Think of it this way, the prospective employer is the dog, and you are holding a stick. The stick represents all the achievements, accomplishments, skills, traits and knowledge you possess.
Your job (should you choose to accept it) is to make that stick as real, as specific, as well-defined as possible so when you wind ‘er up and throw it, prospective employers will chase it.
(Great analogy, dontcha think?)
It’s not a good use of time to make your resume look fancy or fill it up with underlines, fancy formatting or an eye-distracting layout.
Your job is to dig deep down into your background and come up with a solid list of what you have done in the past, to prove what you can do in the future.
So here’s how we do that:
1. Pull out all your previous resumes, performance reviews, letters of recommendation, “atta boy/girl” certificates and make a list of each accomplishment or task reflected in those documents. Do not hold back! Add it all to your list, even if it was something you did 20 years ago. Even if it’s something that wasn’t too awfully impressive. Write it down. We’ll come back to it later.
2. Next, call up or email people you’ve worked with over the years. Ask them to wrack their little pea-pickin brains about the projects you worked on together. Ask them to tell you everything they remember about those projects. Ask them what stands out in their mind as being eventful, frustrating, successful, a huge disappointment. Write down what they say. You’ll come back to it later.
3. Then, ask your spouse, kids, parents and friends if they remember times when you were particularly stressed or happy. See if they remember what you were working on at the time. Write it down.
Now, it’s time to come back to all those items on the list:
- Combine and consolidate the duplicates
- Group these items into categories: Leadership and Management, Operations, Public Relations, Technical, Customer Service, Sales and Marketing, Communication, Crisis Management, Finance/Accounting, etc.
- Take each item, one by one, and ask yourself “so what?” after each phrase or sentence. What was the bottom line benefit of you having done that task? Keep asking the “so what?” question until you feel satisfied you’ve gotten to that bottom line.
- Rewrite the accomplishment with that bottom line benefit up front, followed by how you accomplished that benefit. For example: “Reduced turnover 10% in six months. Identified key skill sets and coached employees to focus on top three competencies, conducted weekly talent development training, reviewed employee performance statistics monthly and created incentive program for top performers.”
To quantify an accomplishment, you may need to use some critical thinking and creative reasoning skills. If you’re not in a sales position, it’s still very possible to quantify accomplishments. Notice that I chose a very “squishy” example in the last bullet above. It’s not easy to prove, is it? But if you made a conscious choice to reduce turnover and help employees develop, and you took specific steps to achieve that goal, it’s fine to take credit for shrinking turnover. Even if you have to approximate and provide your best guess. Who’s to say it wasn’t you that worked that miracle?
Work through every item on your list to quantify an outcome. If you can’t quantify it, then I’d encourage you to drop it from your list. Why? Because the last thing you want is one of those namby-pamby resumes written in oh-so-generic terms that anyone could lay claim to! Your resume needs to be meaty – specific – filled with dollar signs, numbers and percentages. And yes, you CAN do it. Once you get started, you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.
So warm up that pitching arm, lean on back and throw that stick with confidence. Let prospective employers know you mean business!
AND, you can prove it!
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