Allow me to introduce myself. I’m your target employer, and I’m puzzled. Like 99% of job applicants, you’ve submitted a resume and cover letter for Position X replete with industry key words and flowery adjectives. (Yes, I know, you’re really dedicated, trustworthy, team-oriented…)
But where are your actual accomplishments? The pieces of measurable evidence that demonstrate your success in positions previously held?
I know you’re not trying to make it difficult for me to evaluate your candidacy for Position X. And you probably want to get the interview. Heck, I also want you to get the interview! So why are you making it more difficult for yourself?
The Primary Purpose of a Resume
Most job seekers misinterpret the primary purpose of a resume. It’s not to convey your work history (that’s what job applications are for), and it’s not to communicate your skills (although, yes, it should also do that in addition to its main function). The primary purpose of a resume is to tell the employer what you’ve done that’s relevant to Position X and how well you’ve done it. (Click here to tweet this thought.)
I’ve been assessing talent and professional resumes for 20+ years, and here’s what I’ve come to know: Whether you’re a financial analyst, project manager, salesperson, marketer, healthcare provider or barista (more on that in a moment), your career materials (meaning your resume, cover letter and LinkedIn profile) as well as your professional presentations (your talking points at job fairs, networking events and job interviews) should clearly address your professional accomplishments.
As an example, let’s get back to our barista (we’ll call her Clarista). At present, the first bullet point on Clarista’s resume reads as follows:
- Served coffee and other hot and cold beverages to customers.
There are tens of thousands of baristas employed by Starbucks alone, not to mention the many thousands of others working for other franchises and independent coffee shops who can list the same feat — and do. I’ll guarantee you that 95% of barista resumes have a bullet point that’s frighteningly identical to this one.
But there are two problematic issues with such a bullet:
- As a prospective hiring manager reading it, such a sentence is absolutely meaningless to me. I can’t determine whether Clarista is a good barista or not. Every barista prepares and serves coffee. Preparing and serving coffee is what a barista is supposed to do! And the fact that Clarista chose to create such a generic resume is not only unimpressive; it’s also a big negative. The absence of detail (e.g., how many cups of coffee and varieties she prepared and served; her efficiency in getting those cups of brew to her customers; the upticks in revenue and number of customers she helped her employers gain) leads me to assume that a) Clarista’s accomplishments are nothing to write home about, and, perhaps worse still, b) Clarista doesn’t understand what it means to be an exceptional barista. If she did, she surely would have mentioned the aspects that set her work performance apart from others vying for the role to be filled.
For all I know, Clarista served hot coffee cold and iced coffee lukewarm…and she spilled two cups for each one she poured. Bottom line: I can’t assess Clarista’s ability to be a barista at my coffee house.
- With a no-brainer bullet point like “served coffee” mucking up her resume, I can’t possibly take it to my boss (the real decision-maker in barista hiring) and proclaim that I think she’s worth interviewing. Even if there’s something else about Clarista’s background that excites me, I can’t nominate her application. If I did, I’d run the risk of seeming incompetent. I’m not willing to put my own neck on the line with my boss unless Clarista, or another job applicant, shows me something more credible by way of their accomplishments.
Well, enough beating up on Clarista. Here’s an idea of what a barista’s resume should look like:
Moonbucks
Senior Barista
- Served approximately 100 hot and cold beverages per hour (handling 15% more volume than other baristas, on average).
- Introduced a new production process adopted by 500 franchise locations that reduced individual coffee preparation time by 12 seconds and increased daily store revenues by 10%.
- Initiated “Pay Once, Drink All Week!” promotion, cutting average customer wait time by 50% and increasing total revenues by 15%.
So, you tell me: Who should I bring in to be interviewed? Clarista, with her cliché “served coffee” bullet, or the applicant from Moonbucks who clearly understands what being a professional barista is all about?
Based on their respective resumes, I’d say the latter is someone not only capable of making her coffee house more efficient and profitable, but also savvy enough to distill and communicate those accomplishments. This is the person I want working for me.
Help! I Can’t See My Accomplishments!
What do you need in order to effectively communicate your accomplishments on your resume, in your cover letter, during a job interview or in that proverbial elevator where scores of professionals find themselves pressed to deliver a winning pitch?
I think the technical term for it is chutzpah : a blend of knowledge (I know what the job calls for and what my relevant accomplishments are), confidence (I’m not afraid to toot my own horn) and readiness (I can speak of my accomplishments at the drop of a hat to anyone, anywhere).
Not everyone can easily recognize their accomplishments for what they are. Freelancers, in particular, may not have access to the results of their work, having exited a project long before their efforts came full circle. And some full-time employees may work at companies where there are no annual review processes in place, so they understandably can’t see the positive effects their job performance has on their organization.
Being able to call proper attention to your accomplishments may require a bit of work at the start, but once you get going, it’s not that hard to follow through. Simply make it your business, at the close of every project, to write down what you did, how you did it and the positive impact(s) your work had on the project.
More specifically:
- What did you do? What specific steps did you take?
- With whom did you work (colleagues, vendors, clients)? Whose job did you make easier? Did you help anyone save time? Did you help reduce overall costs?
- Where did you perform your work? Did you work with others or with information across various territories? Did you work with data from multiple sources?
- When did the project begin and end? Did it have a quick turn-around?
- Why was your work important? What was the purpose/goal of the work you were doing? Note: It’s not impressive that you “built a new system,” “introduced a new process” or “changed a manual process so it’s now automatic” if doing these things didn’t lead to positive results. Everyone knows of a new system at work that, having been introduced, made matters worse, not better. You need to tie your accomplishments to positive outcomes.
- How did you accomplish what you did? What procedures did you put in place to make operational processes faster, less expensive and/or more efficient?
- So what?! Did your work help your employer? (Think sales volume/revenues, new clients, repeat business, expansion to new markets, larger market share.) Did it help customers? (Think better experience, more services, less expensive.) Did it help your colleagues to work faster, better, smarter? And, if you want to take your resume and accomplishments to the next level, how does what you’ve done potentially have a positive impact on the industry at large? Can you explain how what you’ve done is important because it’s a precursor to “the way the industry is heading”?
Developing a Powerful Accomplishment Statement
If you’re a football fan like I am, you know that Peyton Manning, quarterback for the Denver Broncos, is having a bang-up year. He scored more points (265) over the first six games of the current season than any other quarterback has done in NFL history!
But despite Peyton’s record-breaking achievements, his resume would leave something to be desired if it looked like this:
Peyton Manning
123 Main Street, Denver, CO
Denver Broncos
Quarterback
- Threw football to receivers who scored touchdowns.
Now, imagine you’re the owner of an NFL team and you don’t know who Peyton Manning is. (I know, pretty far-fetched, but bear with me.) Would this bullet point give you the information you need in order to bring him in for a tryout? Does it give you the sense that Peyton Manning is special? That he understands not only how to throw the football, but also the ins and outs of the game?
Not really, right?
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to consider the The Tao of Resume™. “Tao” stands for:
Task: What you did
Action: How you did it
Outcome: Proof that you did a good job
Now check out these revised bullet points after Peyton Manning leverages The Tao (task, action, outcome):
Peyton Manning
123 Main Street, Denver, CO
Denver Broncos
Quarterback
- Threw 22 touchdown passes and scored 265 points over a six-game span to start the season [task], setting NFL records in both statistical categories [outcome].
- Attended 100% of optional pre-season practice sessions and worked one-on-one with a throwing coach during the off-season [action] in order to produce results from game one.
See the difference? In his revised resume, Peyton tells us more specifically what he accomplished (record-breaking stats), how he did it (relentless practice, off-season work) and the ultimate result or outcome of his efforts (he helped to make his team better).
Whether you’re Clarista the barista or Peyton the NFL quarterback (or, more likely, somewhere on the spectrum in between), I, your target employer, really want to hire you. I need someone to fill my job vacancy, and that’s why I’m allocating time away from my normal job routine to review hundreds of resumes. But I need your help.
Make my goal a little easier to achieve by embracing and clearly expressing your accomplishments so it’s clear to me from a quick scan of your resume how you’ll help my business thrive from day one. By doing this, you’ll become a much stronger candidate; it will be your resume, with its accomplishment-focus, that will rise to the top of a very crowded pile.
How can you revise your resume to make it more accomplishment-focused?
Joseph Terach is CEO of Resume Deli. He has 15+ years’ experience as a career manager, content strategist and corporate trainer. Joseph earned his BA in English and MA in Applied Psychology, both from New York University. He delivers career-management seminars and blogs regularly for Resume Deli and FlexJobs.
Image: Flickr
