ResumeProofed

Keyword Atlas · Business Operations · No 11

BusinessAnalyst
resume keywords.

The words hiring systems and business analyst hiring managers actually look for, drawn from the U.S. Department of Labor occupational database and the bodies that certify this field. Sourced, dated, and checked by machine.

LIVE SCAN · BUSINESS-ANALYST.PROFILE
Facilitated requirements gathering workshops with 5 stakeholder groups to scope a new claims-intake system
Built and scheduled Alteryx software workflows that consolidated 6 weekly reports into a single automated dashboard
Earned CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional) certification, IIBA, 2023
$101,860
Median pay, yearly
BLS OEWS (via api.bls.gov) · OEWS 2025
7%much faster than average
Growth 2024 to 2034
BLS Employment Projections (via O*NET OnLine, DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0)
98,100
Openings per year
BLS Employment Projections (via O*NET OnLine, DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0) · 2024-2034
1.08M
Employed, 2024
BLS OEWS/Employment Projections (via O*NET OnLine, DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0) · 2024

The keywords

Grouped, sourced, ready to use.

Tap any keyword to see exactly where it comes from and how to use it in a real bullet.

requirements gathering
O*NET 13-1111.00 · Task ID 7276 · CC BY 4.0
Use it like this
Facilitated requirements gathering workshops with 5 stakeholder groups to scope a new claims-intake system

Skill mix

What the role actually weighs.

English Language 3.8Administration and Management 3.5Customer and Personal Service 3.8Mathematics 3.3Education and Training 3.8Computers and Electronics 3

Communication knowledge outranks computer knowledge in the data.

Federal knowledge ratings for business analysts put English Language, Customer and Personal Service, and Education and Training in a three-way tie at the top, ahead of Administration and Management, Mathematics, and, at the bottom of this list, Computers and Electronics. That does not mean the tools and software in the list above don't matter; it means the communication and stakeholder-facing knowledge behind requirements gathering and findings documentation is what the ratings treat as the harder-to-teach differentiator. Lead your resume keywords with hard skills and tools, but don't leave the communication-heavy terms off the page.

O*NET® 13-1111.00, knowledge ratings (Level 0-7 normalized to a 0-5 display scale) · CC BY 4.0

Wage terrain

Where the salaries actually sit.

90th pct
$171,640
75th pct
$133,370
MEDIAN
$101,860
25th pct
$77,950
10th pct
$60,640
BLS OEWS percentile annual wages, 2025 release, national, SOC 13-1111 (via api.bls.gov, BLS Public Data API v2).

Placement

Where each keyword belongs.

Summary

Title, years, one certification, one specialty area. This is the densest keyword real estate on the page.

Business Analyst with 6 years in requirements gathering and data analysis and solution development, CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional) certified

Experience bullets

Hard skills and tools, each attached to an outcome with a number.

Automated recurring reporting using Alteryx software, cutting report review and improvement cycles from 5 days to 2

Skills section

Exact-phrase matching for screening software. Mirror the job posting's own wording.

requirements gathering · Alteryx software · stakeholder interviews

Cover letter

One or two signature keywords woven into a story. Never a list.

...led our team's cost analysis and process studies that reshaped how the department tracked spend...

The receipts

Claims we checked for you.

75% of resumes are rejected by ATS automatically, before a human ever sees them.NO PRIMARY SOURCE
Traces to a 2012 marketing claim from Preptel, a resume-optimization vendor that closed in 2013 without ever publishing a study, sample size, or methodology. The figure was repeated across blog posts and a few larger outlets with no new evidence, and different retellings put it anywhere from 70 to 88 percent, itself a sign nothing was actually measured. What real screening does is narrower: application-form knockout questions (work rights, a required license, a stated minimum years of experience), not a robot scoring your prose.
Employers admit their own hiring systems screen out qualified candidates who don't exactly match the stated criteria.VERIFIED · HBS/Accenture 2021
Harvard Business School and Accenture's 2021 "Hidden Workers" study, surveying employers across several countries, found 88 percent for high-skilled roles and 94 percent for middle-skilled roles believed their own hiring systems excluded qualified candidates over rigid criteria such as an unbroken employment history or a specific degree. This is real and documented, and it is why exact-phrase keyword matching against a posting's own stated requirements matters for a business analyst resume: not because a robot is grading your writing, but because a rigid filter is genuinely being applied.

Asked constantly

Business Analyst resume questions, answered straight.

What keywords should I put on a business analyst resume?

Mirror the specific terms in the job posting itself. Prioritize hard skills like requirements gathering, data analysis and solution development, and stakeholder interviews, along with any named tools like Alteryx software or Amazon Web Services AWS software, over hitting a target keyword count.

How do I get my business analyst resume past screening software?

Use the exact phrasing from the posting rather than a paraphrase, since screening systems match literally. Employers themselves report this matters: in a 2021 Harvard Business School and Accenture survey, 88 percent said their own hiring systems screen out qualified candidates who don't match stated criteria exactly.

Which software tools matter most on a business analyst resume?

O*NET flags software including Alteryx software, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Web Services AWS software as Hot Technologies for this occupation, meaning current job-posting demand for them is elevated. Name the specific tool you used rather than a generic phrase like data tools experience.

Sources on this page

  1. O*NET 30.3 Database (May 2026 Release), U.S. Department of Labor / ETA, occupation 13-1111.00. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), SOC 13-1111, 2025 release. Public domain. Retrieved via api.bls.gov, BLS Public Data API v2.
  3. O*NET OnLine (onetonline.org), Wages & Employment Trends panel for 13-1111.00, republishing BLS Employment Projections. U.S. DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0. Retrieved 2026-09-04T00:32:25Z.
  4. Recruiter/vendor citation-chain analysis of the ATS rejection-rate claim (see Resume Proofed's own reporting: resumeproofed.com/blog/does-ats-automatically-reject-resumes).
  5. Harvard Business School and Accenture, Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent, 2021.
every number dated · every source fetched and machine-checked before publish
Written by Eli Carter · Data vintage: OEWS 2025 (wages), BLS Employment Projections 2024-2034 (growth/openings), O*NET 30.3 Database (May 2026 Release) · Reviewed before publish