Achievements are ALL that matter on the Resume By: Jun Loayza
Under: ResumeI was reading through some career blogs today and I came across one that mentioned my friend Penelope Trunk. The blog came from Monster’s blog and the author wrote about how interviewers want to know about the nitty-gritty stuff that you did during your internship or experience. Bryan writes that the day-to-day operations of your experience are just as important as what you were able to achieve. I can understand Bryan’s point of view; he is writing that you need to show how you were able to achieve your accomplishments and not just list them out.I understand both points of view, and I must lean towards Penelope’s side. Your resume is a one-page synopsis of you and your accomplishments. Every single bullet point and space on the resume must be optimally used so that it paints a complete picture about who you are and how you can bring value to the company. That is the key phrase, “bring value to the company.” If you are just writing down your responsibilities, such as “Assisted the manager with excel, powerpoint, and word presentations,” then you are not showing how you brought value to the company. ANYONE can “assist a manager”; what you need to show is how you achieved something that no one else could have achieved given that they were in the same positions as you.
Let me put it in a clearer perspective. You are competing with hundreds of other well qualified applicants that have similar experiences as you do. Your peers also come from a top-ranked university, have a high GPA, worked at a finance internship last summer, and are part of a business organization on their campus. Your face, voice, and body language are not on your resume so you cannot use your charm to convince the recruiter that you deserve an interview. All that you have is what is printed on that resume. This is why you need to distinguish yourselves from your competitors with what you write on your resume, and the way to distinguish yourself is by writing about your accomplishments.
When you are writing about your achievements, there is a big difference between an average resume and an optimized, high quality resume. For example, if you worked for a non-profit to raise money:
An average resume would write:
- Worked with a team to raise money by contacting potential funders
An optimized, high quality resume would write:
- Led a team of 5 peers and raised $45,000 through effective cold-calling, emailing, and face-to-face meetings with PowerPoint presentations
Both of them describe what the accomplish was - raising money for the non-profit. However, the optimized resume quantifies and specifies the actual value of the achievement and how it was achieved.
So I agree with Bryan in the sense that you must show how you were able to achieve your accomplishments. That is the KEY FACTOR right there - when you do write about what you actually did at work, you need to keep it in the context of how you achieved something. So ultimately Penelope is right, achievements ARE what matters on your resume. No one wants to read about your day-to-day activities.
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