Resume Makeover: Achievements Will Boost Your Job Prospects

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A lot of job seekers view their resume as simply a chronological listing of their work experience. Don't fall into this trap! In this blog post, we'll explore effective strategies to optimize your resume and capture the attention of employers.

Optimize your resume to showcase your accomplishments and stand out to potential employers. Don't settle for a mere list of job responsibilities – take a different approach and transform your resume into a powerful tool to open employment doors.

Think of your resume as a marketing document. You want to make your experience as attractive as possible to an employer, so you need to show not only what you did in a role, but HOW WELL you did it. What impact did you make for the company?

Any statistics, dollar amounts, timeframes, or percentages that you can highlight will quantify your experience for an employer.

Start By Thinking Through Your Accomplishments

• Did you increase revenue? By how much?

• Did you win any company or industry awards?

• Did you create any new workflows or processes? What was the result?

• Were you chosen to lead a team or a project?

• Were you a supervisor or team lead? How many people did you manage?

• Did you exceed goals that were set for you? By how much?

• Have you solved any problems for the company? How?

Highlight Your Impact with Numbers

Two areas where you can usually find numbers to highlight are time and money. Has your work ever saved the company money? How much? Or have you helped save your coworkers or managers time? How did you do it? These are great things to feature.

Saving Time and Money:

Identify instances where you saved the company money or improved efficiency. Quantify your achievements by mentioning the specific amount or percentage.

For example:

Streamlined manufacturing process, reducing labor and material costs by 15%.

Managed bid process for facility maintenance contracts, saving the organization $25,000.

Driving Revenue and Recognition:

Emphasize your contributions to revenue growth and any awards you have received. Provide tangible figures to illustrate your impact.

Increased revenue by 20% through a website redesign project and optimized copywriting.

Developed a new social media strategy, improving user engagement by over 60% on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Overcoming Challenges and Exceeding Goals:

Highlight instances where you solved problems or surpassed targets. Specify the nature of the challenge and quantify your achievements.

Exceeded monthly sales goals by implementing new follow-up processes, resulting in a 20% increase in new monthly clients.

Implemented new workflows/processes, resulting in enhanced efficiency and reduced errors by 25%.

Use the PAR Method:

One of the best ways to structure your statements is to think in terms of a simple formula often used in job interviews: The PAR Method – Problem, Action, Results.

Problem: What was the problem you solved?

Action: How did you solve it? (Be sure to use an action verb)

Result: What was the outcome for the company, team or project?

To use this strategy on your resume, flip the order of the elements to Action + Problem / Project + Results.

The examples used above are presented in this format.

Quantifying Non-Data-Based Roles

If your job doesn't involve working with data or numbers, consider quantifying your experience using the frequency or scale of your work.

Highlight Your Impact With Frequency:

Quantify your experience based on the frequency of tasks or assignments completed within a given time period.

For instance:

Resolved 60+ help desk tickets per day.

Wrote and posted 3 blog posts per week with an average of 15,000 page views per article.

Directed 20 events per year, including 2 annual conferences with more than 5,000 attendees.

Processed 200+ customer phone orders per week and upsold items in 40% of the calls.

Highlight Your Impact With Scale:

Highlight significant projects, teams, or responsibilities you managed. Emphasize the scope or magnitude of your work.

Hired and trained 20 new managers to serve as team leads in regional call centers.

Led a company-wide web design project, collaborating with 6 departments and 2 external agencies.

Digitized company’s photo library of more than 3,000 files.

Created a 25-page training manual to assist new hires with onboarding.

Grew newsletter subscriber list from 100 to 1,000 in 6 months without increasing expenses.

Organized three volunteer events per year with more than 30 volunteers per event.

Want More Help With Your Resume?

Strengthen your resume with our FREE guide. This 10-page checklist walks you through strategies for each portion of your resume. Claim yours today!

The Bottom Line:

By optimizing your resume to showcase your achievements using quantifiable metrics, you significantly enhance your chances of catching the attention of potential employers. Remember to apply the PAR method and focus on the impact you made.

While you are updating your resume, add these to your LinkedIn profile also!

Want more resume tips? Check out this post on formatting your resume or learn what information you should NOT include on your resume.