Is my ATS-friendly resume actually hurting my chances?

@UXDesigner415 One more tip for your data analyst resume: create a brief "Technical Profile" or summary statement at the top that positions you as a data analyst, not a student. Something like: "Data analyst with experience in statistical modeling, database design, and creating actionable business insights through visualization. Proficient in Python, SQL, and Tableau with a focus on financial and marketing analytics."
This frames everything that follows from a professional perspective rather than an academic one.

Thank you all so much for this incredible advice! I'm feeling much more confident about transforming my data analyst resume now. I'm going to:

Create a dedicated "Data Projects" section with professional descriptions
Focus on business problems solved and quantifiable results
Use strong action verbs and highlight technical skills
Create a GitHub portfolio to showcase my actual work
Emphasize data scale and complexity
Include presentations and communication experience
Add a skills summary at the top

Would it be helpful to include a small data visualization I created as part of my resume, or should I save all that for the portfolio?

@UXDesigner415 Regarding visualizations - I'd save those for your portfolio rather than embedding them in your data analyst resume. Keep your resume clean and text-based for ATS compatibility. However, you could include a QR code linking to your portfolio if you're submitting physical copies!
One more thing: I found the Resume Writing Lab site super helpful when writing my data analyst resume. They have specific guides for showcasing projects as experience that really helped me structure my descriptions professionally.

@FutureTechie That makes sense about the visualizations - I'll save them for the portfolio and keep my data analyst resume clean and ATS-friendly. Thanks for the suggestion about Resume Writing Lab - I'll check that out for additional guidance!

@UXDesigner415 dude same boat, data science grad, zero internships, only uni projects. on my data analyst resume i just wrote "did sql queries" lol, no wonder zero calls. now i do like "Built predictive model in Python (scikit-learn) on 80k customer dataset → 89% accuracy predicting churn, saved hypothetical $50k in retention costs". sounds way better for data analyst resume. recruiters eat that up. you tried adding business context to your projects yet?

@CodeNinja23 @UXDesigner415 business context is key!!! i had same issue — projects looked like homework. rewrote my data analyst resume like this:

Cleaned and analyzed 120k rows e-commerce data using SQL & pandas → identified 22% drop-off in checkout funnel
Created Power BI dashboard tracking sales KPIs → presented to class, got 95/100 feedback

no internship but at least now data analyst resume doesn't scream "student". still no responses tho 😭 anyone know if recruiters care about kaggle rank on data analyst resumes?

@FirstJobPanic kaggle rank helps a bit, i put my top 10% in one comp and got one dm from recruiter. but honestly for data analyst resume without experience the biggest win is GitHub with clean notebooks + readme explaining business value. mine was "just code" → now "end-to-end analysis from raw csv to stakeholder insights". callbacks +2. @UXDesigner415 try that. if still stuck, friend used Resume Writing Lab for data analyst resume — said they made projects look like real client work. worth checking if diy не йде.

OMG thank you guys, seriously reading this made me rewrite half the night 🔥
took your advice: moved data projects right after summary, added business framing like "Analyzed public retail dataset (200k+ rows) with SQL & Tableau → uncovered seasonal trends leading to 18% potential revenue uplift", linked GitHub with notebooks, even threw in Kaggle profile.