Business Analyst Skills for a Resume
Companies hire business analysts to turn business needs into clear requirements and better processes. Show the methods and tools you use, and prove them with projects that delivered what the business needed.
Updated
13 skills at a glance
Hard skills
Hard skills
What the work takes, how a hiring manager judges each skill, and a bullet point that shows it.
Requirements elicitation and documentation
Show how you gathered requirements, and from whom.
Example bullet pointRan workshops with finance, sales and IT that agreed the requirements for a new billing system in three weeks.
Process modeling (BPMN, flowcharts)
Show processes you mapped and what changed.
Example bullet pointMapped the claims process end to end and found handoffs that added four days to every claim.
User stories and acceptance criteria
Show that your stories helped teams build the right thing.
Example bullet pointWrote user stories with testable acceptance criteria, cutting developers' questions during sprints.
Data analysis (SQL, Excel)
Show analysis that supported a decision.
Example bullet pointAnalyzed two years of orders in SQL to show which manual checks caught real errors.
Reporting (Power BI, Tableau)
Show reports or dashboards people used.
Example bullet pointBuilt a Power BI report on process times that managers used to spot delays each week.
User acceptance testing
Show how you planned and ran testing with users.
Example bullet pointWrote 120 test scenarios with business users and tracked every defect to closure before go-live.
Business cases and cost-benefit analysis
Show business cases that won approval.
Example bullet pointWorked out the costs and benefits of automating supplier onboarding, showing payback within 18 months.
Tools (Jira, Confluence, Visio)
Name the tools and how you kept documentation useful.
Example bullet pointKept requirements, decisions and diagrams in Confluence linked to Jira stories, so nothing was lost between teams.
Soft skills
Shown through what you did, never claimed as adjectives.
Active listening
Show how listening uncovered the real need.
Example bullet pointListened to warehouse staff describe their workarounds and found the real cause of order errors.
Facilitation
Show workshops that reached agreement.
Example bullet pointFacilitated a workshop that settled a two-month disagreement between sales and finance over discount rules.
Clear writing
Show documents people used to make decisions.
Example bullet pointSummed up a 60-page vendor proposal in five pages that the steering group used to decide.
Critical thinking
Show an assumption you tested and corrected.
Example bullet pointQuestioned a request for a new system and showed that a change to an existing one would solve the problem.
Diplomacy
Show how you handled stakeholders who disagreed.
Example bullet pointBalanced the needs of three departments with competing priorities and kept all three committed to the project.
Licenses and certifications
Give them a section of their own, with who issued each one and the year or expiry date.
- Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA)
- Certification of Capability in Business Analysis (CCBA)
- Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)
- PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)
Keywords from business analyst job postings
Use the ones that are true for you, in your bullet points as well as your skills list.
- requirements
- user stories
- acceptance criteria
- workshops
- processes
- SQL
- Power BI
- user acceptance testing
- BPMN
Each posting has its own words. Our guide to tailoring your resume to a job description shows how to find them and where to put them.
Where to put your skills
- In a skills section: a short list of the hard skills the posting names, in its words.
- In your bullet points: every skill that matters should show up in something you did, with a result. That is where a hiring manager believes it.
- In your summary: two or three of the skills the job asks for most.
More on choosing them in how to choose and prove the skills on your resume.
Questions
What skills should a business analyst put on a resume?
Requirements gathering, process modeling, user stories, data analysis, reporting, user acceptance testing, business cases and tools such as Jira and Confluence, plus listening, facilitation and clear writing.
Do business analysts need technical skills?
Some. SQL and a reporting tool are common requests, and knowing how systems fit together helps you write better requirements.
How do I show impact as a business analyst?
Describe what changed after your work: time saved, errors reduced, money saved or a project that met its goals.
Put them to work
Start from a business analyst resume that already uses these skills, for an invented person, and make it yours in the builder.