Do you feel like you have no accomplishments in your resume? Are you worried that you have been a worker bee and haven’t collected enough “wins”?
In this blog, I’ll break down how to create powerful accomplishments in your resume that don’t rely on just stuffing numbers into your resume.
But first, what’s the difference between a duty and an accomplishment?
A duty is a responsibility. It’s a task you were assigned to do.Meanwhile, an accomplishment is the successful achievement of a task.
When you share duties only in your resume, you can make the reader feel, “This person had these responsibilities, sure, but I’m not sure how successful they were at this job.” On the other hand, by sharing accomplishments in your resume, you show the recruiter that you bring results.
For instance, “planned events” would be considered a job duty. It was part of your job. However, if you were to say “broke previous attendance records by increasing collaboration with the marketing team,” that’s an accomplishment.
In this article, I am going to show you:
- Where to find hidden accomplishments.
- What to ask yourself to create the best accomplishments.
- How to write accomplishments.
By the way, if you’re working on your resume and want to know exactly how to visually lay out your resume so it slows down even the most impatient of recruiters mid-skim, download my two-page, annotated, salary-doubling resume cheat sheet here:
Introduction
Most people aren't bad writers. But nearly everyone has a hard time writing about themselves. For many of us, it feels too close to boasting, which we’ve been taught is a bad thing.
Worse, it’s easy to lose track of the bigger picture when you’re caught up in your day-to-day tasks. “I just did my job. I didn’t do anything special."
You absolutely have accomplishments under your belt, but it requires a little bit of mental reframing.
Example: If you were responsible for creating and executing marketing campaigns for a product, talk about your campaign wins. What was the biggest campaign you developed for that product? Did you win any awards for your work? Which campaign performed the best?
The key to turning your job duties and even everyday tasks into accomplishments while writing your resume is adding specific examples of each duty. This article will show you how to stop looking at your daily work as “just tasks I do every day,” and instead get you thinking, “what wins did I achieve today?”
While the exercise in this article is great to do once, I highly recommend keeping a notebook or file on your computer that you add to each time you achieve a win at work. This will help make updating your resume a breeze next time!
The C A R Model
Any good accomplishment shows:
- The Challenge that you needed to address.
- The Actions that you took to address the challenge.
- The Result of the actions you took.
Let's start brainstorming! Take a piece of paper and divide it into three columns: Challenge, Action, and Result.
Challenge
To brainstorm accomplishments for your resume, let's start with the problems you solved, i.e. the challenges you overcame every day.
In the challenges columns, write down answers to all of the following questions that apply:
Upon Joining Challenges:
- When you joined up, what challenges did you immediately note (for your team, department, or company)?
- Did the company inform you about the challenges you had to address before joining?
- Did the company give you any specific targets upon joining?
- How would you describe the team or department environment when you joined?
Management Challenges:
- Six months into the job, what issues started becoming apparent?
- Did you spot a project that was in danger of missing its deadlines?
- Did you recommend a change in processes to speed up project delivery?
- Did you notice any process that was taking too much time or effort?
- What was the team’s morale like when you took over? Also, what problems did you see that were causing low morale (if any)?
- Were you ever asked to train a new employee on something because you're seen as a subject-matter expert in your office?
Finance Challenges:
- Did you identify any challenges in cash flow?
- Did you identify any tool or license that the company was paying too much money for?
- Was there any area in your department where you identified overspend?
Public Relations & Sales Challenges:
- Did your organization have PR or image issues?
- Were the relationships that your organization had weak?
- Was your organization just not very competitive?
- Did your organization have trouble retaining or attracting customers?
- Was your business too limited to one vertical or sector of the market?
- Did you identify a new market that the company should move into?
You can also consider these questions for non-work experiences to add as accomplishments in your resume.
For example, if you’re a student, think about the state of a project when you joined. Was no one coordinating tasks? Was there a poor definition of roles? Did you step in and take charge? Similarly, you can expand these questions to examine your volunteer work, side projects, and club memberships. It's good to mention volunteer work on your resume, especially if helps showcase your soft skills.
Action
Now that you have a list of challenges that you noticed written out in front of you, move to the next column of your notes page and think about the actions you took to resolve each one.
Let’s look at an example. Suppose you were working at a company that did all their social media marketing on Twitter. When you joined the company, you saw that the account had a low audience reach. To correct this, you recommended a push toward influencer marketing. Your supervisor liked this suggestion and asked you to execute this idea.
In this case, your actions include presenting a solution to your supervisor, advocating for influencer marketing as a strategy, and executing this new marketing campaign.
Even if your idea was not accepted, write down your proposed action. Later, when you create resume bullets from these notes, you can say something like...
Proposed influencer marketing ideas to marketing leadership to tap into new audience segments.
If you’re struggling with identifying the actions of any challenge, read the questions below. They'll help you get started:
- What tools and programs did you use?
- What steps did you take at each stage of the project?
- Did you have to do something pre-work before kickstarting a project?
- What specific steps did you take to make sure something would be improved?
If you need more help thinking of how your actions can be turned into accomplishments, do you still have the job description that you were hired against? If so, reading it might help you see what actions you take on a day-to-day basis to solve problems for your company.
Result
Results are the consequences of your actions. For your resume, focus on any positive consequence of your actions.
In other words, you shouldn’t get bogged down in the worry that “my actions didn’t have a big impact. It didn’t lead to a lot of savings.”
It is also important to remember that not all results are quantifiable.
Yes, many actions lead to results that you can measure. For example, you can see cost or time savings, metric improvements, or score bumps. But the results of some actions are not or cannot be measured. For example, if you helped simplify a process and that led to less frustration for the user, how do you put a number on this lower frustration? It’s very difficult to quantify.
Therefore, consider the impact made in terms of morale, attitude, and performance when you’re thinking about results. Think about the before-and-after picture. What was different after your actions?
You can also compare your work with that of your co-workers (if you're in sales or other ranked jobs) or competitors. Comparisons are an excellent way to show how you helped improve the company position or how you rank compared to others in your industry.
Here are some brainstorming questions to help you identify results:
- Was there any change in metrics or scores?
- Did you secure cost or time savings?
- Was the new process easier to use? Also, was it faster to execute?
- How do the new performance numbers compare against other departments or teams?
- How do the new performance numbers compare against industry benchmarks?
In results, you can also talk about your awards and recognitions from the past that you received.
Awards & Recognitions
Has your supervisor ever given you any sort of recognition or awards? Did one of your peers or team leads tell you that you did a marvelous job on a project or task?
If yes, add those recognitions and awards to your resume as accomplishments.
Sharing awards like these demonstrates your expertise in your field. Such recognitions become a great source of proof of your skills.
Tying it all together
After creating a “Challenge-Action-Result” list for each organization you worked for, you can begin writing out your accomplishments.
Here is the framework you want to follow for your bullets:
- Achieved RESULT by addressing CHALLENGE and taking ACTIONS.
I recommend this “results-first” format because, when recruiters read a resume, their gaze goes down the left side of the resume. In other words, they are glancing down in that direction to quickly see your job titles.
Additionally, when you use action words like “led," “improved,” and “strategized” to describe your results, you create a strong impression on the recruiter. You come across as a person who is accomplished and action-driven.
This is what this format looks like in action:
- Boosted company sales by $6M/year by revitalizing an outdated trailer pumping system at Star City Cryogenic Research Lab and by offering additional maintenance services to customers.
- Created safe working spaces in extreme weather conditions by ensuring strict adherence to industry and company safety protocols.
If you’re still struggling to add accomplishments to your resume, schedule a free, 15-minute consultation call with us here, so we can give you advice for your specific situation.
Suggested Readings
- 4 Ways To Make An ATS-Compatible Resume
- Get a Promotion by Emphasizing Your Volunteer Experience in Your Resume
- The Single Most Important Skill Hiring Managers Look For in Candidates
