Resume Help... Writing Resume Accomplishments

Resume Accomplishments - Let The Numbers Tell The Story

Your resume is a vehicle for your professional achievements. There, I said it. I cut right to the bone. If you're in a highly competitive job market, the professional achievements that you decide to mention in your resume – and the way they are mentioned – are really what it's all about. Those achievements highlight the extra-ordinary worth that you provided to previous employers. And that's exactly the kind of reading material that prospective employers want to peruse. Everything else on the resume is nice, and might actually be necessary in the long run, but only if the prospective employer is first intrigued by your professional achievements, and thereby motivated to read further.

But the way in which you describe those professional achievements will often determine whether the hiring official is made motivated, or drowsy.

Let The Numbers Tell The Story

When it comes to describing our past achievements, it's natural to want to employ adjectives to facilitate the process. Generated super-colossal savings in office's paperclip purchases. Try to restrain yourself. Adjectives can be subjective. Consider the following:

Before:
Significantly increased sales.

How can we improve upon that, reduce the subjectiveness and make the achievement more universally appealing? Let's try adding some numbers.

After:
Increased sales by 50% in a single year, despite an overall economic downturn.

In this case, adding numbers and further framing the achievement in the backdrop of a recession adds ump and will more likely motivate the reader to keep reading.

More Examples of Professional Achievements

Before:
Managed successful test, launch and rollout of a new brand, exceeding sales expectations.

After:
Managed successful test, launch and rollout of a brand generating initial sales of $5.5 million in 2004, and $11 million in 2005.

Before:
Generated company savings by contesting questionable unemployment claims.

After:
Contested unemployment claims for benefits and successfully presented cases at state hearings; generated company savings of $258,000 in six months.

Before:
Significantly increased territory sales and key accounts.

After:
Grew territory from $1.5 to $6.5 million in two years; increased key accounts from 20 to 38.

In all of these cases, we began with statements that were too general, too vague, too subjective to have any real meaning in the eyes of a hiring official. By incorporating numbers, adding time lines and further fleshing out the details, these professional achievements take on a greater importance and relevance. Now, the hiring official is sitting up and taking notice. 

Adding specific details to your professional achievements, and especially invoking the universal language of numbers, eliminates vagueness and drives home the impact of those achievements. And, of course, keeps the reader reading.

Where we go from here: A few pages over, you can find out how to craft a resume that avoids the common pitfalls of the screening process. We call it our Top 10 Checklist for a Good Resume. Explore which Resume Format makes the most sense for your situation, and learn some tips on writing the perfect Resume Objective.

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