Put Quantifiable Successes On Your Resume
If you're looking for a job these days, you know how tough it can be to separate yourself from the pack. One key is being sure your resume is as good as it can be — that it sells your skills in full force to make you stand out. But US News says that there are five resume mistakes that most job hunters are making, mistakes that are killing their chances of making it to the next step (getting an interview). Of those five, we think this one is the most egregious: your résumé has no numbers, as in, measurable accomplishments...
There are no numbers on your résumé: Accomplishments are measurable. Karsh focuses on two forms of accomplishments: scope and results. When thinking about scope, consider questions like how much, how many, how often, how frequently. When it comes to results, think about accomplishments that were singular and superlative-were you the top seller, the only person chosen, the grand prize winner? Numbers are key to elucidating and proving what you've done in an especially concise fashion. "I tell people that within each section of your résumé, in each job you write about, you want to have at least four or five numbers that quantify what you've done," Karsh says. The phrase "prepared reports" means nothing to a recruiter, while "prepared 500 reports" means quite a bit. "If I hear 'prepared reports'-and most recruiting directors, like I was, are very skeptical-I assume that it was two [reports]," Karsh says.
Think about it this way — which of these two people would you rather hire:
* "Company First" committee member.
* Led special projects team that saved the company $100,000 in two months.
Ok, it's an extreme example, but you can see the difference. They both describe the same task. But the first one is vague, rather meaningless, and certainly does not demonstrate any meaningful accomplishments. The second phrase shows leadership ("led") of an important group ("special projects team") with substantial results ("saved $100,000") in a short period of time ("two months.") It expresses the results in a way to maximize the attention from a potential employer.
So if you're looking for a job, review your resume and make sure your past experiences are accomplishment-oriented. Even if you do not have what you feel are accomplishments, there are ways to make minor accomplishments into major resume successes. It will take some time and effort to do this, but being sure your resume lists measurable accomplishments will likely be the difference that gets you the interview.
5 Résumé Mistakes You're Probably Making [US News]
(Photo: Breslow)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam malesuada commodo erat et molestie. Duis pellentesque aliquam bibendum. Suspendisse venenatis lobortis eleifend. Mauris id est sed lectus convallis aliquam.
Post a comment
Comments:
As a former recruiter, my top tip is to spell the name of the job you are applying for correctly in your cover letter (if you went to school for 9 months to train as a phlebotomist, you should not spell it "phlabotomist"). Also, if you are going to write a sentence that says you are detail-oriented, make sure there's not a typo in the sentence.
Actually the first trick is knowing someone.
What if your work is not quantifiable in this way? Not everyone manages the day shift at Harbor Freight.
@Trencher93: Yeah my job isn't quantifiable in numbers and commission. I can say "I designed X number of projects" but that's not really impressive when you're there every day and you've worked there for a year and a half.
I wouldn't encourage someone to leap from
* "Company First" committee member.
to
* Led special projects team that saved the company $100,000 in two months.
unless it were actually true. I mean, being a member of a group isn't the same as leading a group...and when a prospective employer calls your employer to verify, you bet that there may be some awkward silences.
I know it's an extreme jump, like the post said, but it's not necessarily a good example. If you say you led, but you didn't, that's a lie. If an employer finds out you lied, or nudged facts in certain ways, you can forget about the interview, and you never know if your name may come up during a conversation with other prospective employers. People in the same field tend to talk to each other.
Brad Karsh, the guy quoted in the article, also runs a company that writes people's resumes called JobBound. I haven't used them - I'm a do-it-yourself-er - but some of my friends have, and they said they were really happy with the finished product.
@Trencher93: Well i@pecan pi: Well if you designed/led x amt of projects, it might help state what the projects did. Did they dsave the company $$$, make something more efficient?
Everyone needs a "elevator pitch". They give you focus and are not just for salesmen and entrepreneurs anymore.
Clearly, the first piece of advice is to avoid Monster.com since they love holding security breaches with your information.
Erm, or was it Monster Cable? Or maybe it was monster mini golf? You know, i'm not really sure now that I think of it, oh dear where DID I leave that password....?
@White Speed Receiver: The corollary to the first trick is to make sure that if you're a Manager's Assistant, you don't call yourself an Assistant Manager.
If you have my business card and you send me your resume, spell my name right. I don't know how many resumes I get for "Random Hickup".
@chatterboxwriting: To go with that, consistent tense and punctuation is a pet peeve of mine. If you do bullets ended with a period, make sure they all end with a period. And the same goes for past vs. present tense speech.
@Yurei: Monster.com et al are the worst places to find a job. All sorts of scammers sign up as "employers" to get your information. All you will get is spam for commission sales "opportunities".
I always have an objective statement. I got two jobs with it and I think it works. I agree with putting college accomplishments at the middle or end as they really can't ask you a lot of questions about that anyway. Unless the interviewer went to the same school they aren't going to really care what you did or what you liked about it.
Here's how mine is laid out:
Objective
Education
Qualifications
Skill sets
Career History
Certifications
Awards/Honors
@Eldritch: Because that's lying and I dislike gray-area resume padding. I think resumes should be scrupulously honest. An Assistant to the Manager (i.e., secretary) and Assistant Manager (i.e., the person who calls the shots when the manager is out) are totally different things.
To make it immediately relevant to this article, if you say you saved the company $100,000 in two months, then you better have saved the company $100,000 in two months. I'm going to ask you about it in the interview, and if you give me a vague answer about what you did, like
Me: How did you save your company money?
You: I did a comprehensive review of the operations, identified the inefficiencies, and used synergistic Six-Sigma strategies to streamline the processes.
then I'll know you're full of shit.
At least this how it'd work in my fantasy life where I get to not hire people who shouldn't have been hired.
@pecan pi: What was the value of the projects to the customer how much was your company paid for them? You could say how many there were and estimate an average value.
What effect did they have on the client? Did they save any time? did they eliminate any unneeded processes?
What was the effect of you being the one designing the projects?
EVERYTHING is quantifiable, sometimes you just have to dig a bit in some jobs to find them.
Example: I made a series of spreadsheet macros about 10 years ago that automated a lot of mundane tasks for a lot of people. They told me it saved them hours of work a day. On my resume it's a bullet point: Automated processes saving about 50 man-hours daily.
I headed up some projects later in my career and it's also a bullet point: planned and managed projects with budgets ranging from $100k to $1 million.
@Michael Belisle: That could be just bad interview technique. He could have actually done that but not known to be specific or at least generally specific. Some things you might not be able to talk about because of non-comp.
@White Speed Receiver:
For people coming out of college or school there's better ways of formatting a resume to highlight your skills rather than your experience. My wife helps people do this and has good success. People understand when you're trying to find a job initially you're not going to have any experience or accomplishments.
@Gokuhouse: The resume format you use should depend on the type of career and the stage of the career.
mine is:
Education
Career history
skill sets (qualifications)
certs
awards/honors
I had a professional resume writer help me reformat it after having a hard time getting a new job. After reformatting and getting some interview coaching I went from 0 interviews to 4 offers.
As for objectives, my counselors in college told us to use them, but phrase them for what you're going to do for the company, not yourself. After you're established in your career you don't really need one anymore, especially if they are wordy, confusing or just take up space.
@snowburnt: Getting people to look at your resume is one of the best ways to improve it. I had my former boss and one former co-worker help me update my resume. It really did help. Comparing my old resume to my new one is almost sad. They both had lots of great ways for me to make myself look better without lying and helped me reformat it so it just flowed smoothly from top to bottom.
@snowburnt: If there are non-comp issues involved with answering the question, I'd like for the interviewee to disclose that. It's usually possible to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about without running afoul of contractual obligations.
Also, in my imaginary interviews, I assign a buzzword penalty.
@snowburnt: Mine goes
Education
Bar Admissions
Career History
Community Involvement
Community involvement is a huge one here because it's a smaller community, and through my volunteer work I've managed projects with million-dollar budgets and sat on boards of directors and so on and so forth.
My education is slowly shortening up as I get more years away from it. Awards and honors I list with the job/education/whatever they belong with.
I've never used an objective on the resume, but I include something like that and highlight specific skills relevant to the job (especially if they may not be immediately obvious on the resume) in the cover letter. My cover letter has gotten me a lot of interviews in the past.
@Gokuhouse: A recruiter I talked to when I was looking for a job this past summer said she sees about 1/3 of her resumes with objective statements and the rest without. She said that she doesn't really care if you have one or not, but that depends on the recruiter/hiring manager.
The other thing she mentioned was once you're 10 years out of school or so, remove the dates from your "eduction" section. No need to advertise to the hiring manager how old you are right off the bat (Yes, it's obviously discriminatory to make any kinds of decisions based on that info, but anywhere you can remove bias is a good thing.)
I think these are great tips, and I'm forwarding the article to my unemployed husband. It's a little harder to quantify in his field (higher-ed administration) but it can't hurt to look for opportunities to do so.
This helps with people who've had "real" jobs. I don't think my, "Stocked 50 boxes a day, and had 100 customers yell at me for their own ignorance." or, "Repaired 10 computers a day and had 200 customers yell at me for their own ignorance" would truly benefit me in my resume. Haha, I forgot I also, "Helped 75 members a day sign in for the tennis courts, and single-handedly sold and served more than 20 drinks a day."
Damn, I bet they can't wait to hire me with my ultimate part-time experience.
@pecan pi: I think it's obvious that the second way of writing it is the correct way, and the first is an example of a common way that some people would describe the activity. If the second one is true, don't write the first one.
I don't think that this sort of thing helps those of us who work/worked for non-profits.
@selianth: That's a good idea about removing the dates from education. If you look young I can see that helping you out. Sadly there are lots of places that avoid hiring people who are older for different reasons.
@selianth: If you have an objective statement, make sure it says something. Don't just give me a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that says you are looking for a position where you can "provide value to an employer while maximizing my career development and potential".
It's okay to say:
Objective: Entry-level pharmaceutical sales position
If you have multiple things you want to do, create separate resumes. If you are a jack-of-all-trades, then don't bother with an objective because it comes off as wishy-washy and wastes valuable space.
@snowburnt: Always lead with what you are selling since most recruiters can only go so far in reading your resume. After you are established in your career, education should drop down as it's the experience you are using to catch someone's attention.
@Michael Belisle: Or "Mr.Manager". We just call them managers.
If you didn't get that joke, just ignore it.
Dwight Schrute would probably rock at this.
@Plates: It really depends upon the job. Things like budgets, people supervised, clients served can all be measured. A lot of what recruiters are looking for (in an easily digested format) is an idea of scale and scope. Did you manage an office of 2 or 22? Did you support 1 senior employee or 27 junior ones? There are ways to describe almost anything so that it is more eye-catching (or easily eliminates you from jobs that you probably don't want anyway).
These resume tips only apply to business types with a ton of experience who must be making a lot of money, since they have so much accomplishments to put on their resume. What about everyone else who isn't a junior executive at a fortune500 country and doesn't wish to be?
Strangely, I've heard opposite advice (from a CV writing company, no less). They said not to put numbers in your resume because they won't mean anything to recruiters. I can see how that'd be true, too:
Applicant A saved Company A $100,000
Applicant B saved Company B $10,000
Applicant A looks better... but what if the $10,000 Applicant B saved Company B was 50% of their total expenses or something (yes, you could write "Saved company 50% from office supply expenses")? Or, even better, Applicant C doesn't have a line about saving expenses? It'll never be comparable, which is what recruiters want.
Anyhoo, the point this advisor made is that numbers are actually not as measurable as you'd think, unless the recruiter is familiar with the companies you've worked for.
YMMV
@Landru: Nah, no sparring. I just try to make sure I know my stuff and associate primarily with people who are smarter than me. The rest can take care of themselves.
@animeredith: Duly ignored.
The corollary to the first trick is to make sure that if you're a Manager's Assistant you don't call yourself an Assistant Manager.
Let's call it Assistant to the Regional Manager.
@RandomHookup: True enough.
This should go without saying also but never list your date of birth gender race or marital status. Sometimes these will be pretty obvious (like gender) but they're questions that they aren't allowed to ask you or judge you based on so they don't need to know
Jeez people stop with the resume tips already!! It's not as if we need better competition out there!
@Plates: Non profits should be just as concerned with measurable benefits as anyone else. You could stil have initiated something that cut costs in a measurable way, increased productivity in a measuable way. You could have brought in $x in additional funding, or improve service ratings (if you provide a service and their are client surveys). It obviously depends on the type of organization and your role.
The first trick to this is actually having accomplished something worth writing about.