Whether you’re writing your resume for the first time or you just need to update your old one, you want the hiring manager or recruiter to get a clear picture of what distinguishes you from the rest of the candidates.
There are many things that can make you stand out, from a prestigious school you have graduated from or a big company you’ve worked for, but companies nowadays have become more demanding than ever. According to top experts assessing the current job market scene, employers want to see numbers, figures and any other relevant metrics that prove you are a good fit. In other words, they want you to quantify your accomplishments and not just qualify them.
But what if your achievements are not related to managing big teams, big budgets, and big sales? Fear not! Even you haven’t been doing any of this stuff before, there is still enough information you can write down in your resume to impress a potential recruiter. But, here’s the catch: you need to use a good pragmatic filter to highlight the practical side of you.
The Question of How
Being able to answer HOW you managed to do the tasks at hand is just as good as writing how much money you dealt with and saved for the company you worked for, for instance. Include in your resume how many people you interacted with, how you identified and solved problems, how much time you invested to yield results, and so on.
Furthermore, the question of how leads you to acknowledge accomplishments that you might not think of mentioning, which in turn can make you think of measurable ways to describe them. For instance, if you’ve been an educator, you could say that your most valued accomplishment was the ability to help students excel by coming up with innovative ways of capturing their attention.
Once you identify your achievements, the next step is to find high-impact quantifiable statements to put in your resume.
The Question of Range and Frequency
Not all of us work with numbers or have access to companies’ statistical results that reflect your contribution to the company’s bottom line. But one way to get to the practical side of things is to make an estimate and use a range. If you are a customer service operative, you can quantify the average number of clients you talk to or how many calls you take in a week.
Also, assessing how often you performed a specific task, like how many articles you wrote or proofread a day, will give your interviewer an idea of the volume of work you can take on.
As you can see, the time spent on a job, even if you only worked as a part-time librarian in your college years or as an office assistant, can be cleverly converted into money spent or saved for the company. Even if you don’t have access to any statistical data, you could think of all the activities you performed and how the initiatives and programs you proposed might have saved additional costs for your employer.
Last but not the least, the secret to effectively measuring your accomplishments is first to understand what the job position you’re applying for requires. Once you get a good idea of what is relevant to the company, complete your resume with its business goals in mind.
