Need a Resume Boost? Try Adding These Skills!
Actually learn these BEFORE you add them to your CV ;)
The job market is tough right now. You’re shooting off job application after job application and then getting rejection after rejection. You have so much to offer—you’d probably knock the hiring team’s socks off in an interview—but you aren’t given that chance. So, how do you get your resume to stand out and land an interview?
After many requests, I have *finally* put together a list of skills and tools that, in my own experiences and those of fellow public health colleagues, get employers excited. This list is by no means complete or comprehensive. In fact, if I’m missing a skill that, in your experience has gotten a lot of excitement by hiring teams, drop it in the comments or in our handy dandy feedback form—who knows who you’ll help!
Without further ado…
Work Automation Tools
What: Think Trello, PowerAutomate, Monday, and others. Especially in program or project coordination or management roles, employers love at least exposure to, if not experience with, these tools.
Why: These tools allow users to assign tasks and keep track of responsibilities as you work towards deadlines and deliverables. Simply, they keep teams organized in their prioritization and delegation of work. Knowing these tools shows employers that you 1) are organized, 2) are good with time and task management within a team, and 3) can be easily integrated into their existing organizational structures.
Dashboards and Data Visualization Tools
What: Applications like PowerBI, Tableau, and R Shiny that allow you to display multiple data visualizations at once, such as various key performance indicators. PowerBI is particularly accessible if you already know Excel—same with R Shiny if you already know R. I highly recommend Alex the Analyst’s YouTube tutorials to guide your learning. From there, most folks will say learning Tableau is fairly straightforward if you already know PowerBI. These are fairly easy to practice too, just grab an open-source data!
Why: This one is, by far, the set of tools I personally get the most excitement about in interviews. These tools allow you to summarize several key metrics with different graphs—bar graphs, line graphs, pivot tables, counts, and more— on one page to get the bigger picture. Dashboards are invaluable analytic tools that allow for simplified information sharing with teams and supervisors. This tool may not always be listed in an analyst job description, but hiring teams will love to see your ability to manipulate data and play with the puzzle pieces to answer big-picture questions.
Primary Source Skills
What: Literature reviews, scoping reviews, systematic review (with and without meta-analyses). Essentially, how to search for appropriate, pertinent evidence to support research questions and how that information can be used.
Why: You would be surprised how many people in the sciences can’t effectively or efficiently consume scientific literature and synthesize it for use. Understanding the breadth and depth of relevant evidence is the backbone of research—you have to know what’s out there to figure out where to go next. If you can show hiring teams, particularly those looking for researchers, that you can take technical papers and make meaning out of them, connecting them to other sources and to your research question, they’ll be excited! Bonus points if you have familiarity with platforms that help to facilitate and organize working with literature—EndNote, Nvivo, Zotero, DistillerSR, etc.
Coding Languages
What: The biggest ones I’ve seen in public health are R, SAS, Python, DAX, and SQL, but it never hurts to learn more. Even knowing one will help you, as learning the logic of programming makes it easier to learn additional languages. There’s so many free online courses, YouTube tutorials, and other learning tools out there, and many platforms, like RStudio, are open source! Some coding languages have certifications—such as SAS—but these can be expensive. These skills are also fairly easy to practice with open-source data!
Why: Coding languages allow you to explore the breadth and depth of data efficiently, as well as clean, manipulate, and visualize. As public health and healthcare becomes increasingly reliant on '“big data”, data skills in coding languages are essential. Even if the job description doesn’t require it, having coding skills tells a lot about you and the value you can add—you have an analytical toolbox with the ability to troubleshoot, which can then be incorporated into a team’s normal practice, such as evaluation. If you don’t have at least one in your arsenal, add one—many public health disciplines, like epidemiology, already include this in their curriculum. If you have some, add more. Bonus points if you keep your coding skills strong with independent projects on platforms like GitHub—this shows initiative and curiosity, as well as creates a portfolio for employers to see your work.
Continuing Education
What: Think courses, such as FEMA trainings—I personally have ICS 100, 120, 130, 200, 700, and 800 under my belt. Anything that is pertinent to your interests and is provided by a reputable source, whether it be a skill, topic, process, or methodology. There’s both free online courses, as well as certification exams you can pay for (CHES, PMP, etc).
Why: Again, initiative and curiosity! You can learn most things on the job, but no one can teach you passion or a love of learning. Showing that you go the extra mile to grow as a public health professional stands out! Also, who knows when you might need that information—it can broaden and/or deepen your knowledge base, creating additional ways for you to fit in and benefit a team.
What tools or skills am I missing? Let me know in the comments or here :)
