Accomplishments - a Must for All Resumes

As a professional recruiter, I see my share of resumes. In fact, in any given week, I probably review between 800-1000 resumes. People make many, many mistakes when writing their resumes, but the #1 mistake that people make is not including Accomplishments.

First, let's agree on the purpose of a resume. A resume's job is NOT to get you a job. In 10 years of recruiting, I have NEVER sent a resume to a client and had them call me back with a job offer. The purpose of a resume is to get you, the job-seeker an interview. It is your one and only marketing tool... so it better be good! So, agreeing that the purpose of your resume is to get you an interview - we can then further agree that everything on your resume should make the reader excited to bring you in for an interview.

Too many resumes read like consecutive job descriptions. "Ordered parts for manufacturing", "Managed staff of 10", or "planned company functions".... Booooring! How many parts? What kind of parts? How many in a week? What did you manage your staff to do? What goals did they accomplish under your leadership? What kind of events did you plan? For how many people? How much was the budget?

An Accomplishment is ONLY an accomplishment if it is Quantitative and Time-Related. What's that mean? Simply put, if I, as the reader, don't know what you did and how long it took you to do it... I don't know whether to be excited. Let me give you an example...

On your resume you write, "Planned 16 banquets". Ok. Is that 16 banquets over the course of 16 years? Should I be impressed? Well...maybe. How many people attended each Banquet? If it's 100 people, I'm probably not impressed. If over 1000 people attended each year - I'm impressed. So the Accomplishment should read: Over the course of 16 years, singlehandedly planned a banquet each year with over 1000 people in attendance. WOW!!!

If it is NOT quanitative AND time-related, it's not an Accomplishment. If you are listing enought Accomplishments on your resume, you will not need to list as many Responsibilities! It will be clear through your Accomplishments what exactly it is that you do!

Bullet your Accomplishments, but not your Responsibilities. I see a lot of resumes with 20 or more bullet points. The purpose of a bullet point is to call attention to "the important stuff". If everything is bulleted, the reader will become confused and overwhelmed and may set your resume aside. Call attention to the information that will prompt them to call you in for an interview. Bullet point your Accomplishments.

With well-written, clear and concise Accomplishments, your resume will stand out from the stack!