The Importance of Accomplishments

The following is reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from The Panic Free Job Search: Unleash the Power of the Web and Social Networking to Get Hired © 2012 Paul Hill. Published by Career Press, Pompton Plains, NJ. All rights reserved.

The resume is not a story about your responsibilities or duties. It is not just a job description. It is about the facts: What did you do? What did you accomplish? In today’s job market competencies supported by accomplishments are the focus. Simply listing a bunch of competencies on a resume without any supporting accomplishments just does not cut it.

An accomplishment is defined using metrics, such as dollars, percentages, and time saved. For the most puritan competency evangelists, if an accomplishment can’t be measured it does not exist.

Usually the words and keywords that will get your resume selected by the HR software are related to the job-specific competencies—the functional parts of your job—and, as previously stated, sometimes these are still represented under headings such as technical skills and qualifications.

In order to get an interview you need to impress a person. You impress a person with your accomplishments.

It is also good to know that this work will help you with interviews because in a competency-based interview system the key selection factor is how well you can demonstrate or prove your competencies with supporting accomplishments.

Use the following structure when formulating your accomplishment state¬ments or bullet points. The result is impactful.

PAR

• Problem: What was the problem (situation)?
• Action: What action did you take?
• Result: What was the result?

You can vary this approach. If you want to grab the employer’s attention, state the result first and use the Results-Action-Problem (RAP) format.

Examples:

• Delivered an 80% ROI on new memberships by hiring an independent telephone marketing company to reverse declining memberships and increase membership growth. Marketing drive increased paid memberships from 200 to 533 within 3 months of taking leadership of the department—setting a company record. Note: The accomplishment statement above could be used to demonstrate the following competencies: initiative, results orientation, and problem-solving. Note: Begin each accomplishment statement with an action verb and make sure it is a powerful action verb.

 

• Contributed technical input to the railway signalling project that increased traffic flow capacity by 22%.

Write a list of accomplishment statements related to each job you have had. Jot them down for now and make a comprehensive list. Make sure that you quantify the accomplishment using dollars, percentages, and time.

Bringing it All Together: Writing Your Masterpiece

Your resume needs to answer the following:

1. What is your Sustainable Competitive Advantage over your competition?

2. What are your competencies?

a. What are your skills?

i. Present your functional skills: instruments, machines, processes, and/or software you have used.

ii. Provide your industry keywords, lingo, and buzzwords.

b. What is your knowledge?

i. Remember it encompasses everything: information you have gathered, understanding of cultures, languages, challenges, activities, places, ideas, and anything else you can think of that may be remotely valuable. It includes special knowledge of industries, competitive knowledge, product positioning, ability to call on your network for help, ability as a speaker, presenter, or trainer.

ii. Education and training: consider all that is relevant to the dream job you seek.

c. What is your style?

i. Consider your strengths, work style, thinking style, stamina/resilience, communication style, and management style or subordinate style (whichever is appropriate).

3. What accomplishments have you achieved that will prove that you have the right stuff for the job?

a. In answering this question, consider PAR. We are not talking about golf here but rather Problem-Action-Results. What problems have you been given or have you identified? What action did you take? What were the results? You need to quan-tify these results where possible.

4. What have you done with respect to influencing the bottom line?

a. Consider that everyone is hired in a business to do one of three things: to make money, to save money, or to do both for their employer. You need to point out what, where, and how you have done this. Again, you need to quantify these results.

5. What is your work history?

a. Dates: include month and year.
b. Employer: name and one-line description about the company or division if not well known.
c. Job Title: Make sure you use a universally recognized job title, not something obtuse such as “talent acquisition” (instead use “recruiter”).

Comments

[Steve Mertz]

I was speaking to a friend of mine last week. She is a recruiter but in the HR world these days-talent acquisition is the phrase of choice according to her. I would just add this-she is constantly amazed at how often potential employees don't clearly spell out their accomplishments.