Past experiences indicate how you are likely to perform in the future. So you'll want to present your strongest experiences in a clear and powerful way.
When anyone buys something, they are often buying more than the product or service itself. They buy the benefits, the specific features, advantages and attributes which the product or service will bring to them.
When you buy a television, for example, you are buying more than the hardware. You are buying:
- Design
- Convenience features (remote channel changing, etc.)
- Reputation for quality and reliability
- Picture quality
- Lifestyle benefits
You'll want to pay special attention, then, to the ways you can best communicate your skills, talents, abilities, and aptitudes that you can bring to an organization ... the benefits you offer.
The more benefits you bring, and the fewer potential problems, the more likely you are to be screened in and not screened out.
In your resume, the best way to accomplish this is to do what most people neglect to do:
- Emphasize your accomplishments, and
- Tell the reader any specific results you have had.
They fail to market themselves. Employers buy results, accomplishments, and benefits. So, that's what you should put in your resume!
What Are Accomplishments?
Accomplishments are things you started, completed, worked on, created, developed or made possible... things that happened because you were there!
An accomplishment can be a long or short term project something created or supervised by others, or by yourself.
But they are always specific, not general, and they are always things in which you played an active role (even if others worked with you.)
Look at the difference between a duty (which does not market you effectively but is the way most people write their resumes) and the same situation described as an accomplishment.
A duty: Wrote weekly reports on sales and submitted these to home office.
An accomplishment: Completed 156 summary reports on sales, including weekly volume, percent of increase, new clients seen. Received commendation, from sales manager for accuracy and for never missing a deadline.
Which, do you think, will impress an employer more?
What about Results?
Doing something is one thing; doing it well is quite a different thing. Results detail the positive differences, advantages and changes which occurred as a consequence of your efforts. They are best expressed in easy-to-understand words or in numbers.
When writing your resume, select the statistics which best show the results you have achieved and, therefore, the kinds of results you are capable of achieving for an employer.
Here is an "ordinary" result (not a good example): Sold complete line of cars and trucks for a major metropolitan dealer for six years. Interfaced with sales force, customers, service department; prospected by phone.
Now, look at how this same experience can be changed into a good statement:
- Member, 'Winner's Circle,' honors sales club for Goodman Chevrolet, 1987-1989.
- Sold 200+ new cars and 50+ new trucks annually-over $2,500,000 in sales-for each of the past four years.
- Received dealer's highest measured customer rating for most of the 70 months on sales force.
- Averaged 50 cold call phone contacts daily, converting 6 percent into customers.
- Contacted "prior dealership customers" list by phone and set new sales records with this previously ignored group.
Analyze Your Work Experience
Your previous work experience is an important source of resume content. More recent experience is of greater importance than examples from years ago.
If you are young, or if your previous jobs are unrelated to your current objective, the type of experience you have is not all that important to most employers.
Employers are more interested in the fact that you worked somewhere, that you are ambitious, that you worked hard and did a good job than they are in what sort of job you had-unless it has a very specific relationship to the job you are seeking.
But your advancement at McDonald's to supervisor or your ability to train new staff could well add to your attractiveness as a candidate with virtually any employer.
And so could the fact that you supervised six employees. Or that you earned 80 percent of your schooling expenses while maintaining a B average.
So whether you are 20 and just starting out or 45 with considerable work experience, you want your resume to show off your accomplishments in the best possible light.
