There was a time when outlining your duties and key responsibilities on your résumé was enough. But in today’s competitive and tech-driven employment landscape, crafting a powerful résumé requires a little more finesse. Employers want to see real examples of how you’ve performed in the past, as well as how you’ve added value to past positions. And the best way to show them is by highlighting your professional achievements and fine-tuning your résumé.
Despite this, many still fall into the trap of presenting a list of daily responsibilities rather than demonstrating their worst on a résumé. Before you do the same, here are five examples of achievements that will help “super charge” how your qualifications appear to potential hirers.
MAKING CLIENTS HAPPY
Clients are the lifeblood of any business, and today’s consumer expectations are very high. Plus, with client support now a key driver of brand loyalty, it’s no wonder that client service is a top priority for so many businesses.
Therefore, being able to demonstrate ways in which you’ve supported clients and gone above and beyond to make them happy can make you a very valuable candidate for any position. There are several ways you can show the impact you’ve had on client care, such as explaining how many people you helped each day and how you increased customer satisfaction rates.
You can take these examples to the next level by quantifying them, for example, “supported an average of 50 clients per day while maintaining a customer satisfaction rating of over 95%.”
INCREASING REVENUE
Money talks, so what better way to impress an employer than to show how you’ve generated profit in the past. After all, generating revenue is a primary goal of most businesses, so it pays to show how you’ve contributed towards a company’s income with some figures (dollar signs ideally).
And this doesn’t just apply to people in the sales team; all teams contribute to generating profit indirectly. Marketers can prove how their campaigns attracted clients, project managers can highlight how projects they have completed contributed to sales and revenue, and account managers can show how profitable their client relationships have been.
If you can find a way to link you work to company profits and quantify them accurately, you are on to an interview-winning strategy
REDUCING SPENDING
All spending impacts a company’s bottom line, so just as making money is important in business, so is cutting costs wherever you can. So, if you’ve done something impressive in a past role that saved your past employer money, this will be of great interest to future employers
This could have been achieved through implementing new systems, consolidating job roles, or reducing spend on supplies. And as with revenue generation, being able to quantify these figures increases your chances of landing the job.
For example, try including “utilized free and budget-friendly tools such as social media and employee referrals to find qualified candidates whilst slashing hiring costs by 24%.”
SAVING TIME
Time is a precious and irreplaceable resource, and employers like to see their workforce using their time wisely. This means anything that can simplify the workload and save time is always welcome.
If you were able to revamp existing processes or implement new systems that save time, you should certainly highlight this on your résumé. This could have been done as a way of supporting employees or perhaps making life easier for your customers; whatever the case may be, this shows initiative that leads to great results.
Though these achievements can be harder to quantify, it is possible; you could use units of time rather than percentages if it’s easier. For example, “designed a new internal communication system that saved teams an average of four work hours a week spent calling, emailing, or conferencing colleagues.”
BUSINESS GROWTH
Finally, without continued growth, business operations could stagnate, ideas could run out, morale could drop, and products/services could suffer. This is why it is so important to employers that they hire forward-thinking professionals who can innovate and help to drive the business.
There are a number of ways that you might have helped a business to grow in the past, be that growing market shares, sales, numbers of employees, or any other important metric for that matter. You might also have exceeded targets and expectations.
For example include a phrase like, “oversaw and increased the performance of the marketing team during a critical Q1 by 20%, this enabled the team to meet end-of-year KPIs.”
By showcasing your achievements on your résumé in this way, quantifying these where possible, you can help your application to stand out, giving you a competitive edge over other candidates.
(Source: www.fastcompany.com)