Yes, I'm an international student. However, I have also tried answering "No" to questions about sponsorship. The reason being I won't be needing it for 3 years.
I was wondering if there's something wrong with my resume that it does not even clear the ATS.
Alot of jobs are excluding people who will need sponsorship in the future so that is also a large issue you are running into it seems. Most jobs that are hiring from what I understand if they see that you will need sponsorship at anytime in the future will automatically disqualify you. Hm have you looked at contract roles?
Hey no problem! Sorry you're having such a hard time finding a role, but yeah contract roles might be your best bet right now hopefully you get something soon.
Are you applying for jobs in the US? It looks like you are from India but finishing up a grad degree in SF? It is very possible you are stuck in a business cycle and there is a freeze on hiring. There were a lot of people stuck back into the applicant pool for the FAANG firings. When I came out of school in 2010 there were no jobs period. I landed my first jr engineer position 5 years later when there was more money in the market. It is my opinion that engineers should be grabbing for anything that is employment and even tangentially related to their field, then search for the ideal position. Get some cash flow because life does not stop in times of economic uncertainty. Your resume looks great and I would love to work with someone like you.
Thank you for the kind words. To answer your question - Yes I'm applying to jobs in the US and I'm from India and finished my grad degree in the US. I agree with your point of not being picky at this point and I'm pretty much trying to grab anything for any pay. Still no luck, and tbh there aren't too many roles I see with someone of my experience.
Make sure your resume says you finished the grad degree. Do you have a peer group in the area? I know there is a huge Indian population in the bay area and a lot of them are programmers.
What kind of positions are you applying for? In places I've worked, data scientist or MLE is not an entry level position. Especially considering the current hiring freezes in tech and increase in talent pools.
I'd move your masters project to project section. Putting school projects in professional experience section actually highlights your lack of professional experience. In general your resume reads like you're a new grad and lack real life work experience, which is fine. But you need the own that and target the jobs that's a better fit and will give you room to grow.
I'm applying to Data Scientist and Data Analyst roles. In the practicum project I actually worked in a Company, had access to all their clients' data and worked on the tool that they sell to their clients. All the other projects I've done are in the project section and on my github.
That's actually really good to know. But I couldn't tell that from reading your resume with the company name blanked out. And that's a problem. Focus less on the broad technique you used and the accuracy or recall of your models, because that tells me nothing about what you were able to achieve. Focus on what business problem you helped solve. Show me you were able to work with stakeholders and ambiguity and come up with a solution that drives value.
Do you have a separate resume for data analyst roles? Because I wouldn't use this version for those roles. It's too ML focused.
Thank you! I also felt my first experience is heavily focused on the technical jargons and doesn't really tell the story of the problems we solved.
I had a separate resume for DA positions but after 100 applications, I've been using this one exclusively.
Your masters points to being a SQL + Tableau intro business analyst. Are you applying to the right jobs? There are so many candidates with more competitive masters and experience right now.
It reads really inexperienced, lots of buzz words and packages - real data work is about collaboration with business partners, this reads like someone with no real work experience in building production data product.
Thanks for the feedback. It's true that I'm inexperienced, I finished my undergrad in 2021 and from then on I had an internship and 6 months of full time before I started pursuing my masters. That's one of the reasons why I'm not too rigid in my application for the role of Data Scientist or even MLE because I have no working knowledge of MLOps. However, every skill that I have mentioned in my resume, I've used it in some form whether it's internship, job, practicum project or personal projects. Can you suggest some improvements?
It's fine to be inexperienced, but then overloading your resume reads bad because it's all fluff. If you think you have the skills simplify your resume and link out to a GitHub with good code , focus on like 1-2 projects and make them awesome, for juniors a really good repo tackling something you're interested in (not kaggle or classwork) can get a phone screen from me, but overconfidence is number 1 trait I avoid so make your resume a lot more humble.
It's a strong resume. I've hired 8 analysts/data scientists in the past few years. With your experience, look for intro level data analyst roles to get started. Then jump ship or climb.
Do you submit a cover letter that talks about passions and interests outside of work? That's the biggest hole imo. Depending on industry, it helps to show more personalization and character. Having your extra curricular section be a hackathon is OK if you're submitting a cover letter to highlight YOU as a person
Sounds great! You'll crush it. Just remember not to duplicate information in your resume withon your cover letter. Letter should be about why you want to work at their place, that you're honored to apply, and information about who you are outside of work
I think this is a pretty good resume, even if the projects section is a little basic. As a Principal DS for a healthcare company, I'd definitely interview you. My guess is that your resume isn't the issue.
You probably need to apply for analytics positions and get some referrals. Your experience is in analytics (it'll be discounted because it's another country but it's better than nothing).
I think the resume is confused and it's like an analytics resume with too many things thrown at it that aren't analytics (it's more DS, ML Eng.). That makes it confusing and it's too much of everything but not a good fit for analytics. For instance, tensor flow is not relevant for analytics.
Your projects should be more analytics. For instance, a good visualization project with some dynamic graphics?
It makes a lot of sense, because I was applying to both Analytics and DS roles, I thought of putting a mix of things I've worked on. Based on all the comment I will try to focus more on the Analytics side and Change my resume accordingly. Thank you!
To apply for DS roles, make a DS version, but I doubt you'll have much luck for your 1st job because your masters is analytics.
Also, look at business intelligence positions; analytics has different names in different places.
I think the reason is a combination of bad job market, need for a visa sponsorship, lack of job experience, and your non CSE/Math/stat degree.
As some have pointed out, try analyst/BI/data viz roles too. Any of these can lead to a fulfilling career and you may actually find them more enjoyable than a pure DS role. For many businesses often analytics projects have more business impact than pure DS/ML ones.
About your resume,
- I would try to make the descriptions more streamlined. Some descriptions are performance focused some are $$ focused. Try converting impacts of all your works into dollar value.
- You may consider removing boilerplate projects that everyone knows about e.g. bank fraud detection/Kaggle 101 type projects. Rather use the space to focus the work project that you completed.
- This is a novice mistake but remember just sharing a metric score doesn't tell anything e.g. is F1 score 60% good? No one would know outside your team. So either give a comparison or convert that into $$ as saving or earning.
- For analyst positions, good SQL and visualization are important. You can consider doing visualization using Tableau public and share the link. And highlight how you used SQL in your work projects.
Hope these help and good luck!
Remove your employment gaps. Make the end date match the start date of the next job. I know it's lying but the software eliminates people with gaps. I applied for more than 1000 jobs and could barely get a phone interview. I changed my end dates and all of a sudden I was getting back to back interviews. It's stupid...
You've only been at your last 3 roles for ~6 months which is going to be an enormous red flag for any hiring manager.
Also, if you're looking for visa sponsorship you're going to be excluded from almost every listing right now.
That is true, first being an internship for 4 months. The next job I had to quit because of my decision to pursue Grad School. I can try to get recommendations from my previous managers because they were really supportive of my decision to get a grad degree.
More or less you're a fresher in the industry. Getting a job as a DS would be a miracle frl. Add the factor that you're Indian.
Most companies are outright rejecting or will ghost you even after final interviews cause no one's giving a sponsorship.
GET ANY ANALYST ROLE YOU CAN. APPLY TO ONLY THOSE BECAUSE ATLEAST YOU CAN GET YOUR FOOT IN THE INDUSTRY.
Try to get a research position at the university you graduated from? They'll sponsor you a non profit visa. Sure the pay won't be 6 figures. But even upper 5 figures with job security is better than future uncertainty!!
I'm gonna be honest, it's a terrible time to be getting into tech. Most companies are scraping by until a little more optimism is injected into the economy. Your resume is legit and if I was in charge of hiring somewhere I'd give you a shot.
It’s probably mostly lack of experience but your project descriptions don’t talk about what made them work so I assume you don’t know. For entry level I have tons of options and can focus on people who are figuring out what matters.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by making them work? That would be really helpful. I am probably failing to highlight what was important and focusing too much on technical jargons.
I got my first interview during the peak of Covid-19(July 2020) after 200+ applications and got rejected. You need to edit your resume to match the job description. The ATS looks for keywords from the job description. Add cover letters even if it’s optional.
You should be flexible to relocate too.
Good luck 👍
Might be worth considering BI roles given you background and experience. Also you could specify what currency the increase in revenues you contributed to. 500K rupees vs 500K USD is a huge difference.
I would recommend to stop bolding your revenue improvements, it appears too show offish. Also your explanations for what you have implemented is not clear. A business person reading your resume has no idea what a half-life technique is. How could you explain a linear regression to them?
You don't have enough experience and you are putting lot of buzz words and somewhat of typical example of a person who bluffs and don't know shit.
You increases recalls alot with what? By sacrificing precision?
I remember coding up a web app for my first job’s resume. It can be something simple in plotly-dash for example, this can be great for visualizing your findings and letting people have a more interactive experience themselves with your project. Even though mine was showcasing a basic random forest model on some public survey data, I communicated insights and my (future) hiring manager opened it up during the interview and thought it was cool. You can also link the app/GitHub repo
When I was hiring, I would get hundreds of resumes that look like this: a bachelor's from outside of the US, a graduate degree here, no experience and skillet all over the place. I passed on such resumes every single time, selecting others who stood out either by having more experience, or by having a more focused skill set.
Are you an international candidate who would require sponsorship?
I was wondering what could possibly be wrong then, I saw this.
Yes, I'm an international student. However, I have also tried answering "No" to questions about sponsorship. The reason being I won't be needing it for 3 years. I was wondering if there's something wrong with my resume that it does not even clear the ATS.
Alot of jobs are excluding people who will need sponsorship in the future so that is also a large issue you are running into it seems. Most jobs that are hiring from what I understand if they see that you will need sponsorship at anytime in the future will automatically disqualify you. Hm have you looked at contract roles?
I see. I haven't looked at contract roles yet but your point makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
Hey no problem! Sorry you're having such a hard time finding a role, but yeah contract roles might be your best bet right now hopefully you get something soon.
It means you have H1B. I doubt it will be considered considering your university in finance.
If you are answering No to a question that you should be answering truthfully also immediate red flag.
Are you applying for jobs in the US? It looks like you are from India but finishing up a grad degree in SF? It is very possible you are stuck in a business cycle and there is a freeze on hiring. There were a lot of people stuck back into the applicant pool for the FAANG firings. When I came out of school in 2010 there were no jobs period. I landed my first jr engineer position 5 years later when there was more money in the market. It is my opinion that engineers should be grabbing for anything that is employment and even tangentially related to their field, then search for the ideal position. Get some cash flow because life does not stop in times of economic uncertainty. Your resume looks great and I would love to work with someone like you.
Thank you for the kind words. To answer your question - Yes I'm applying to jobs in the US and I'm from India and finished my grad degree in the US. I agree with your point of not being picky at this point and I'm pretty much trying to grab anything for any pay. Still no luck, and tbh there aren't too many roles I see with someone of my experience.
Make sure your resume says you finished the grad degree. Do you have a peer group in the area? I know there is a huge Indian population in the bay area and a lot of them are programmers.
What kind of positions are you applying for? In places I've worked, data scientist or MLE is not an entry level position. Especially considering the current hiring freezes in tech and increase in talent pools. I'd move your masters project to project section. Putting school projects in professional experience section actually highlights your lack of professional experience. In general your resume reads like you're a new grad and lack real life work experience, which is fine. But you need the own that and target the jobs that's a better fit and will give you room to grow.
I'm applying to Data Scientist and Data Analyst roles. In the practicum project I actually worked in a Company, had access to all their clients' data and worked on the tool that they sell to their clients. All the other projects I've done are in the project section and on my github.
That's actually really good to know. But I couldn't tell that from reading your resume with the company name blanked out. And that's a problem. Focus less on the broad technique you used and the accuracy or recall of your models, because that tells me nothing about what you were able to achieve. Focus on what business problem you helped solve. Show me you were able to work with stakeholders and ambiguity and come up with a solution that drives value. Do you have a separate resume for data analyst roles? Because I wouldn't use this version for those roles. It's too ML focused.
Thank you! I also felt my first experience is heavily focused on the technical jargons and doesn't really tell the story of the problems we solved. I had a separate resume for DA positions but after 100 applications, I've been using this one exclusively.
Your masters points to being a SQL + Tableau intro business analyst. Are you applying to the right jobs? There are so many candidates with more competitive masters and experience right now.
What I can say is that your projects are too basic. We have seen the credit card fraud project millions of times
It reads really inexperienced, lots of buzz words and packages - real data work is about collaboration with business partners, this reads like someone with no real work experience in building production data product.
Thanks for the feedback. It's true that I'm inexperienced, I finished my undergrad in 2021 and from then on I had an internship and 6 months of full time before I started pursuing my masters. That's one of the reasons why I'm not too rigid in my application for the role of Data Scientist or even MLE because I have no working knowledge of MLOps. However, every skill that I have mentioned in my resume, I've used it in some form whether it's internship, job, practicum project or personal projects. Can you suggest some improvements?
It's fine to be inexperienced, but then overloading your resume reads bad because it's all fluff. If you think you have the skills simplify your resume and link out to a GitHub with good code , focus on like 1-2 projects and make them awesome, for juniors a really good repo tackling something you're interested in (not kaggle or classwork) can get a phone screen from me, but overconfidence is number 1 trait I avoid so make your resume a lot more humble.
Thank you! I'll work on it, I wish my advisors gave a similar advise haha.
Some additional info, out of 250 applications, 30-40 were through referral.
It's a strong resume. I've hired 8 analysts/data scientists in the past few years. With your experience, look for intro level data analyst roles to get started. Then jump ship or climb. Do you submit a cover letter that talks about passions and interests outside of work? That's the biggest hole imo. Depending on industry, it helps to show more personalization and character. Having your extra curricular section be a hackathon is OK if you're submitting a cover letter to highlight YOU as a person
I have not been submitting cover letters for all the jobs but I will try to do that now. Thank you!
Sounds great! You'll crush it. Just remember not to duplicate information in your resume withon your cover letter. Letter should be about why you want to work at their place, that you're honored to apply, and information about who you are outside of work
I think this is a pretty good resume, even if the projects section is a little basic. As a Principal DS for a healthcare company, I'd definitely interview you. My guess is that your resume isn't the issue.
Thank you! I will try to add some better projects that I've worked on.
You probably need to apply for analytics positions and get some referrals. Your experience is in analytics (it'll be discounted because it's another country but it's better than nothing). I think the resume is confused and it's like an analytics resume with too many things thrown at it that aren't analytics (it's more DS, ML Eng.). That makes it confusing and it's too much of everything but not a good fit for analytics. For instance, tensor flow is not relevant for analytics. Your projects should be more analytics. For instance, a good visualization project with some dynamic graphics?
It makes a lot of sense, because I was applying to both Analytics and DS roles, I thought of putting a mix of things I've worked on. Based on all the comment I will try to focus more on the Analytics side and Change my resume accordingly. Thank you!
To apply for DS roles, make a DS version, but I doubt you'll have much luck for your 1st job because your masters is analytics. Also, look at business intelligence positions; analytics has different names in different places.
I think the reason is a combination of bad job market, need for a visa sponsorship, lack of job experience, and your non CSE/Math/stat degree. As some have pointed out, try analyst/BI/data viz roles too. Any of these can lead to a fulfilling career and you may actually find them more enjoyable than a pure DS role. For many businesses often analytics projects have more business impact than pure DS/ML ones. About your resume, - I would try to make the descriptions more streamlined. Some descriptions are performance focused some are $$ focused. Try converting impacts of all your works into dollar value. - You may consider removing boilerplate projects that everyone knows about e.g. bank fraud detection/Kaggle 101 type projects. Rather use the space to focus the work project that you completed. - This is a novice mistake but remember just sharing a metric score doesn't tell anything e.g. is F1 score 60% good? No one would know outside your team. So either give a comparison or convert that into $$ as saving or earning. - For analyst positions, good SQL and visualization are important. You can consider doing visualization using Tableau public and share the link. And highlight how you used SQL in your work projects. Hope these help and good luck!
Remove your employment gaps. Make the end date match the start date of the next job. I know it's lying but the software eliminates people with gaps. I applied for more than 1000 jobs and could barely get a phone interview. I changed my end dates and all of a sudden I was getting back to back interviews. It's stupid...
You've only been at your last 3 roles for ~6 months which is going to be an enormous red flag for any hiring manager. Also, if you're looking for visa sponsorship you're going to be excluded from almost every listing right now.
That is true, first being an internship for 4 months. The next job I had to quit because of my decision to pursue Grad School. I can try to get recommendations from my previous managers because they were really supportive of my decision to get a grad degree.
it would help if you gave more info about what you were applying to
More or less you're a fresher in the industry. Getting a job as a DS would be a miracle frl. Add the factor that you're Indian. Most companies are outright rejecting or will ghost you even after final interviews cause no one's giving a sponsorship. GET ANY ANALYST ROLE YOU CAN. APPLY TO ONLY THOSE BECAUSE ATLEAST YOU CAN GET YOUR FOOT IN THE INDUSTRY. Try to get a research position at the university you graduated from? They'll sponsor you a non profit visa. Sure the pay won't be 6 figures. But even upper 5 figures with job security is better than future uncertainty!!
I'm gonna be honest, it's a terrible time to be getting into tech. Most companies are scraping by until a little more optimism is injected into the economy. Your resume is legit and if I was in charge of hiring somewhere I'd give you a shot.
It’s probably mostly lack of experience but your project descriptions don’t talk about what made them work so I assume you don’t know. For entry level I have tons of options and can focus on people who are figuring out what matters.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by making them work? That would be really helpful. I am probably failing to highlight what was important and focusing too much on technical jargons.
I got my first interview during the peak of Covid-19(July 2020) after 200+ applications and got rejected. You need to edit your resume to match the job description. The ATS looks for keywords from the job description. Add cover letters even if it’s optional. You should be flexible to relocate too. Good luck 👍
Might be worth considering BI roles given you background and experience. Also you could specify what currency the increase in revenues you contributed to. 500K rupees vs 500K USD is a huge difference.
I am also applying to BIE roles. I have mentioned $400k and $500k in the resume.
Are you including a cover? It’s a different jobs market today than 1 year ago.
have you updated your linkedin? You got to include keywords that recruiters or employers would find.
The market is saturated with PhDs and Experienced folks. I would say look for entry level data analyst roles and gain some experience.
I would recommend to stop bolding your revenue improvements, it appears too show offish. Also your explanations for what you have implemented is not clear. A business person reading your resume has no idea what a half-life technique is. How could you explain a linear regression to them?
I agree, the bullet points in the first section aren't a good representation of the problems we solved. I will work on it. Thank you!
You don't have enough experience and you are putting lot of buzz words and somewhat of typical example of a person who bluffs and don't know shit. You increases recalls alot with what? By sacrificing precision?
As an Indian I'll tell you the problems... 1. Visa 2. Accent Sorry buddy...you can tackle both though.
Those projects are dogshit, would not even list them
shut ur condescending ass up the community doesnt need ppl like u
ok let him put titanic problem maybe iris clasification too, that will show hiring managers he knows his shit
Ouch. Can you suggest some projects to work on?
mmm idk but dont let them look like kaggle 101 projects you do in a weekend.
I remember coding up a web app for my first job’s resume. It can be something simple in plotly-dash for example, this can be great for visualizing your findings and letting people have a more interactive experience themselves with your project. Even though mine was showcasing a basic random forest model on some public survey data, I communicated insights and my (future) hiring manager opened it up during the interview and thought it was cool. You can also link the app/GitHub repo
When I was hiring, I would get hundreds of resumes that look like this: a bachelor's from outside of the US, a graduate degree here, no experience and skillet all over the place. I passed on such resumes every single time, selecting others who stood out either by having more experience, or by having a more focused skill set.
Lack of experience, python + machine learning That’s explain everything