Here’s the reader’s dilemma:

I’ve been the sole BA in my organisation for nearly a decade, only finally getting formal training in the past 8 months or so. The ‘Barely controlled chaos’ and lack of interest in formal methods has been incredibly frustrating. I’ve now been made redundant, and would like to share what happened with the first job I applied for.

For info, I have a BSC in computing, a diploma in systems practice, a diploma in business analysis, and I’m a professional member of the chartered institute for IT.

I went through the recruitment process for a firm about a month back. I passed two interviews and a group exercise with flying colours. The feedback was all very positive. However, they commented that they’d have liked longer to talk about the specific tasks I’d completed. At their request I forwarded copies of some deliverables I’d produced from various projects. They were very aware of the informal setting I work in, and lack of exposure to other BAs.

The final feedback I got was that the content of the deliverables was good, but not ‘strong’ enough, so I didn’t get hired.

I feel frustrated, as anything more complex than the examples I’d sent would be inappropriate in my current role. By their own admission I was a ‘Great fit’ for the organisation, and I hold qualifications that they hope to have their other staff pursue. I feel I’m in a catch 22 as I can’t get experience of using formal methods extensively until I get another post. Can’t get another post because I can’t evidence long-term use of formal methods!

Thanks for sharing your story. That sounds like a really unfortunate situation — to be so close to a job that’s the right fit and have it fall through. In what follows, I’ll describe the problem with work samples and give you some practical tips for using them to your advantage.

You may also want to check out this video on how to really sell your business analyst skills in a job interview.

(Before I forget, I want to be sure you know that you can download my free BA Job Interview Prep Guide and receive more detailed information on preparing for your business analyst job interview.)

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #1 – Tell me about yourself.

Nearly every interview starts out with this question, but it’s frustratingly vague. Does the interviewer want a complete rundown of your career history? Or a synopsis of your key skills? Or a more personal account of how you got where you are today?

Instead of stumbling through a long-winded introduction that may or may not be relevant to the position or interesting to your interviewer, a good approach is to provide a brief summary and turn this opening question into an opportunity to shape the direction of the job interview and focus the discussion on your most compelling business analysis qualifications.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #2 – Tell me about a time you ____.

Fill in the blank with any key term from the job description. These are called behavioral interview questions and your interviewer wants to hear about how you used a skill or technique required to be successful in this job. Select one of the more positive and complex experiences from your career background and tell this story with as much detail as possible.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #3 – What is a _____?

Again, fill in the blank with any key term from the job description. (Common examples would include business process, use case, or data dictionary. These questions seem different from behavioral interview questions, but I would suggest providing a brief answer and then sharing a specific experience you have related to the skill. That’s what is going to help your interviewer believe you really know what you are doing anyway, even if they don’t directly ask about your experience.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #4 – How do you deal with difficult stakeholders?

This one can crop up in a variety of forms, depending on the difficulties perceived by your interviewer. This question is nice because it gives you a bit of insight into the challenges you might face at this organization, which you’ll want to understand before you accept an offer.

Like many interview questions, you’ll gain the most confidence from your reviewer if you provide a direct answer and then speak to a similar challenge you had in a previous stakeholder environment. Working with difficult stakeholders is one of those areas where your transferable soft skills are extremely important, so even if you don’t have a relevant BA experience, be ready to speak to a relevant experience from a different profession.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #5 – What will you miss most about your current job?

Typically someone asking this question is looking to get a feel for your orientation and what you perceive as most important about a job opportunity. They may want to be sure they can position their organization in a positive light against your past experience or they may be looking to make sure that you would be a good fit for the work environment they have to offer.

Avoid answers like “being the expert” as that can make you seem tied to your current position and lacking confidence in your ability to perform in a new role. Saying you’ll miss the people is always a safe choice – just be sure you can say it honestly and back the sentiment up with detail.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #6 – What was a typical day like at your most recent job?

I used to like to start with this question to get a good feel for the candidate’s actual work experience and their ability to summarize it briefly and relevantly. It’s a bit of a false question because everyone knows that there is no “typical” day. As a business analyst, your work varies greatly day to day.

The best candidates I’ve interviewed were quick to point out that there is no typical day and then speak to the types of days they had or activities they engaged in. (As a side note, having a candidate nicely but clearly point out that your question is a bit off shows that they have the confidence to correct a potential manager. This type of leadership is a quality that managers are often looking for in BAs.)

To answer this kind of question, be ready to speak more to the types of meetings you attended and client engagements you had than the deliverables you created. This is also a good question to speak to how you organize your time, handle conflicting priorities, and stay focused on moving your projects forward.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #7 – Tell me about your typical approach to a project.

This question is looking both to understand your business analysis process and see how flexible you might be. If you start spouting lists of deliverables and processes, you’ll probably turn most hiring managers off. Instead, speak to the general phases or types of deliverables you tend to create and let them know how you’ve customized specific approaches to the project needs. Then ask about their project and business analysis processes.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #8 – When are you done with requirements?

When I was interviewing BAs, this was my favorite question as part of the screening process. I can’t tell you how many candidates couldn’t answer it or provide clear criteria for finishing a set of requirements. Don’t be those candidates!

Be prepared to speak to how you see the business analysis effort through from start to finish – and that you know how to finish. Finishing typically meets a set of clear and approved requirements that represent the business need and have been vetted by the solution team.

(For more information about what you can do to cultivate a manager’s confidence in you as a BA job candidate, you might also read about our BA job search process.)

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #9 – What do you see as the key strengths of a business analyst?

Business analysis is a growing and emerging profession. Employers want to know that you are aware of the skills needed to succeed as a business analyst, and that this is not just technology skills.

Be prepared to speak to the variety of business analyst roles within the profession and the key business analyst skills that are important for success in the role.

Business Analyst Job Interview Question #10 – What questions do you have for me?

As a business analyst, you will ask questions – lots of them. There is no better place to demonstrate your ability to ask thoughtful, intelligent questions than in the interview. Your interviewer should ask you if you have questions and you should have at least a few.

Turn this part of the interview into a conversation by sharing more about your experience or offering a suggestion. Use active listening techniques so your interviewer feels heard and understood. This is a time to demonstrate your elicitation skills, not just simply get a few questions answered.

>>Go Into Your Next Interview with Confidence

Pick up the BA Job Interview Prep Guide that walks you through the essential steps you need to take to prepare for your first or next business analyst job interview.

Click here to get your copy of the BA Job Interview Prep Guide

Today I’m going to share 8 business analyst resume secrets you absolutely need to know – and they are especially relevant if, like so many business analysts, you don’t have the BA job title.

1. Your Business Analyst Resume Does Not Need to Catalog Your Work History

Many professionals fall into the trap of thinking they need to include a complete catalog of their work experiences and skills in their resume. The first secret you need to be “in” on when putting together your resume is that your resume is not a catalog, it’s a sales document.

This means you can be selectively honest about the skills and experience you include and emphasize in your resume, and you should organize your resume so that it presents your qualifications in the best possible way.

Provided you are applying to business analyst jobs you are reasonably well qualified for, something we talk about in our business analyst job search process, the next 7 secrets will help you create a resume that sells your qualifications in a way that doesn’t make you uncomfortable.

2. Create a Specific Summary So Your Resume Isn’t Quickly Sent to the “No” Pile

Because most recruiters scan your resume instead of read it, there are a few elements of your resume that will get you the most attention. The first one of these is your objective or summary statement.  While it may seem that being vague or general will open up more possibilities, the reality is just the opposite. Highlight your business analysis accomplishments and make it crystal clear that you are qualified for the types of BA jobs to which you are applying.

This can also be a great place to include the phrase “certified business analyst”, whether that’s a certification from IIBA like the CBAP, or the Applied Certification in Business Analysis (ACBA) that we offer through Bridging the Gap.

Because many recruiters skip right past the objective on your resume, you need to make sure that other parts of your resume draw them in too. Let’s move on to those other parts.

3. Tweak Your Job Titles to Get Your Resume Read

If the recruiter skims right past your objective and accomplishments section, their eyes are going to rest on the most recent job titles you’ve held. These are typically in bold (if not, they probably should be) and stand out.

Do your job titles present you as a candidate that is qualified for the types of jobs to which you are applying? If your most recent job title is listed as “Network Engineer,” “Software Developer” or “Customer Support,” you are most likely to get calls for jobs with similar titles.

Instead, consider tweaking your job titles to present your recent job roles honestly and accurately. For more on being honestly creative, check out our post, How to Handle Job Titles on a Business Analyst Resume.

4. Highlight Your Most Relevant Skills and Still Be Honest

Remember how we said that your resume is a sales document? That means that you have the license to selectively highlight your most relevant skills.

One way to do this is to focus on the projects where you held the most BA responsibilities – this enables you to get beyond being a “jack of all trades”  and focus on your business analysis career experiences. And it does not mean “overselling” yourself – it’s just a matter of selectively telling the truth.

(By the way, you’ll learn about a whole host of transferable skills in the best-selling book How to Start a Business Analyst Career.)

Out of all the business analyst resumes I review, by and large, this is where most professionals need to invest the most time

Here are some of the mistakes I see.

• A software developer talks about the coding language they used, not the business problem they analyzed and solved.
• A customer support person details their primary responsibilities and the “special project” they participated in as an SME/BA is relegated to a single bullet point that goes unnoticed.
• A prior manager is so “accomplishments focused” that they overshadow their abilities to roll up their sleeves and do business analysis work such as role definition, business process analysis, managing change, and obtaining buy-in across multiple departments.

5. Use Business Analysis Terminology to Demonstrate Your Capabilities

Let me let you in on another secret. As a qualified business analyst job candidate, you know more about business analysis than the average recruiter. While you know that “process flows” and “workflow diagrams” mean the same thing, the person doing the first-pass review of your resume might not. This means that you’ll hear back from the most opportunities if you use the right terminology to talk about your experiences in your resume. These are called transferable business analysis skills.

Here’s an example from my own resume: As a QA Engineer I coordinated multiple business groups to review a particular application before it went live to our customers. At the time, we called this activity “data testing.” Later I learned the formal term was “user acceptance testing.” I now use “user acceptance testing” on my resume. It’s accurate and honest and presents me as more qualified for certain business analysis positions.

Once you have selected your most relevant skills and the right terminology for them, you’ll want to craft bullet points that clearly communicate those skills and build instant credibility. And that leads us to secret #6.

6. Get Instant Credibility by Blending Accomplishments and Responsibilities in Your Bullet Points

I’m often asked whether to highlight your accomplishments (what you achieved for your project or organization) or your responsibilities (what you did for your organization) in your work history section.

My answer: Both.

In your resume’s bullet points, you want to show how you used a business analysis skill and achieved something significant by applying that skill. So you essentially back-up an accomplishment with a qualification, using the right terms you’ve selected above.

You can add to your credibility by using a variety of concrete details to talk about your contributions. Even if you don’t have access to precise project results, you can include a variety of numbers and details that help give shape to your experiences, thereby helping your reader see what kinds of things you might be able to do for their organization.

7. Address Any Employment Gaps Clearly

Some of the resume gurus will tell you to hide an employment gap in your resume by reorganizing it in a functional resume format. In all the work I’ve done with new business analysts and transitioning professionals, I’ve never seen this approach work. Assume the person reading your resume is a relatively intelligent human being who is not going to miss a gap because you’ve reorganized your work history in a confusing way. Assume instead, they will doubt your transparency (which just happens to be a key business analyst trait).

Giving others the opportunity to make false assumptions about you and your work, will only get your resume into the “no” pile. Proactively address your employment gap on your resume. Tell an honest story that shows you are ready, able, and willing to do the work of a business analyst.

8. Someone Else Cannot Write Your Resume For You

Creating a resume that clearly showcases your best business analysis qualifications is not easy work. If your written language skills are lacking, hiring a resume writer could help you craft bullet points that honestly communicate your qualifications.

But keep in mind that as a business analyst you will be writing a lot of documentation, so your resume is an artifact that demonstrates your ability to fulfill a key business analysis competency, just like the business analyst job interview is a time to demonstrate you can ask insightful questions.

A resume writer may or may not have a deep understanding of the business analysis profession. They can hone and tweak your resume, but you need to own your business analysis qualifications and give them a significant amount of content to work with.

Be Ready for Your Business Analyst Job Interview

Once you have your resume ready to go, the next thing to be prepared for is the job interviews!

>> Click here to download the BA Job Interview Prep Guide <<

In particular, what’s different is how you position your skills to a potential employer. I’ve been on both sides of the business analyst job interview process multiple times – I’ve hired several BAs and, while I was contracting, I interviewed for several BA positions.

In this video, I share my insider tips on how to prove or show your business analysis skills in an interview.

For those who like to read instead of watch, here’s the full text of the video:

Today we’re going to talk about job interviews, specifically, how do you sell your skills in a business analyst job interview?

Let’s jump right in.

Two Types of BA Job Interview Questions

In my experience, there are two kinds of questions where employers are looking to understand your skills and the competencies that you bring to the table. The first is a knowledge-based question, which would be along the lines of,

“Can you tell me what a business process is?”

“Can you tell me what a use case is?”

These are general questions about a specific skill that feels like they’re asking you to tell them what you know about that skill.

The second is a behavioral interview question, which is, “Tell me about a time when…”

“Tell me about a time when you used a use case.”

“Tell me about a time when you analyzed a business process.”

This is a different kind of question because they’re asking for you to talk about your experience.

Now, here’s the catch. I really think that for both kinds of questions, what employers are really looking for or what an individual is really looking for is to understand that you can do the things that they need you to do to be successful in that job role. That means, they want to hear about your experience.

You could simply answer,

“Oh, a business process. That’s a step-by-step workflow of how a business user completes a task.”

Great. You could have learned that out of a textbook. If you answer the question, “Can you tell me what a business process is?” with a textbook answer, no matter how correct it is, it’s not going to feel nearly so awesome and validating and confidence-building as,

“You know, a business process, that’s a step-by-step workflow of how a business user completes a process or adds value to the organization. One time I had this project where we had to analyze five different business processes and they were all related and it was in the accounting department. We looked at their accounts receivable processes and we discovered all these issues about why we weren’t receiving as much money as we should be.”

And now you start talking about how you improved the process and engaged stakeholders in the process and analyzed the process. Who is going to stand apart? The person who has the perfect textbook answer? Which is why nobody else can give you an answer to a job interview question because that textbook answer isn’t what people are looking for.

They ’re going to be like, what I really want to know is that this person can do business process analysis or do use case modeling or do whatever it is that I’m asking them about. That experience, that sharing of a specific example is going to build that rapport, is going to build that confidence that they have in you and your skill set.

Be thinking about how you can share those examples in an interview.

This Also Works for Questions about “Soft” Skills

This approach works for all kinds of topics too. Another typical interview question that a business analyst might face is,

“Tell me how you handle difficult stakeholders.” or

“What do you do if nobody shows up to your meeting?”

Again, you can give that theoretical hypothetical answer like,

“Oh, if I have a difficult stakeholder, I’m going to try to build a relationship. I’m going to work with them 1:1.”

That’s all good stuff, all things that you want to be saying in a certain way, but what’s going to be more powerful is,

“There’s this project where I had this really challenging stakeholder and I didn’t think I was going to be able to break through it. Here are some of the reasons that they were challenging to work with. Here are some of the problems that caused and the requirements process. Here’s what I did and here is what our end result is.”

Just that flavor of how that shifts the conversation from what you hypothetically would do, to what you’ve actually done.

As much as possible in a job interview, I think, especially if you’re having issues getting to the second interview or getting the job offer once you get a second interview, be thinking about how can you share those experiences and how can you demonstrate that you have those skills that the employer is looking for. This is going to make a difference in terms of how they come away from the interview and their experience with you as a potential candidate.

One Last Tip – Do Your Research

I knew there was one more important thing I wanted to cover, and that is how to figure out what job interview questions they might ask.

You want to start with a job description. Most people do this, but there have been times when I’ve heard people say, “Yeah, it was the job posting, but I just didn’t think they’d ask about it.” No, if it’s in the job posting, make sure you know all the terms in the job posting, what they mean, what the alternative variations of those terms are. Do the research on the terminology so that you can say, “Yes.”

Adam Haesler has a great case study about saying “Yes” in a job interview instead of, “No, I don’t know how to do that.” How can I say yes? And to what degree can I say yes? That starts with knowing the terminology so when they ask you a question and use that term, you can say, “Yes.”

For example: “Yes, I have done a wireframe. We actually call them prototypes, and here is the kind of user interface model I created.”

You want to say yes, and that requires knowing the terminology.

The second place, though, to get the terminology is in the LinkedIn descriptions or the LinkedIn profiles of other business analysts, or whoever has that job title that you’re interviewing for, inside their LinkedIn profiles, what words do they use to talk about their responsibilities, and what they contribute to the organization?

It’s another area to research. Not all the time do job postings have the most current information. Sometimes they’re old. Sometimes they’re created by somebody that’s not actually doing the hiring. There are a lot of reasons they can have outdated information. LinkedIn would just be another resource. Not, necessarily, a more definitive resource, because sometimes people don’t always update their profiles either, but another resource to understand the terminology that is being used by the business analyst inside that organization. Just a quick insider tip for you.

Get the Interview Prep Guide

I do have an interview prep guide, completely free. If you want to go through our process at Bridging the Gap of how to prepare for a job interview, be sure to download the interview prep guide. It will walk you step-by-step through how to put together your stories, how to think about the research that you do, what steps you need to go through to walk into that interview with confidence and ability to handle the unexpected.

That’s the final piece I’ll tell you. No matter how much preparation you do, no matter how well researched you are, you’re going to have unexpected things come up in a business analyst job interview, and you’re going to have unexpected things come up in a business analyst job role. Showing that you can handle that with grace and ease and confidence is part of the battle of being successful in a business analyst job interview.

I hope these tips help you. Share your successes. Let us know how this goes. I hope your next business analyst job interview goes absolutely awesome and that you get that position and it’s what you were hoping it would be.

Click here to get the free interview prep guide

The good news is that business analysis skills are relatively timeless, and so re-entering the workforce after a career break is definitely possible! But you need a strategy, and approach, and also a good dose of confidence.

That’s what this video is all about.

Hi, my name is Laura Brandenburg from Bridging the Gap. Today, we’re going to talk about what to do when you’re returning to the profession after a long career break. We’ve had people in our community and in our courses who have taken an extended maternity leave while their children were young, who took time off to care for parents, who just took a leave of absence from work to travel or do something fun with their lives, and now, for whatever reason, feel like it’s time to go back. It’s time to restart their career and get back to where they were professionally.

I want to share a few tips. This often can feel like you’re starting over all over again, like you have to start from the ground up. What you want to do is leverage the strengths that you have, the experience that you have and bring all of that forward into this “restart.”

Let’s jump in with some of the tips.

Career Break Tip #1 – What Do You Want?

The first thing I want you to do is get clear on what it is you want. So often we set goals based on what we think is possible. We might think, “I want a job that’s kind of like what I was doing in corporate before I left five years ago. I want to be doing something like that.” We use that as the frame for our goals. Then maybe it doesn’t inspire us. Maybe you want something different.

Even if you have not been in a professional role for the last few years, you have grown as a person. You have been exposed to new environments, new people, new ideas, new ways of living, new everything.

Give yourself permission to ask,

• “What do I want?”
• “What do I really want out of this next step?”
• “What priorities have shifted for me?”
• “What’s important to me about how I show up to work?”
• “Do I want to work part-time, do I want to work full-time, do I want to work from home, do I want to have that flexibility?”
• “Is it more important that I’m just craving being back in an office with a regular schedule?”

Whatever that looks like for you. Nothing is wrong there. Everything is right, but it is getting in touch with what you want and what you want that next step to be.

Career Break Tip #2 – Start Networking

Now, start networking. Start going to the places where people in those kinds of roles would be showing up. Within business analysis, this is your local IIBA® chapter meetings. Go. Start talking to people. Learn what’s happening in the profession. Rebuild your community.

Start reaching out to your past colleagues and let them know that you’re thinking about restarting. You’re thinking about getting back into a role or a similar role to how they worked with you before. Would you be able to call on them as a reference, if needed. “By the way, do you happen to know any opportunities of people that are hiring things that you’ve seen me do well at in the past?”

It never hurts, it’s always valuable to kindle and rekindle connections. Start on LinkedIn and look at people in your past companies and start reconnecting and engaging with them.

Career Break Tip #3 – Experience and Skills

You also want to determine, for that goal that you want, what experience and skills that you have that gets you on that path. What I see people do that gets them stuck is they look at, “Well, for the last three years I’ve been doing this, and this is nothing like where I want to be.” They get stuck thinking about what the last three to five years looked like instead of going back through the whole trajectory of their career and bringing forward all that skill, all of those skills of all of that experience.

The reality about being a business analyst is that your skills are relatively timeless. Your ability to solve business problems and your analytical thinking, the structures that you would use to do that kind of work, the way that you handle complex communication challenges and navigate organizational change and resistance, that skill set does not go away.

You may have even had experiences since you left corporate that make you even better at that, that you have to handle some challenging negotiations or resolve some conflicts within your family, or negotiate your new job role, your new role for your life, whatever that looked like for you. You are the sum of everything that you did before and all the enhanced experiences you had during your “break.” Bring all of that forward.

With that in mind, there might be some nuances. There are tools; maybe you’ve never worked in an agile environment, and that’s becoming the norm. Maybe the tools that are out in the marketplace are a little bit new, so you can refresh your skills or you can broaden and add something new to your skill set, but you don’t have to feel like you start from scratch.

Career Break Tip #4 – Be Ready to Hit the Ground Running

What employers do want to know, though, when they’re hiring a new employee after a break is that you’re ready to hit the ground running. You need to have that inner confidence that you could pick up your role in that same capability, in that same capacity that you did before you left corporate (if you want to go back to that same kind of role).

You have to be fresh in that experience. If you don’t feel like that ability to hit the ground running, if you don’t feel like you have that, that’s where training can help. Training that gives you that refresh that helps you, “Oh, right, I did this, I did that, I did this.” It gives you that structure to apply. It gives you the awareness, the re-emergence in industry-standard best practices. This is where volunteering to do some business analysis in an organization can help as well. Look at the non-profits or the organizations, friend groups.

We were in a session of The Business Analyst Blueprint® program where we were talking a lot of participants are choosing event management as their project of choice. We were like, “Oh my gosh, I could have totally put an event management process together for my weekly girls’ group.” I could have used that as an opportunity to practice some process analysis and to refresh my skills so that I had that confidence that comes with, not that I did that five years ago, but I just did it yesterday. That’s where volunteering can help fill that gap and it can also give you something to put on your actual resume as work experience.

Career Break Tip #5 – Get Your Story Straight

Finally, one last tip, and that’s just to get your story straight. People are going to ask you about your break. That’s going to come up in an job interview. It might even come up as the very first thing on a phone interview as part of a phone screen.

Don’t just hope you come up with a good answer. Have a clear explanation and don’t apologize for it.

“I took time off to do this and now I am ready to be back in the workplace. Here is what I’ve done to make sure my skills are current. Here are the kinds of things that I’m ready to do and I’m really looking forward to getting back in because…”

And really sell the “because.” This is going to help them feel confident that you really want this, that you don’t want to stay on your break, and that you’re ready to hit the ground running.

I just will share one last thing. There was one BA that I hired after her career break. I will tell you how she showed up in the interview. It was so present, her experience. We were talking about all of the things that she had done as a business analyst, and she had taken a long time off to care for her aging parents, and I didn’t even realize it.

I feel like I’m a pretty smart person, and I’m pretty insightful. She talked so clearly about her experience doing business analysis work as if it were yesterday. She had nuances to it of what this person did and how this person did it, the challenges she faced, and how she overcame it that it didn’t even occur to me to ask her, “Well, when did that happen?” Because it felt like it had happened last week.

If you can bring that sort of presence into your interview with the kinds of experiences that you’ve had, you might still get the question, but it’s going to come in a different light. They’re going to see you as ready to hit the ground running, ready to be the successful business analyst you know you can be.

What’s Next?

If you do want a career refresh, I have a quick free training for you. Just click below, it’s called Quick Start to Success as a Business Analyst. We’d love to have you join it. We go through the key skills to be successful as a business analyst, what the business analysis process looks like, and gives you a deeper insight into the profession. Great way to start to hit that refresh button so you can start rebuilding your business analyst career starting today.

Again, I’m Laura Brandenburg from Bridging the Gap. We help mid-career professionals start business analyst careers. I’m so happy to be helping you today.

>> Get Your Quick Start to Success

Earn the respect you deserve and get the insider details on how to get into a business analyst career quickly, with our free Quick Start to Success training. You’ll learn how to avoid the most common pitfalls faced by new business analysts and the step-by-step business analysis process to create predictable, consistent project success.

>> Click here to register for the free training today <<

Finding your next job opportunity might mean changing industries, sectors, or domains – especially if the bulk of your experience is an area brought down by the pandemic.

So how do you do transfer your business analysis skills across industries? For example, from non-profit work to a corporate setting? Or vice versa?

That’s what this video is all about.

To learn more about the essential business analysis skills, be sure to check out our Quick Start to Success workshop – it’s absolutely free today.

>> Click here to sign up for the workshop <<

As someone who just turned 41, I honestly didn’t want to go any more deeply into this topic. I didn’t feel like I had a good answer, and I didn’t feel fully informed about the challenge.

And then I realized that while I don’t have a full answer to the challenge of ageism in the workplace, I can contribute to a part of the story. And my contribution is what it was like for me, as a 28-year-old-new manager, to hire a talented man in his 60s who had at least 2 decades of experience in a profession I was just figuring out.

So that’s where we’re going in this week’s video! Please watch the video (or read the transcript) and leave a comment below with your contribution to this important topic.

Hi, I’m Laura Brandenburg from Bridging the Gap. One of the questions I receive often is, “Am I too old to be a business analyst?” I also hear stories that I believe are true that there’s a judgment or perception, particularly, of older workers in an IT environment that tends to be younger.

Now, I just turned 41. I cannot give my firsthand experience of what it’s like to interview in your 50s or 60s and what it takes to be successful in that interview.

But the piece of the story that I want to share with you, the piece that I have to contribute was the process and mindset and somewhat limiting beliefs I had as a 28-year-old manager who hired a 60+-year-old business analyst.

I know that ageism exists in the workplace. I know that there are all kinds of unfairness in the world. I’m not here to solve that problem, but I am here to share my piece of the story to contribute a piece of the puzzle and, hopefully, inspire you to not allow any factor about your life, personality, characteristic as a human being to hold you back from the true success that you really want as a business analyst or any career goal that you might have in your life.

Let me just share a little bit about how this went. I have some notes so I don’t forget to share all the key points because this is an emotional story for me.

My First Fear – That an Older Worker Would Be “Too Experienced”

The first objection I had – I was young and I was a great business analyst. I was like a superhero.

People wanted me on their projects, but I had very little experience managing at that point in my life. I was just like, “Does he have too much experience?” We’re an informal startup. We were in an informal environment and I was nervous that we didn’t need a BA with too much experience because they might not fit in and they might bring too much methodology and too much, “We have to do things this way” to this informal environment. Even just as I said that, I was like that was the most ridiculous thing to think in the world.

And my current 41-year-old self knows that 28-year-old self had some pretty significant limiting beliefs. If anything, we needed somebody with that kind of experience to bring the breadth of experience to this young thriving organization that had huge growth plans. That was the first thing that I brought up.

My manager, the CIO, was like, “You need to interview this guy.” He threw the resume back at me and was like, “Interview him.” I was like, “Okay, let’s do this.”

My Next Fear – That the Older Worker Would Know More Than Me

Then the fear came up of, “Well, maybe he knew more than me.” He probably did know more than me about business analysis. He had a huge deep technical background. Way more experience and education and qualifications than I did for that role. I wasn’t worried about my job or my role. Some people might be. You might interview with a younger manager who’s worried that you’re going to overstep them. That wasn’t the fear that I had.

I was worried about looking like I didn’t know what I was doing. What if this guy comes in and is talking past me and I actually can’t effectively manage him because he knows more than me? That was, again, limiting belief. Fear. Got past it.

The Fears Don’t Stop – What If He Didn’t Want to Work For Me?

The next fear that came up was, “How would he feel working for me?” I put myself in my own 60-year old shoes and was like, “Why would I ever want to work for some young quick start kind of person? I want to work for somebody who has more experience than me.” That was my reality at the time because I was always the youngest person in any role and everybody that had ever managed me was older than me.

I’ve seen, now, how age is less of a factor. It’s about capabilities and your qualities and what your genius work is and what you’re best at in the world. But at that point in time, I had never seen an environment where a significant age gap where somebody older was being managed by someone younger. It just made me feel he was going to feel uncomfortable with me was, again, my limiting belief.

I asked him that question flat out in the second or third; whatever the final interview was. “Are you okay being managed by me or having me as your manager?” He was like, “Yeah, I’m fine with that. Of course.” He was in the third interview putting out what he had into the interview process. Of course he was, but I asked the question and he was like, “Yeah, no problem.” That was, for me, the light bulb went off. Okay, I can do this. He’s okay with it. I need to figure out how to get me okay with it.

Not All Managers Interviewing Older Workers Are Aware of Their Fears

Not every manager might be aware that these fears are coming up for them. It’s probably some version of this, though. To be honest, what was coming out for me was more about my discomfort in being a manager than it was about the age difference or the capabilities. This is only the second person I’ve hired at that point. The first person I hired was older than me but not by so much. It was the thing that was out there and it was easy to see.

Why am I sharing this? It’s not because I want to be a hero about this situation. Obviously, I was not a hero. I worked through a lot of stuff in order to make this happen. It’s not to make the story out to be your story. There might be pieces of it that land with how you have shown up either as a young manager or as an older person seeking employment with a younger manager. You might resonate with some of that.

Even As An Older Worker…It’s Not About You

I just wanted you to see what was behind the scenes because that empowers you to see it’s not just about you. None of what I shared was really about him; it was all about my own stuff.

When you’re thinking about that situation and you’re afraid of the reaction, how can you turn that around? How can you make that person feel super comfortable with you? How can you make that person, use your BA skills, to help them see how you’re going to add value to the organization and bring more to the organization, ask great questions, rely on them, and collaborate, then, with them in an appropriate manager/employee relationship; that you’re ready to embrace that role and you’re excited to work with them, to make them feel comfortable as well?

Try Not to Take Rejection Personally

The other thing is to not take that rejection personally. Job searches are hard. Most likely you’re going to hear more “No” than you hear “Yes.” Very few people fly through life and get every job that they ever apply to and never hear a “No.” It’s kind of like dating. Very few people meet, date, marry, and live forever with the very first person they ever dated. It happens, but it’s very very rare.

Most of us are going to hear “No” somewhere along the path.

But Also Don’t Let Being an Older Worker Be The Excuse

What you do, though, when you make it a factor of a quality that you can’t control is that you give up hope and you let yourself off the hook for taking personal responsibility for what you can change.

You can’t change your age.

You can change how you interview.

You can learn how to interview in a better way. You can learn how to connect with people easily. You can leverage your best skills. You can do all kinds of things that will influence your job search process. If you just say, “It’s never going to work for me because I’m older. I guess I should just throw in the towel,” you’ll never be inspired or motivated to change the things that you can control.

You Can’t Control Everything

I’m not saying there’s no unfairness in the world and that people don’t make decisions on factors that they shouldn’t make decisions on, but all you can do is take charge of the pieces that you can control and move forward in spite of the “No’s,” and learn from the “No’s” when you can, and when you see that it’s truly a judgment, it hurts, but as easily as you can, move forward until you find the person who is going to work through their own limiting beliefs to hire you. Because you have so much to offer.

The piece I haven’t shared yet is that person brought…that experience was so valuable to our organization. I learned so much from him about business analysis. That’s still part of who I am today. You have that gift of experience, knowledge, and acumen that often a younger person doesn’t have because they haven’t seen the depth of the situations and the encounters that you’ve had. Use that as your strength, your experience. Be excited to offer that to the world. I just wish you the best in finding the job that’s the perfect fit for you and finding the right person who sees you for the qualified, excited, engaged individual that you are.

Again, I’m Laura Brandenburg at Bridging the Gap. Thank you for being here. We help mid-career and advanced career professionals start business analyst careers. I don’t think you’re ever too old to be a business analyst. It’s just when is it your time, when are you ready to stop. That’s up to you. If you’re ready to get started, we’re ready to help.

Again, talk to you soon.

Let’s look at what you can expect from your business analyst job search, figure out where you are in the process, and decide what steps will get you hired.

Step 1 – Position Yourself to Get Hired as a BA

The first step in the job search process is to figure out what kinds of business analyst jobs you are qualified for and how to position your skills and career experiences for those types of jobs. After all, if you don’t know what BA qualifications you have, how can you decide what BA jobs to apply for?

The good news is that you probably have a lot more BA experience than you think and so are qualified for a broader set of business analyst roles than they you are currently considering.

Finding your transferable business analyst skills ensures that you have more career options and job opportunities. It also makes updating your resume and preparing for job interviews a lot easier, so that’s a nice bonus.

For an in-depth coverage of transferable business analyst skills, be sure to check out Laura’s best-selling book How to Start a Business Analyst Career.

Step 2 – Put Together a Resume that Highlights Your Business Analyst Skills

You can be well-qualified for a particular type of role, but if your resume doesn’t showcase those qualifications, you will not get a call back. Recruiters don’t read between the lines and they never make assumptions in your favor.

Your business analyst resume needs to spell out exactly what you are qualified to do and be structured in such a way that it doesn’t make your recruiter guess.

It also needs to look like a resume that’s relevant to a business analyst job, which means it’s not laden with too much technology jargon or management-level accomplishments  (without the detail to back them up). Your resume needs to clearly demonstrate that you can (and have) contributed to past projects in a business analysis role (even if you’ve never held the business analyst job title).

Step 3 – Apply to BA Jobs

With an understanding of your key business analyst skills and a resume that highlights your skills and experience, you are ready to apply to business analyst jobs. With your skills assessment in hand, you’ll be able to focus on the jobs that are a relatively close match to your skill set. If you’ve been applying to hundreds of jobs and not hearing back, this tactical change could increase the proportion of opportunities you hear back from significantly.

A “relatively close match” means that you find evidence of at least 80% of the skills from the job posting in your resume. This percentage gives you some room to stretch beyond your qualifications and also the chance to be in the right place at the right time, should a particular employer lighten up on their laundry list of qualifications, such as for specific technical skills or industry expertise.

Three rules of thumb are particularly important when applying to jobs:

• Since the person reviewing your resume may not understand business analysis as well as you do (especially once you’ve gone through a skills discovery process), you’ll want to be careful with terminology. You know that “process flows” and “workflow diagrams” can be used interchangeably and that “use cases” are a type of “functional requirements”, but does your reviewer? Tweaking terms can help get you to the 80% match.
• As you match up qualifications, you will probably discover that you have other relevant skills that aren’t yet incorporated into your resume. There is nothing wrong with customizing your resume specifically for this position to highlight relevant skills. And if that new skill comes up again and again, it probably makes sense to add it to your main resume.
• Even with a good match, you may not hear back from a job application. This can happen for reasons that have nothing to do with your qualifications, such as the job being filled before you apply or the job requirements changing. It could also mean that one of the qualifications you didn’t provide evidence against was a critical one as so the recruiter decided you weren’t a good fit for the position.

This step in the process can be emotionally trying. It involves a lot of iterating on your resume, defining of your skill set, and persistence. A strong professional network can really help accelerate your job search even further as you are more likely to hear back about an opportunity when you can secure a personal recommendation or introduction.

Step 4 – Interview for the Job with Confidence

If you are focusing on the right business analyst jobs, you will start to hear back about opportunities and get asked to interview for the job. Before getting an offer, you can expect to interview with multiple people. Often a recruiter will do a first pass phone interview and then you might meet with several people from the hiring organization including the hiring manager.

You can expect to be asked a series of open-ended behavioral interview questions related to the job qualifications. And even if they aren’t listed, soft skills are almost always considered to be very important, so preparing to speak to how you handle challenging stakeholders, tight deadlines, and complex problems is a good idea.

A little bit of confidence goes a long way in doing well during the interview and ensuring you honestly and thoroughly communicate your qualifications for the position. And a little bit of preparation and practice goes a long way in building up your confidence.

Step 5 – Make an Informed Decision about the Offer

Once you make it through the job interview process and receive a job offer, you’ll have a decision to make.

• Do the terms of the offer (including salary and benefits) work for you?
• Will you be happy working in the environment?
• Is this a step forward in your career?

Thinking forward to an eventual job offer can help ensure you ask the right questions during the job interview process itself.

Find Your Place in the Process

If you are looking for a new business analyst job, consider where you are at in this job search process and starting working forward towards the next step.

If you’ve been searching for awhile and aren’t seeing much traction, start from the beginning. I find that many people skip steps 1 and 2 and then get frustrated when they don’t hear back from jobs in step 3. This is often because they aren’t fully communicating their relevant skills and experience in their resume.

Get the Book

In How to Start a Business Analyst Career, you’ll learn how to assess and expand your business analysis skills and experience.

This book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

Click here to learn more about How to Start a Business Analyst Career

I’ve been on both sides of the business analyst job interview process multiple times. Here’s what you can expect and how you can prepare.

(Before I forget, I want to be sure you know that you can download my free BA Job Interview Prep Guide and receive more detailed information on preparing for your business analyst job interview.)

The BA Job Interview Process

For most positions, you can expect a series of two to three different interview sessions. The first interview session will often be a phone screen. The second and third session may involve multiple interviewees in a group (or in back-to-back meetings). You might meet with the hiring manager, a peer business analyst, and perhaps stakeholders from the business and technical team. In selected cases, a representative from upper management is also involved.

Take some time to consider the perspectives of your interviewers. Research them on LinkedIn and see what you can learn about their backgrounds.

How Recruiters Get Involved in the Job Interview Process

Your first interview might be with a recruiter, either a recruiter from a third party agency or an internal recruiter from the organization’s human resources department. They often don’t understand the business analyst role as well as the hiring manager does and so may be looking for specific skills or other personality qualities.

You can improve your chances of making it through this initial phone screen by researching the skills laid out in the job posting and preparing to speak to specific times when you’ve used the skill or a similar skill.

The Types of Job Interview Questions You’ll be Asked

Business analyst job interviews tend to be situational in nature and this means that you’ll be asked questions about your past experience as it relates to business analysis. (These are also called behavioral interview questions.) On other websites you’ll find lists of 100s of questions and preparing a canned answer for each of them is laborious to say the least.

I instead advocate being generally prepared to speak to how your experience relates to the qualifications for the job. Even if you’ve never held the business analyst job title, it’s likely that your past experience is relevant, otherwise you wouldn’t have landed an interview in the first place.

(In the Mastering the Business Analyst Job Interview course we cover preparing for interview questions in detail.)

Simulations and Work Samples in a Job Interview

As a former hiring manager and an experienced business analyst, I still found interviewing business analysts one of the most difficult parts of my job. Interviewing project managers and quality assurance professionals was much, much easier. That’s often why managers look for additional ways to verify their assumptions about a particular business analyst job candidate.

It’s not unlikely that before you are offered a job, you’ll be asked for work samples or requested to do some sort of business analysis simulation exercise, whether that’s drafting a requirements artifact or facilitating a short requirements session.

(For more information about what you can do to cultivate a manager’s confidence in you as a BA job candidate, you might also read about our BA job search process.)

Your Questions Are Just As Important As Your Answers

You should be given the opportunity to ask question during the job interview, either throughout the interview or at the end. After all, the purpose of the job interview is to find if there is a mutual fit between the hiring organization and the job candidate. I’m sure you have doubts or concerns about the position and the interview is a good time to address them.

As asking questions is a core business analysis skill (being the primary component of elicitation), not having relevant and interesting questions to ask will be a red flag.

>>Go Into Your Next Interview with Confidence

Pick up the BA Job Interview Prep Guide that walks you through the essential steps you need to take to prepare for your first or next business analyst job interview.

Click here to get your copy of the BA Job Interview Prep Guide

Recruiter: Thanks for taking some time to meet with me today. I’m working with a client who needs a business analyst to fill in on a new project and hit the ground running. It’s really important that they have experience working with use cases. Your resume says you have experience with use cases. Can you tell me more about that?

Let’s look at answers from our Prospective BAs and how they would do for the position. (These all resemble answers I’ve heard from my consulting clients or in real interviews with professionals who were perfectly well-qualified to create use cases.)

Prospective BA #1:  Use cases? Where does it say that?

Not good. I’m sure the interview would be over in about a minute, maybe less.

Prospective BA #2: Oh, well, I do have experience with use cases, I guess. But they weren’t formal use cases. They were documents that were a whole lot like use cases.

A little better. But not good. You undermined the value of your own experience by downgrading it. You might get one follow-up question from a nice recruiter. (And they aren’t all nice.)

Prospective BA #3: Use cases…er, well, yes…hmmm…let me think a minute here…yes, I remember it now. I was working on a project for my call center and we needed to implement some software updates to support how we managed accounts. I created a use case to capture the current functionality and then updated the use case to show the new functionality we needed. I validated the use case with my manager and other members of the customer service team. I met with the developers to walk through the use case. They asked a lot of clarifying questions and I updated the use case to reflect the answers. As the developers implemented the requirements I used the use case to create test cases and assigned different members of my team to execute the test cases.

Decent. The recruiter’s interest is probably piqued. You’ll get a follow-up question. The difference between decent and good in this case simply involves getting rid of the self-doubt and hesitation at the beginning. 

(You might take a minute and consider how you would answer this question if you were asked right now.)

(Before I forget, I want to be sure you know that you can download my free BA Job Interview Prep Guide and receive more detailed information on preparing for your business analyst job interview.)

How Do I Get Rid of the Hesitation?

It’s quite simple, actually. You use a technique that everyone who has ever excelled at anything uses…from classic pianists to professional football players. It’s so simple yet very often overlooked.

It’s called practice.

Practice?

Yes, you practice answering possible business analyst job interview questions, just like you would practice complicated set of chords or catching passes.

Why Is This Necessary?

When we rewrite our resume to emphasize our most relevant business analysis skills and experiences, it should be expected that we need to practice using these new terms to talk about our experience. After all, until we put the experience into words in our resume, we probably never thought about what we’d done in so much detail or using those words. And if we’re honestly and appropriately word-smithing, the terminology is going to feel a little unnatural.

And that’s perfectly OK. You are not expected to go from talking your old way to talking as a BA overnight.

Just like a football star doesn’t wake up on game day and catch touchdown passes.

Just like a classic pianist doesn’t walk into a concert and play a flawless Beethoven Sonata. (In fact, anecdotal evidence from my musician friends indicates that they practice 4 or more hours each day, even if they are not preparing for a specific gig.)

Being a star or even being good enough doesn’t happen naturally. It takes work. And it’s worth it.

Set Aside the Time

You don’t have to practice for a job interview 4 hours a day, but practicing a total of 4 hours or maybe even 8 wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, especially if you are new to the language of business analysis, skill solidifying your business analyst skills, and haven’t interviewed for awhile.

A bit of discipline goes a long way to ensure you are not overlooked for the right opportunity just because you don’t communicate about your qualifications with confidence.

>>Go Into Your Next Interview with Confidence

Pick up the BA Job Interview Prep Guide that walks you through the essential steps you need to take to prepare for your first or next business analyst job interview.

Click here to get your copy of the BA Job Interview Prep Guide

(By the way, I want to be sure you know that you can download my free BA Job Interview Prep Guide and receive more detailed information on preparing for your business analyst job interview.)

What is a Behavioral Interview Question?

Behavioral interview questions ask the candidate to give concrete examples of how and when they’ve used specific skills in their work history. Say I was interviewing a candidate and crafting use cases was very important, I might ask the candidate to tell me about a time they used use cases to document requirements. Or, if we tend to have challenging stakeholders (who doesn’t?), I’d ask about how they handled a situation where the sponsor was not willing to compromise on scope.

Why Does the BA Interviewer Ask Behavioral Interview Questions?

Because how you do business analysis is very important. Knowing how to do something is not the same as having done it in a real-world situation. Having the technical skills of a BA or knowing how to write “perfect” requirements specifications is not enough. As a BA, building relationships, communicating well, and handling sticky situations with grace is just as, if not (depending on who you ask), more important. Behavioral interview questions are one way to ascertain whether or not you can do the job and do the job well, because you have done it well before in a similar situation.

(Before I forget, let me also point you to my Mastering the Business Analyst Job Interview course where we cover preparing for a BA job interview in detail and mastering the art of responding to behavioral interview questions without preparing dozens or hundreds of canned answers.)

Just Be Sure Not To Do This…

There are hundreds of lists of possible behavioral questions. As a BA, you like to prepare. Your first thought might be to prepare an answer for every possible question you might be asked in a business analyst job interview.  Having a great, canned answer for each is not only not feasible, it’s counter-productive.

It’s counter-productive because in the interview you want to be fully present and putting your best foot forward. If, instead, you are searching your memory for one of several canned responses you’ve prepared, you risk missing the essence of the question and properly positioning your skills and experiences.

How Do I Prepare For Behavioral Interview Questions?

Instead, take a few key career highlights and practice talking about them. If your career background largely matches the background the employer is looking for, it’s likely that in your key career experiences you’ll have a story or two that will be relevant for most of the behavioral interview questions you’ll receive.

Second, before the interview, take some time to familiarize yourself with the terminology of the organization and practice telling your stories using the terms that are most likely to be used by the interviewer.

It’s important to note that this approach also works for the aspiring BA who might have a lot of relevant work experience but is just learning to “talk the BA talk.” By learning to talk about past experience using BA terms, you’ll prepare yourself for the behavioral interview questions, multiplying the value of your past professional experience in a BA context.

>>Go Into Your Next Interview with Confidence

Pick up the BA Job Interview Prep Guide that walks you through the essential steps you need to take to prepare for your first or next business analyst job interview.

Click here to get your copy of the BA Job Interview Prep Guide

The heart of job offer decisions comes back to two key elements:

1. Benefits – What are the benefits of each opportunity in front of you, relative to the short and long-term trajectory of your career?
2. Risk – How much risk are you able or willing to absorb right now in your career?

This sounds familiar right? We do this type of analysis all the time on our projects. This is yet another example where we can use our business analysis skills to help our business analysis careers.

Let’s Look at Risk First

All too often though, we forget the benefits and let the notion of risk freeze us and prevent us from making any decision at all.  Risk is the probability of a negative impact. Let’s take a look at both the negative impacts being in the wrong job could have on your career, and the factors which increase the probability that something negative will happen.

How do you use these factors? Just as an example, let’s take the professional in a typical “jack of all trades” type position. This person wears a lot of hats and is successful mainly based on their deep expertise in a system. Wearing a lot of hats isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it can expose you to multiple responsibilities and increase your marketability in organizations valuing employees who can pitch in and contribute in multiple areas. But it might limit your options when it comes to pursuing more formal roles within a profession, whether business analysis, development, or project management. The quality and depth of your experience may not stack up to someone who has spent the last several years focused on building a career in that profession.

But what about that system expertise? If your expertise is in a mainframe system that the company is visibly retiring bit-by-bit, the value of that expertise is declining every day. That creates job instability for you, unless you can expand your role and develop expertise with a long-term impact on the organization. But other areas of expertise can be very valuable and have long-term marketability, such as expertise in a widely-adopted tool like SAP or Salesforce.com or SharePoint.

Then over on the probability side are all of these factors that might increase the chances that something bad will happen. In immature organizations, we simply don’t do as much business analysis, which can lead to diminished marketability. In highly specialized roles we increase the changes that economic factors will make our roles (and our skill sets) obsolete (think of all those working in the financial sector in and around New York). If our organization does not perceive value in business analysis, then we’re less likely to have the opportunity to take on more advanced responsibilities, progress our careers, and may even face a bit of job instability when the purse strings get tight.

The point is not to rest on any one factor, but to look at all of them and consider where your risk points are and what aspects of your role might counter-balance those risks.

But What If I Needed a Paycheck Yesterday?

We’re not always in a position to make a decision based on the long-term. Sometimes immediate financial or even career concerns are also a significant factor. When you are deciding to look for a new job or bypass a not-so-right job offer, think about  your financial runway.  Entrepreneurs use this concept a lot when they talk about starting a new business.  They ask, “How many months do I have before I simply run out of money?” Your cushion might be a little bigger.  It might be, “How long do I have before I have to start drawing on critical savings to pay the mortgage? ”

Now, Let’s Look at the Benefits

Risks often prevent our clear thinking, so I’ve spent the most time on them. But benefits are important as well.  If you look at where you are today and where you want to be two to five, to ten years down the road – however far you can look, does the opportunity help you take a forward step in that direction?  Or is it in a different direction that might eventually lead to where you want to go? Will you be building valuable career experiences and will you be minimizing your risk?

Warning: Avoid the “Grass is Greener” Syndrome

A lot of times we can look at jobs outside our company and they seem perfect on the outside.  Few people want to tell you the truth in an interview — that the boss micro-manages and the stakeholders avoid you at all costs and it’s just miserable to work here. You might be looking at your own imperfect situation and thinking any situation can be better.

Yes, the grass is always greener somewhere else. Until we get there. Then we sometimes realize they have similar fundamental flaws and our last opportunity didn’t seem quite so bad.

So take that into account and do some diligence around those benefits. Make sure the grass really is greener.

Pulling it All Together

Weigh the pros and cons of all the options available to you, and weigh them not just against the short term of, “What will they achieve for me next month?” but the long term of, “Where do they take me in my long-term career plan?” Look at the relative risks of each situation. After doing your research and looking at the pros and cons, you might take a deep breathe and decide based on your gut — often your gut gives you information that doesn’t show up on any spreadsheet or comparison chart.

And remember, every situation can be influenced by YOU. Careers are not something that happen to us, careers are something that we build in response to the opportunities that we discover along our paths. The decision you make at this juncture could be the most important in your career, or it could be that either answer will lead you where you want to go. I can’t help you see into the future, only make the best decision based on the necessarily limited information you’ll have to make it.

Get the Book

In How to Start a Business Analyst Career, you’ll learn how to assess and expand your business analysis skills and experience.

This book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

Click here to learn more about How to Start a Business Analyst Career

Do you use a summary or an objective?

An objective talks about what you want to achieve in your next position. A summary tells a story about what you bring to the table as a professional. Summaries are the introduction of choice unless you are a recent college graduate and do not have much to summarize.

So we know a summary should tell a story of us as a professional. That’s a good place to start.

The summary will most likely be the first item on the resume that is read. To determine what makes a good summary, you first need to put yourself in the employer’s shoes.

What does the person reading your resume want to know about you?

First off, most people review business analyst resumes to ascertain if you are qualified for the position. Recruiters receive hundreds of resumes for an individual job position and many people apply to jobs they are not qualified for. You want to use your summary to show that you are well-qualified for a business analyst job, preferably the specific business analyst job you are applying to.

Secondly, you want your summary to tell a story of why you are interested in this specific position.

• If you have a career as an executive and you are applying for a business analyst job, you need to tell that story.
• If you have 10 years of experience testing software and now you want a business analyst job, you need to tell that story.
• And your story should be specific to the job at hand. Avoid generic language like “interesting position at a growing company”.

The BIGGEST mistake people make is making the summary about them…about what they want as a candidate. It’s all about the employer. You want to them to see YOU as the solution to their problem.

(By the way, we cover this in more detail in this article walking through the business analyst job search process.)

What can your resume reader about your qualifications that entices them to pick up the phone and call you in for an interview?

With all that out on the table, what are some phrases you might incorporate into your professional summary?

• Experience with enterprise XYZ systems
• Evaluating vendors
• Working around the constraints posed by legacy systems.
• Helping stakeholder teams perform cost-benefit analysis
• Engaging appropriate stakeholders throughout the project
• Creating alignment between stakeholders from multiple levels of the organization.
• Building processes / improving processes / defining processes
• Achieving positive ROI on projects.
• Diverse professional experience across multiple organizations from a variety of industries.

This is not an exhaustive list.  (Check out our list of important business analyst skills for additional ideas.) The point is to focus on the types of experiences you have had that qualify you for the position for which you are applying. I suggest you keep a running list of power phrases or summary sentences. Then when you apply for a job, select the ones that best match the job description.

And here are some to avoid:

• Seeking CBAP support
• Support my career growth
• Growing company
• Company that supports its employees
• Company that appreciates its employees

You might say, well I want these things! Yes, you do and that’s perfectly fine. But remember we are talking about the first sentence on your resume, the purpose of which is to get you a job interview.

Would you start a first date talking about a pre-nup? Probably not.

Then don’t start your business analyst resume talking about conditions of accepting an offer that’s nowhere near being on the table.

Get the Book

In How to Start a Business Analyst Career, you’ll learn how to assess and expand your business analysis skills and experience.

This book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

Click here to learn more about How to Start a Business Analyst Career

The issue for many people is that ‘networking’ sounds scary. It stirs up images of ill-fated cocktail parties and other awkward forced social situations. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way!  Networking can be easy and fun as well as productive.  Here are some tips:

1. Plan and commit to networking opportunities:

If you are interested in expanding your network, the first step is to find some relevant networking opportunities.  A great place to start is your local chapter of the IIBA – they may well hold monthly events where you can meet other professional analysts.  Alternatively, depending on the type of person you are hoping to meet, there may be another professional organisation relevant to your specific domain.  Once you’ve identified a networking opportunity, mark it in your diary and commit to it.  If you are a nervous networker, you might be tempted to back out.  By making a commitment, and making time in your schedule, you are more likely to make sure it happens.

2. Carry the right tools:

To make the most of your networking opportunities, you will want to carry the right tools.  It is good practice to carry a supply of clean, up-to-date, crisp business cards.  Remember that first impressions last, so don’t be tempted to rely on an out-of-date creased business card with your old job title on it!  If your employer doesn’t supply business cards, consider having your own personal contact cards printed.

3. Meet new people:

When going to networking events, it can be tempting to spend time speaking to people you already know.  Remember your aim, and make sure you speak to people you haven’t met before. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to people –  I find a smile, handshake and brief introduction such as, “Hi, I’m Adrian, I don’t think we’ve met yet,” can often be an easy way to strike up a conversation.  You might also want to consider how you introduce yourself, and some networkers advocate using an ‘elevator pitch’ (a short polished summary of your role and/or strengths).  Either way, the important part is to be confident and genuine.

4. Exchange cards and build your address book:

When you meet new people, be sure to exchange cards or contact details.  After each networking event, store the business cards you have been given carefully, or even better put the details into your address book.  You might also want to add a few lines describing the person/their role to help remember them in future.  Make sure you do this as soon as possible, else you will end up with a stack of business cards with no idea of who was who, particularly if you meet several people with the same job title, first name or from the same company.

5. Be genuine:

Networking should be a fun professional activity.  Unfortunately, some people use it as an opportunity to immediately sell their services, or to ask for a favour.  My view is the best type of networking happens when neither party has any immediate gain.  That way, a professional relationship can build over time, and perhaps at some point inthe future business might be conducted.  It is also better to think about what you can give to your network, rather than what you can get from it.   If you act genuinely and invest in your network, you’ll find you won’t even need to ask your network for help – they will offer it when they find out you need it.

6. Stay in touch:

Professional relationships strengthen over time, so make sure you stay in touch with your network.  If you see an article that a colleague might like, ping them over an e-mail.    If you see an opportunity that someone in your network might be able to bid for, let them know.  There are many ways to stay in touch, and you might prefer to use a professional networking site like LinkedIn.   Online social networking is a very useful way of supplementing real-world networking, but it certainly doesn’t replace it!

In summary, as BAs we can benefit greatly from networking with our peers in other domains and industries.  This allows sharing of information and best practice, and building a strong network is a great way to protect your career stability.  It is one area of professional development that can definitely be fun.

>>Networking as Part of Your BA Job Search?

Our BA Job Search Process covers the entire lifecycle of finding a new BA job, from getting started to accepting the offer.

Click here to learn about our BA Job Search Process

Some BA jobs require SAP experience, but how do you get it if you don’t have it?

Eric’s Response:

Many BA job posts require applicants to have some kind of experience about specific business software, such as ERPs, CRMs or other specialized software.  Although it can be a questionable requirement for a job post (See Laura’s post on “Why do we see technical skills in business analyst jobs?” and Jonathan Babcock’s post on “Four Key Knowledge Areas for Business Analysts“), it is something that we have to deal with as not everyone really understands the BA role and responsibilities.  In this context, how can a BA get experience in the software when you don’t have it?  Based on my experience, there are 3 ways to get it (other than actually working with the software, of course).

1. Self-Training

Take some time to read on the specific software (of the specific module of the software you’re interested in).  Do some research on the web, look for software editor documentation, check for software users and developers communities, register for webinars on the software.  It will not be something that you will be able to put on your resume, but it will at least provide you some general knowledge and vocabulary that you will be able to use while reviewing your resume or during an interview.

2. Experience with Similar Software and Business Processes

Although you might not have experience with that specific software, you might have relevant experience with other related software, which makes your introduction to the new software much easier.  You might also have knowledge of specific business processes supported by the software without having software-specific knowledge.  Since most similar specialized business software use similar patterns (known as best practices), the knowledge curve to switch from one to the other is quite small when you’re already familiar with the concepts.

3. Emphasize Required Competencies Behind the Software Knowledge

You might not have related experience on similar software or business processes, but you probably have competencies that could be used within a SAP-like context.  Have you worked in projects involving close interactions between systems?  Company-wide processes, crossing multiple departments?  Do you have related experience in the company’s industry?  Answers to these questions should help you to demonstrate that even though you don’t know the software, you know how to handle the specific characteristics of working with a software such as SAP.

Making My Case for “CRM Experience”

As an example, the job post for my current job was asking for experience with a specific CRM software, which I didn’t have at this time.  I managed to get to the interview phase with the hiring manager, where I was able to point out that although I had no experience with the specific software, I have worked on several projects involving customer-related processes and systems in the past, and have also dealt with off-the-shelf integrated software in the past.  This experience makes it easier for me to quickly understand the business context, as well as the users’ and the development team’s needs and how they interact with the software to support their activities.  These competencies are much harder to get than actually knowing how the software works.  Moreover, I have worked in the same industry (telecommunications) for some years, so I already had a good idea about the specifics of the customers, products and processes.

I put the emphasis on these points during the interview, and I finally got the job.  After a quick introduction to the software and some exploration on my own for a week or two, I was up and running, and started working as the lead BA on major projects.

Make Your Case

Looking for the best way to make your case for a business analyst job? Join our free BA career planning course – we’ll help you identify your transferable skills in business analysis and find the leverage points you have that will lead you to the best possible BA opportunities.

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Of course, to succeed as a business analyst it’s important to have the core business analyst skills. Most new business analysts are strong communicators and problem-solvers and many even have a bit of informal business analysis experience under their belt. But for many, their first positions, their “chance” so to speak, comes from leveraging a qualification that’s specific and unique.

What Can I Leverage?

Potential areas of expertise that are important include the following:

• Industry experience
• Functional / domain experience
• Application expertise
• Organization expertise

You might think of expertise as “know how.” It’s something that probably took you a few years to build and sums up a good part of your on-the-job experience.

For example, as I look at my career history, I’ve built some expertise in working on web products and, especially, content-rich web products. I understand search, content organization, and how to bring this together in a way that is a benefit to the customer or user. And more recently, these content products are driving connections. The websites I’ve worked on are trying to connect two parties (candidates and employers; wedding vendors and engaged couples; etc.).

This means that if I had to find a job fast I’d be looking for companies that could leverage this experience. I know my job search would be more effective in these areas. It also means that if I was considering a career change and trying to find a job outside of business analysis, I’d focus in on these types companies because I’d bring a lot of transferable knowledge to the table.

Whether we like it or not, many managers hire BAs for industry experience. As a new BA, you’ll make a much better case for your qualifications if you can mine elements of your career history that give you a leg up on the competition and make you a well-qualified candidate. Employers are simply more likely to overlook your relative weaknesses in business analysis if you have some irresistible expertise to provide.

What Expertise Do I Have?

Expertise comes from experience and it doesn’t necessarily have to be business analysis experience. Although industry expertise is often the most obvious qualification to leverage, other opportunities exist.

Here are some examples:

• Were you the subject matter expert on a specific tool? Common examples include Enterprise Resource Management tools (such as SAP), Customer Relationship Management Tools (such as Salesforce.com), and Documentation Management Tools (such as SharePoint).
• Do you have deep experience within a business domain or functional area? Consider marketing, finance, product development as ripe possibilities. Although I had built a team of BA generalists, I brought in a specialist BA for an accounting system migration. She new the accounting application, could talk accounting-speak with our finance team, and was a business analyst.
• What about the organizations you’ve worked for or are currently working for? This area of expertise that is often overlooked.  It includes what you might know about how an organization works, who the stakeholders are and what the business model is. So many professionals become BAs by moving from one role into another in the same organization. Going back to organization’s you’ve worked for in the past can also yield opportunities. In this case, you can leverage your expertise in that organization and, very likely, your track-record of success in that organization. A close corollary would be focusing on organizations that are direct competitors  to an organization you worked for previously.

Expertise Can Also Help Ensure Your Early Success as a BA

Instead of entering a new job where everything is new, you have an anchor of expertise to rely on. This actually makes it easier for you to consciously build your business analysis skills. If you walk into an industry or domain you know inside and out, you won’t need to spend as much time learning the language. Instead you can invest your time learning new business analyst techniques and preparing to use them in your projects.

>>Get Hired as a BA

Our 5-step business analyst job search process will walk you through what you need to do to get hired as a business analyst.

Click here to learn more about the BA job search process

In what follows I’ll walk you through 5 tips for landing more job interviews for business analyst jobs.

1. Be Current

If you are unemployed and have a employment gap to address on your resume, let them know what you’ve been doing to advance yourself professionally. Volunteer work for as a business analyst in an organization, shows that you’ve been keeping busy and continuing to grow. Training and professional development shows you used the time to hone your skills. Although business analysis skills date less quickly than say software development skills, a strong awareness of the latest tools and practices will help you show that you are ready to achieve success for your new employer on day 1.

2. Read the BA Job Postings

This might seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how often I talk to people who do not read the job postings before they apply. And many of the questions we received showed a focus on job titles over job responsibilities. This is a great way to completely miss a great opportunity or to create a lot of noise in your BA job search process. It’s not a great way to actually find a job.

Look closely at the job responsibilities and not just the titles. While in a purist sense, we might define a clear difference between a business analyst and a systems analyst or a process analyst and a business analyst or a business process analyst and a functional technical analyst ….and so the list could go on…the titles are used inconsistently in job postings. Reading the responsibilities and requirements will typically give you a good insight into what the job actually is and could open up more opportunities for you.

(By the way, our best-selling book How to Start a Business Analyst Career will help you dissect the qualifications in job postings so you can get past titles to see what’s a BA job and what’s not.)

3. Use Language from the Job Posting in Your Resume

Many business analyst hiring managers are less informed about business analysis techniques than you might assume. And recruiters or HR representatives are often less so. By using the terms from the job posting in your business analyst resume (provided they accurately represent your business analysis qualifications) you can make it easier for a manager or recruiter to pick out your relevant qualifications and see your career history as relevant to the current position.

4. Network Professionally to Find Hidden Opportunities

We all know it, but few do it. The best success stories I’ve heard recently all come from professional networking. The best interviews are when someone contacts you about a job. You get to skip the whole application process completely! Getting involved in your IIBA Chapter is a first place to start. You’ll meet BAs and if you can prove to them that you are dependable and smart, they are much likely to fill you in when there’s a new opportunity in their organization.

I know this works. I recently helped connect one of our IIBA Denver volunteers with an organization and she landed her first BA position. I felt confident recommending her because she had helped me document one of our Chapter business processes.

Moreover, recruiters at IIBA meetings come mostly to meet candidates. They are scoping out local talent. They are a great resource for what’s happening in your local job market and for helping you find open positions. At our last networking meeting I made a connection with a recruiter who might be able to help me find part-time contract work in 2011.

And beyond IIBA, professional associations for related roles, industry associations, job seeker groups, and any place where you’ll be in contact with business leaders can be great ways to make new contacts that might help you with your job search.

5. Break the Rules

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to your job search. In answer to a question about “what’s the ideal amount of time to build a BA experience?” I said (of course) “it depends.” It could be 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years depending on the nature of the experience, the constraints in your work environment, and the amount of knowledge you need to accumulate to be successful. What matters most about putting an experience on your resume or talking about it with a potential employer is that you achieved a meaningful result that you can speak to with clarity. There’s not a rule, but there is a purpose or principle to consider.

In a similar fashion, you can break the rules, including those in this post. My feelings won’t be hurt. Just be sure to understand what rules you are following and what you intend to accomplish through those rules. Consider some other options. You never know when you might realize your rules are marching you consistently away from your goals.

Get the Book

In How to Start a Business Analyst Career, you’ll learn how to assess and expand your business analysis skills and experience.

This book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

Click here to learn more about How to Start a Business Analyst Career

1. Do all BA jobs require industry experience?
2. Is industry knowledge mandatory to find my first business analyst job?
3. If I see a  qualification for industry expertise in a job posting, but I know I could be successful in the job, should I apply anyway?

Let’s tackle these inter-related questions one at a time.

Do All BA Jobs Require Industry Experience?

Not all BA jobs require industry experience, but many do. And when it’s included as a required qualification, industry experience is typically a show-stopper qualification for the hiring manager, meaning that they won’t consider candidates without the right expertise.

(This means you won’t ever hear back if you submit your resume, for no other reason than your lack of relevant industry experience. I am making a point to spell this out because I see people get very frustrated about their opportunities in business analysis when this happens. The reality is that this has nothing to do with you as a person or a BA. It simply means there is not a fit between your qualifications and this particular job. Focus instead on leveraging your other transferable skills.)

In a small handful of other cases, the manager will consider BAs without the appropriate industry experience but they are very likely to hire a BA with industry experience before just about any other BA they interview – unless the BA significantly outranks the BA with industry experience in every other important qualification.

You can argue about whether this is right or wrong, and I’ll go into that a bit later on. But for now, let’s take a practical look at how this situation came to be by considering the hiring manager’s perspective.

That job posting represents a pain point of some sort. They need to solve a problem in that organization. And, if they are requiring part of the solution to that problem (i.e. the BA) to have industry experience, it’s probably for one of the following two reasons:

1. They believe that it will take a BA without expertise too long to get up to speed to be successful in the position.
2. There is no one for the BA to work with who has the industry experience required to make the project successful.

Often #2 is the case. That those BA jobs requiring industry experience need the BA to fulfill a form of product ownership. The BA is required to have the domain knowledge because there is no one for them to “elicit” the domain knowledge from.

Is Industry Knowledge Mandatory to Find My First Business Analyst Job?

No. But it’s extremely useful. It’s a success path I see many new business analysts following — leveraging their industry experience to find their first BA job. By bringing this essential qualification to an employer they are able to position themselves as a strong contributor and then learn the BA skills on the job.It also provides a bit of comfort as a new BA to have some system or industry competencies to rely on.

If you don’t have deep knowledge in an industry, you’ll want to consider what other position of strength you can offer to an employer. This might be technical knowledge, strong facilitation, specialized tool or system knowledge, organizational expertise, etc. We all have something unique to offer. What’s your point of differentiation?

Should I Apply for a Job Posting that Requires Industry Expertise That I Don’t Have?

I really sympathize with the underlying desire behind this question. It can often feel like industry experience is just slapped on a role and that we could be successful in “everything but” the industry experience. And it is tough to look at all the BA job openings and find yourself unqualified for the vast majority of them.

But this is reality. And it doesn’t just apply to you.

Most BAs do not qualify for the vast majority of BA jobs.

Even those that are CBAPs and have years of professional experience. The market is just too fragmented for even a senior BA to apply to every BA job out there.

Now, if industry experience is a preferred qualification or just listed in the bullet points as an after thought, it can be worth applying if you are otherwise qualified. But again, it’s likely that if the hiring manager bothered to list industry experience as a qualification, they are going to prefer candidates that have it, when reviewing resumes and conducting job interviews.

It could make sense to apply – it could very well be that no one with the appropriate experience applies and the manager widens their net – but please don’t allow your ego to get caught up in the position at any stage of the process. Because if your ego gets too damaged, your progress towards your BA career goals suffers, and I don’t want to see that happen to you.

What Should We Do About This?

You might read all this and think that someone should “do something” about this “problem.”

I have two things to say about this.

First, while this might seem like a good idea to address this head on, it’s important to remember that organizations don’t exist to support business analysts. Business analysts exist to support organizations.

We need to solve a problem for the organization and if that organization needs someone with industry experience to solve their problem, then who are we, the individual professional, to tell them differently?

Now, of course, we can take this problem up a level and help the organization see how the use of professionals in more general business analysis roles could help them solve their problems more effectively. We can help them restructure their organization so that that industry experience requirements fall to a different, possibly more appropriate, role. This is possible and potentially desirable for our profession. But it’s not something for you to worry about right now, which leads me to my second point.

Second, you as the BA job seeker have no business trying to solve this problem. As an individual job seeker applying for an individual job opening, it’s very unlikely that you will wield the influence necessary to achieve this sort of organizational change.

I’d rather you see you focus on getting employed first, then making a solid contribution so you stay employed, and then (and only then) begin the even more difficult work of maturing your organization’s BA practice and perceptions of business analysts.

What Can I Do About This?

Glad you asked. The way you position yourself as a BA is very important. And it may even be that you have more relevant industry experience than you expect or more relevant and transferable skills that will help you make this career transition.

Get the Book

In How to Start a Business Analyst Career, you’ll learn how to assess and expand your business analysis skills and experience.

This book will help you find your best path forward into a business analyst career. More than that, you will know exactly what to do next to expand your business analysis opportunities.

Click here to learn more about How to Start a Business Analyst Career

For job interview purposes specifically, but also pertaining to those early days on the job, what questions should an entry level BA be asking?

To provide additional context, I am currently interviewing for BA positions that match my experience level. Although I’m hoping for another job opportunity, I don’t want to wake up and find that I’ve talked myself into a position that doesn’t challenge me to grow and where I am not gaining exposure to valuable project experience.

Are there questions I should ask in the interview to expose the company’s commitment to their BA’s, or should I expect those barriers as a common path to the more challenging BA roles? What are the “signs” to look out for that will tell me whether the organization I’m interviewing with will utilize and value their BA’s?

Laura’s response:

This is a great question. There is a delicate balancing act, as you recognize, in terms of asking questions without putting the manager on the defensive. Also, in many business analyst job interview situations, you might have the opportunity to meet with multiple people, so think about what questions you might ask different people. The BAs will probably be more honest and upfront.

(Before I forget, I want to be sure you know that you can download my free BA Job Interview Prep Guide and receive more detailed information on preparing for your business analyst job interview.)

Now, if you are hiring for a position and you don’t get to meet with anyone but the hiring manager, that could be a different sign in and of itself — I always gave at least a few members of my team an opportunity to meet candidates. It was good to help build their skills, judge fit for the organization, and also for the candidate to get a real flavor for the position. I would sit in on these conversations and just listen and watch for rapport (or not). But I digress.

I think for the most part you want to understand the business analysis role and the business analysis methodology. By understanding the manager’s approach to roles and process, you’ll indirectly be able to see support for BAs.

Ask questions such as:

• What different roles are there within the organization? How do they interact with business analysts?
• When it comes to process, do you have a big process or an informal one?
• What are your expectations for someone filling the business analyst role? t
• Another good one is “What makes a person successful here?” or “What kinds of challenges will I be able to help with?”

If you are feeling comfortable, you can ask questions about professional development opportunities. I would think about asking a BA something like, what do you do as a team to improve your process? What sort of support do you get to grow your business analyst skills? Or, have there been any recent improvements to how you do requirements? How were those received?

>>Go Into Your Next Interview with Confidence

Pick up the BA Job Interview Prep Guide that walks you through the essential steps you need to take to prepare for your first or next business analyst job interview.

Click here to get your copy of the BA Job Interview Prep Guide

In this article, I’ll walk through a process that has helped almost every business analyst job seeker I’ve worked with transform the work history section of their resume to emphasize the most relevant career experiences. This process results in a different structure to the work history section – you still organize your experiences by job and by employer, but instead of including one list of bullet points for each job, you have the flexibility to add bullet points specific to each project you’ve worked on. This allows you to pick and choose what experiences you emphasize and give more attention in your resume to your most relevant career experiences, while also being 100% honest about your professional experience.

(By the way, this is just one of 8 Business Analyst Resume Secrets You Need to Know Especially If You’ve Never Held the BA Job Title.)

Let’s look at the four steps you can take to elaborate your work history by including project summaries.

Step 1 – Identify Key Projects in Your Work History

The first thing you want to do is list some of the key projects in your career, paying careful attention to those that meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Big impact for your organization;
• You took on new responsibilities or otherwise excelled in some way;
• Close match to the type of work you want to be doing in your next position.

Not all projects will make it on your resume. In fact, you might develop project summaries for several projects and then select the key ones that best match a specific job you are applying for.

As you go through the list, start diagnosing the project.

• What did you contribute?
• What did you learn?
• What deliverables did you create?
• What would others say about your work?

Look at the project from multiple different angles to get a clear picture of the experience. This step takes a good understanding of your business analyst skills and it can be helpful to go through a skills discovery process so you know what projects to highlight and skills to represent.

Step 2 – Write a Summary for Each Project

With the background information in hand, write a short 1-2 sentence summary of the project.

Although there are no hard and fast rules, what I’ve seen work best is to have a sentence or two describing the project. These should hit the high points:

• What was your role?
• What, in essence, did you contribute?
• What impact did the project have on your organization?

Once you are done, you’ll have a bunch of mini-elevator pitches ready, any one of which might be the exact thing your next hiring manager is looking for in a candidate. You’ll also be using your resume to suggest some very compelling discussion topics, should you get called in for a business analyst job interview.

Step 3 – Write a Set of Bullet Points for Each Project

Next consider a few bullet points that back-up your project statement. You’ll want to select a few experiences that showcase your ability to use business analysis tools and techniques to achieve a tangible outcome for your project or your organization. You might think about one bullet each for the beginning, middle, and end of the project. These bullet points should detail specific contributions that you made. Wherever you can, include numbers to quantify your role. Here you want to be very concrete.

For example,

Elicited business requirements from 10 stakeholders to define a validated scope statement.

You can improve how you position not just your business analysis skills, but also your soft skills, by identifying how you impacted the project. As you think about a statement like the above, consider what challenges you faced doing this specific activity. When you are eliciting requirements, stakeholders don’t often just line themselves up in a row and sign on the dotted line. There is facilitation involved and maybe you helped overcome conflict. Maybe they had different understandings of some key terms and so couldn’t agree on scope. What did you specifically add to the elicitation process that helped make the project more successful?

After such a diagnosis of your experience, you may end up with something that looks more like this:

Elicited business requirements from 10 stakeholders across 4 departments, overcoming inter-departmental differences in understanding about key business processes by drafting high-level process flows, resulting in a validated scope statement.

There are probably 20 ways to write the above accomplishment and how you choose to do it will depend on which professional qualifications you want to emphasize in your business analyst resume. But doesn’t it have some punch? Don’t you feel like the person who could write this is likely to know a good deal about how to be a good BA?

Step 4 – Include Selected Project Summaries in the Work History Section

It’s likely you’ve worked on several projects. After drafting the summaries and bullet points for each project, consider which ones have the most impact and are most relevant to the type of position you are applying for.  Insert 3-5 projects into your work history section, indenting them below the appropriate job. If you are applying to multiple different kinds of business analyst jobs, you can swap projects in and out of your work history section so you are emphasizing career experiences the recruiter and hiring manager are most likely to find interesting.

My question is about BA resumes. I have 5 years of experience in IT and around 4.5 in BA. I am a developer/BA blend, as I understand from your book My resume lists my experiences chronologically. I remember from your IIBA presentation on resumes that a resume should contain accomplishments vs just responsibilities.  What proportion of these two things do you suggest?

I don’t want the resume to sound like I am just blowing my own trumpet but balance it with something like this is what I helped the company with (in other words, accomplishments) and these are the additional responsibilities that I handled.

Laura’s answer:

I totally understand the desire not to sound too much like a salesperson when you are putting your business analyst resume together. However, the reality is that you do need to sell your legitimate qualifications on your resume and be sure it clearly communicates what you can do by showing what you have done. The first person reviewing your resume is very unlikely to make assumptions in your favor. So toot your own horn or blow you own trumpet, even if just a little.

Let’s look at exactly what an accomplishment is. An accomplishment is a tangible result you’ve achieved for an organization you worked for. It is a benefit they received of employing you as a BA or a developer or in a blended role.

If you are honest about what you contributed, you’ll start to feel less like a salesperson and more like a communicator. And that’s the sweet spot you want to be in. You’ll need to be there before you succeed in the job interview, so you might as well figure it out when putting together your resume.

The other thing about accomplishments is that they don’t just happen. You have to do something to make them happen. Your projects are not wildly successful because you happened to wake up on the right side of the bed. Your requirements aren’t clear representations of real stakeholder needs that solve real business problems because you put random words down on paper. You did something tangible to make this happen.

This is why backing up your accomplishments with responsibilities is so important. Trust your “blowing my trumpet” instinct to guide you to in asking “what did I do to achieve that result?” In the answer to this question, you’ll find your how behind your what.

Include both in each bullet point.

For example,

Achieved alignment across four departments about a new, user-friendly navigation scheme by creating mock-ups, identifying stakeholders, and facilitating review meetings.

Or, as another example,

Improved communication between product managers and the software development team by modeling requirements in use cases and holding combined walk-through meetings, resulting in fewer changes in test.

This way your list combines accomplishments and responsibilities in one statement. Written this way, all of your bullet points could show accomplishments.

If you want more information on what responsibilities and accomplishments to include in your resume, especially if you have a varied career, click here to read my take on that.

>>Get Hired as a BA

Our 5-step business analyst job search process will walk you through what you need to do to get hired as a business analyst.

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Part of the challenge is that many of us view a resume as primarily a document of our career history. If you change up your perspective and view your resume as a sales/marketing document (a high-quality, high-integrity one), there are some plausible options for grooming your resume appropriately.

In today’s job market, recruiters receive an overwhelming number of resumes for every open position. Assuming they actually look at your resume, they are looking primarily for a reason to throw it to the side. One recruiter actually shares his scanning method for looking at resumes and a key trigger is whether or not your most recent job title is similar to the opening position.

When you are thinking about your job titles, think about that over-worked and overwhelmed recruiter. But also think ahead to landing the job interview and passing reference checks. You don’t want to sneak through the filter system and get caught later on down the road. (It’s always a good idea to keep your entire BA job search process in perspective.) And there are a few options to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

Change Your Job Titles on Your Business Analyst Resume

Simply swapping out the “official” job title for the one you feel best represents the work you were doing at the time is a way to make sure your resume helps you stand out as a candidate for your target position. This approach does have some risks. If your previous employer is called for a reference check, they will most likely reference your work by the official title.This option is probably best suited for positions at smaller companies where titles were lax anyway.

As I interviewed new business analysts as part of my research for How to Start a Business Analyst Career, I found that people used this technique to highlight legitimate business analyst experience in their career history in jobs where their responsibilities shifted quite a few times and job titles were not formalized.

But don’t worry if you aren’t comfortable with this solution, because there are other ways to be sure your BA experience gets noticed.

Include “Business Analyst” and the “Official” Job Title

Another option is to include your official title and also a representative title in parenthesis. You could also separate the two titles with a slash or hyphen. I use this technique to represent my work in my most recent full-time position. My official title was “Director, Enterprise Solutions” but what I was really doing what leading a PMO, a QA group, and defining the Business Architecture. As I am applying mostly for business analyst positions, I capture this title as Business Architect / Enterprise Solutions Director.

Use Descriptions to Tie Together Job Titles and Work Accomplishments

While most resumes follow-up a job title with a bullet list of accomplishments, I aim to capture my core responsibilities and any situational context in 1-2 brief sentences. If you are uncomfortable changing out or augmenting your job title, brief descriptions can help tie together a mismatched job title and the accomplishments you are listing out. This won’t necessarily get you past the filter, but it will help you pass muster in a more detailed review.

Warning: Match Your Accomplishments to Your Job Titles

Simply swapping out titles is not going to land you a business analyst job interview. The titles you use in your career history and the job responsibilities/accomplishments within that position must be consistent. Nothing smells stranger to a recruiter than a title and description that don’t match. Do your homework.

This means you can only give yourself the title if you can also legitimately list responsibilities you had that someone with that title would have had. After all, we are not talking about stretching the truth here. We are talking about representing the work you actually did in a way that recruiters and hiring managers will respond to.

Warning: Prep Your Employment References About Your Resume

If you are flexible with your job titles in your resume, be sure to inform your references. If a potential employer contacts someone, they are likely to reference the title on your resume. Be sure your reference understands how you are presenting that position and are comfortable supporting that characterization so they don’t mistakenly botch a reference-check.

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