Career Advice

Gain visibility in the screening process for a Data Science Job

I recently got the responsibility for the recruitment process to incorporate a new Data Scientist member into our team. We published the job description and after just 3 days we already had more than 70 applications. Amazing!

However, all those applications must be filtered, as there is only one position open. I would like to share with you some of the challenges I first faced and some tips that you could use to leverage your resume. Let’s start!

As a background note, no all the companies work in the same way, the hiring process will depend on the recruiting person and the hiring manager.

It could be possible that the recruitment team does the first screening, based on what the hiring manager has described that they are looking for. But it also may happen that the hiring manager does a quick screening first, in order to select candidates. Note, the hiring manager will be the person that you will report to.

Anyway, both of them have very limited time. The hiring manager still has meetings to attend and projects to develop as well as a team to manage and guide. The recruiter person probably is also in charge of another bunch of applications. That’s why it’s very important that your CV gives a good impression.

In my first access to the candidate’s pool (+70 CVs), I realized that:

• Design and concise CVs are really important. I don’t have time to read 5 pages curriculum nor a CV that is not well structured.
• The data science skills and tools used must be at glance and easily captured.
• Some CVs have a lot of experience that is not relevant to the job applied, as example, asking for NLP experience or Deep Learning and not showed even once in the experiences or keywords.
• A common filter should be applied. I have to apply a common minimum threshold to all candidates to filter them out.
• I can’t read fully all the CVs. The long CVs will be directly removed unless they have a summary at the beginning, that engages me with relevant information.

After checking a few curricula I could classify the applications into:

• Good. Less than 2 pages and everything I want to check on the first page. Preferable just 1 page. Easy to understand the ML skills with categories and level of experience.
• Long but well-structured. The CV is long, but still, it’s easy to read and includes a summary on the first page. Probably the person can’t summarize so good and wants to add everything in case it helps to get the job, or he/she has too much experience and projects.
• Long and impossible to follow. I noticed the same type of 5 page plus CVs for multiple applicants. They are long, with no margin, categories or structure to understand what you are reading.

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After, I came up with some points that could help you to improve your resume, based on what I quickly saw, and position your skills to easily be matched.

👁 Image from Unplash

Tips for mastering your Resume:

• Work experience should be the first thing the hiring manager sees. I’m mainly interested in your relevant experience, please don’t add a list of your skills before this. Ideally, you add your work experience (including the years and accomplishments) and the skills and/or tools needed for that job or developed during that time.
• If the job you are applying to is heavily focused on python, classification algorithms, and NLP, add keywords under your work experience: it will show your relevant experience for the job and catch the eye of the recruiter faster.
• If you don’t have enough work experience, add your experience on projects such as Kaggle or any other project with real data.
• If you come from a research university, adapt the skills and tools to the job you are applying to. If the job description asks for knowledge of python, don’t say you know Stata and Latex; that’s not going to be useful and it just takes space in your resume.
• Don’t add a long list of skills without categorization. If your skills are based on programming, ML frameworks, algorithms, soft skills, version control tools, languages, etc. then say it, don’t add them all waiting for the hiring manager to find the one they are interested in. Extra tip: if the position asks for X, Y or Z skills, make use of BOLD to highlight you already have that. It will catch recruiter’s eyes faster.
• Don’t add extra things just to fill up space. Make sure you are concise and that you don’t repeat always the same descriptions in job experience. If for 2 jobs in your life you have been doing A/B testing, add that one in one of them and in the other add that you analyze the data or anything else you have done related to the A/B test. It will show variety and I will see that you already know that. Then in the interview, you will be able to really show that you master that skill.
• Make sure the position of the title in the work experience section is aligned with the Company and the time worked there. Apply proper margins. In the end, we are humans, we read organized things, not messy. If your CV is not organized, I would assume that you won’t be organized in your position, so unless the hiring manager relates to that, you won’t be easily taken into account.
• Don’t write that you are single or even your birth date. We base the decisions on your qualifications, so avoid anything extra that could bias the decision.
• Send your CV in PDF, not .docx. You don’t know the platform we are using to open it, and if it’s not pdf it’s possible we don’t see it as beautiful as you did it.

This is just some few tips that will really bring up in the pool your CV. Please make sure you understand the person reviewing it doesn’t have much time, and you should succeed in your resume in order to have a chance for an onsite interview.

Good luck!

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