter to find the information they are looking for. Below is an example of how to do this:

This makes it a lot easier for a recruiter to scan this section compared to listing all these skills together.

SHOWCASING YOUR OPERATION ANALYST EXPERIENCE IN YOUR RESUME

This is a very important section of an operations analyst resume. It plays a significant role in determining whether you get hired or not.

Since operational analysis is a highly technical field, it involves a lot of technical jargon and methodologies. However, it’s good to note that the hiring manager or recruiter who is going to read your resume might not be a technical person.

Therefore, you should try as much as possible to use terminology that is going to be understood by a generalist. A good approach is to only use jargon and terminologies that are used in the job description. For terminologies that do not appear in the job description, try to explain them in layman’s language or focus on the impact they are able to deliver.

When listing your experience, you should not just list your responsibilities in each role. You should also mention what you were able to achieve, as well as the quantifiable impact you were able to deliver in each role.

A good way to do this is to establish a cause-effect relationship for everything listed in your experience section.

In other words, you should mention the project you were working on, what you did, and the result you achieved.

Below is an example of how to write the experience section:

HOW TO DESCRIBE YOUR EDUCATION IN YOUR OPERATION ANALYST RESUME

This is another section that most people do not pay much attention to when creating their operations analyst resume.

If you want to stand out from the hundreds of other resumes the recruiter is going through, you should make the most of the education section by going beyond listing your degrees. Mention any achievements you made while undergoing your education. Below is an example of how to do this.

This is a lot better than simply listing your degree and GPA, and it can give you an edge over a similarly qualified candidate, especially if you are applying for an entry level position. It’s also good to note that you should avoid mentioning your GPA if it is lower than 3.5.

SPICE UP YOUR OPERATIONS ANALYST RESUME BY MENTIONING YOUR CERTIFICATIONS

While certifications are not absolutely necessary to get a job as an operations analyst, they can still give you an advantage over other candidates, and if you have received some certifications that are related to the operations analysis field, there is no harm in flaunting them.

Below is a list of some common certifications that are relevant to business operations analysts.

• CompTIA Project+ Certification
• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
• Certified Associate in Project Management
• Associate in Project Management
• Certified Project Management Practitioner
• Certified Project Director
• Project Management Professional
• PRINCE2 Practitioner/PRICE2 Foundation

WRAPPING UP

That’s it! By following this simple guide, you will be able to create an irresistible operations analyst resume, and you’ll start receiving more call backs and invitations to job interviews if you implement what you have learnt in this guide.

Here’s a recap of what you have learnt in this guide:

• Unless you have significant employment gaps in your career, go for the reverse chronological resume format.
• Check the personal information section of your operations analyst resume to ensure you don’t get rejected by an ATS because of some flimsy reason.
• Use a professional summary/career objective that shows what you can do for the prospective employer.
• List your skills before your experience. You should also have a separate section for your technical skills, and arrange them in sub-categories to make it easier for the recruiter.
• Establish a cause-effect relationship when writing down your professional experience and avoid using lots of technical jargon.
• If you are applying for an entry level job, ensure your education section includes any achievements you got while undergoing education.
• If you have any relevant certifications, use them to spice up your operations analyst resume.

All the best in your job search, and remember, if you don’t want to build your operations analyst resume from scratch, you can always use our resume builder.